Middle East
It is difficult to know what to say in response to Mona Eltahawy’s explosive article on the experience of women in Middle Eastern countries. She writes about a level of institutionalized brutality that demands that readers pay attention. At the same time, she doesn’t say anything new, nothing that wasn’t already made too vividly clear during the Arab Spring.
A rabbi and strong advocate for Palestinians’ rights told me this: "When you Christians start talking about divesting from Israel, it sounds to us as if you are undermining Israel’s economy and thus Israel’s existence. We close ranks."
Palestinian parents don’t fret about drugs or drunk drivers. They worry that the Israeli soldiers will use their M-16s.
Western Christians seem neither to know nor care about the catastrophe that has unfolded before them in the ancient heartlands of their faith.
Attacks on Israelis inside or emanating from the West Bank are now almost nonexistent. Peace efforts are focused instead on settlements—because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a conflict over land.
