The United States – Israel relationship is unique. In 1989, Israel was officially designated by the United States as a Major non-NATO ally (MNNA). This has allowed Israel to remain an “unofficial” ally of the U.S. while at the same time conferring them a number of military and economic benefits.

NUCLEAR threats and counter-threats are a subtext of our times, steadily, it seems, becoming more insistent. The July meeting in Geneva between Iran and six major world powers on Iran’s nuclear programme ended with no progress.

A reasonably evenhanded biography of Barack Obama, published last year, describes him as “an exceptionally gifted politician who, throughout his life, has been able to make people of wildly divergent vantage points see in him exactly what they want to see.”

Our Founding Fathers, whose ideas were formed during the Age of Enlightenment, provided us with many gifts of wisdom. We all know that. Their greatest gift was guiding us clear of the debacle of combining government and religion, i.e. Separation of Church and State.