Operation Iron Wall comes as an advanced episode of the war in the Gaza Strip, and part of the Israeli Prime Minister’s previous promises to redraw the features of the Middle East. This is evident through a series of Israeli measures aimed at re-engineering the Palestinian and Syrian geography, spatially …

Mounted atop a former warehouse in Hamburg’s industrial-era docklands, the billowing form of the Elbphilharmonie concert hall rises above Germany’s second-largest city like an ocean wave. The glass-panelled building crowns a new, forward-looking section of the city, a modern and elegant counterpoint to the seedy Reeperbahn nearby. Built with the …

“And are we not guilty of offensive disparagement in calling chess a game? Is it not also a science and an art, hovering between those categories as Muhammad’s coffin hovered between heaven and earth, a unique link between pairs of opposites: ancient yet eternally new.” Once again, Stefan Zweig got …