Mike Konrad

I have a hero, one with was rather odd for an American like me: Charles De Gaulle. A man who rescued a dying France, which was surviving only on life support and former glory, and stabilized its deteriorating situation -- to leave his…

In 2004, an Israeli ambassador to Sweden destroyed an artwork that depicted a Palestinian terrorist as a hero. Was that appropriate? The question posed then still troubles us. The art installation consisted of a rectangular basin filled…

There is a forgotten piece of turf — at least to us Americans — that has probably the greatest effect on history outside Jerusalem. Yet, thanks to name changes and legends crowding out the truth — if they really be legends — no…

As an amateur historian -- and probably not a good one -- I go nuts when I see amateurish fictions tendered as core premises. This is no more frequently found than in Hollywood; but do not kid yourself, it is not confined to Hollywood.The…

I like to study history a bit further than most people — probably not as deep as “professional” historians, but deep enough to know that much of what drives nations and foreign policies is more mythologized history than actual truth.During…

One of the follies of recent Western Civilization is its exaggerated hyper-secularization, with man being the measure of all things, and religious faith being relegated to a sideshow, important only to the individual, not the society at…

The present estimates for the rebuilding of Gaza are roughly $50 billion, and that is probably lowballing it. That amounts to roughly $25,000 per Gazan. There is no way that Israel will allow that much money to go into…

There are events that an astute student of history will ascertain as turning points. One such event is at the root of the debacle we see now in the Mideast.In 1939, after years of Jewish-Arab fighting, the British government all…

The present world we see today can be traced back to a war that is almost unknown in America, yet had it turned out differently — and it almost did — much of the world problems were see today might not exist.The Dutch Boers (lit: farmers,…

There are times when large wars produces miniscule results, waged only to re-arrange pieces on a chessboard (War of the Spanish Succession) -- and times when small scuffles will make or break a civilization (The battle of Thermopylae).This…