Two opinion pieces in this week's Daily Star are well worth looking at, both the work of historians: David Abulafia of Cambridge has written on the deal between the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen and Sultan Al-Kamel in 1229 to share Jerusalem. The compromise, which came during the Crusades, was an effort by both men to avoid a confrontation (Frederick, who was also king of Sicily, was an Islamophile), and Abulafia used the incident to make a commentary on any future Palestinian-Israeli deal on Jerusalem.

Military historian Douglas Porch has written a commentary on how the German and Japanese occupation models are not examples to emulate in Iraq, but, on the contrary, ones which should be avoided by the U.S. The piece is drawn from a longer one he wrote for the National Interest magazine.