One of the dreams of Zionism was to be a bridge. Instead, we are creating exclusion between the East and the West instead of creating bridges; we are contributing to the conflict between East and West by our stupid desire to have more.

I think about the Arabs not as enemies but as cousins. Even when we are in a fierce conflict with them, they are more of a kind of family - with all the problems of a family. We have to live with them.

All wars signify the failure of conflict resolution mechanisms, and they need post-war rebuilding of faith, trust and confidence.

Was Sen. Barack Obama a Muslim? Did he ever practice Islam? The presidential candidate officially rejects the claims, but the issue of Obama's personal faith has re-emerged amid conflicting accounts of his enrollment as a Muslim during elementary school in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

As film-makers, it is very important for us to find common ground between cultures, and maybe that's less the case for politicians who benefit more from finding the conflicts and differences between us.

If you look at military and intelligence positions from the 1950s, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always been against American national interests.

Movies can provide tear-inducing or comically-entertaining representations of love, but many agree that its deeper conflicting complexities often seem unfathomable.

Whenever I visited China in the past, the relationships always felt superficial; there was no time where I felt those moments of conflict and delight that make you feel close to another person. But since I started touring there in 2004, I would always collaborate with local musicians, and that opened up a new level of intimacy.

Mississippi's loose campaign finance laws allow lawyers and companies to contribute heavily to the judges they appear before. That is terrible for justice, since the courts are teeming with perfectly legal conflicts of interest.