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But my Arabic is pretty good. It's good enough to have conversations with people, to understand what they say, to understand what they're feeling.

Before I got into politics, I wanted to be a missionary to people in the Middle East. I thought it would be better to speak with them in their own language.

I grew up in Jerusalem and went to school here. I studied at the Hebrew University - mostly Islam and Arabic: Arab literature, Arab poetry and culture, because I felt like we are living in this region, in the Middle East, and we are not alone: There are nations here whose culture is Arab.

Arabic is very twisting, very beautiful. The call to prayer is quite haunting; it almost makes you a believer on the spot.

As teenagers, a lot of us just did not want much to do with Arabic culture - we looked to the West.

Everybody needs to understand that I learned Arabic from the United States Army as a second language. I never spoke it at home.

Whenever I come across an Arabic word mired in English text, I am momentarily shocked out of the narrative.

For a journalist who covers the Muslim world, we have responsibilities to be familiar with that culture and to know how to respond to that.