An estimated 1.4 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes since the Israeli military began bombing the Gaza Strip on Oct. 8, 2023, in retaliation for a surprise attack by Hamas militants. Many of these Palestinians have sought refuge in United Nations emergency shelters in a situation the World Health Organization has described as “catastrophic.”

The Saudi government is continually looking for some acceptable justification to suppress this Shi’a minority, which Riyadh believes threatens the stability of the kingdom. The designation of Shi’a as heretics aids in cementing this justification. However, the Saudi rulers have gone one step further. They have tied the interests of their Shi’a citizens to Iran, creating a false narrative of Iranian hegemony. 

Yom Kippur will even see a complete shutdown of Tel Aviv’s airport, with no flights allowed in or out.  With all that being said, Tel Aviv and its citizens seem more concerned with quality of life—time spent socializing with friends over drinks and tanning on the beach—than the seemingly endless religious and territorial conflict that surrounds them not only in Israel, but in the entire Middle East region.

“…That’s the difference between us and our neighbors,” Netanyahu said. “They consider murderers to be heroes. They name public squares after them. We don’t. We condemn them and we put them on trial and we’ll put them in prison.” Not only is that rhetoric dehumanizing, it is also false. For example, the town of Kochav Yair in central Israel is named after the leader of the notorious LEHI, or “Stern Gang,” Avraham Stern, a terrorist who was summarily executed by the British. LEHI, along with the Irgun Z’Vai Leumi (or Irgun for short) was responsible for the massacre of the Palestinian Deir Yassin village in 1948, though this was after Stern’s death. 

Images, and the words that oftentimes accompany them, have a tendency to take on lives of their own.  The mustache sported so famously by Hitler represents many things.  It represents fear, violence, extermination, destruction, hate.  The very fact that someone would use an image as loaded as that of Hitler to make a statement about an economic policy is irresponsible.  That being said, the policies born from economic theories have had huge impacts on the lives of millions upon millions of people.  

While U.S. media heap praise on Secretary of State John Kerry for his efforts at restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, more critical still are recent developments across the region. Four factors, specifically, have proven decisive in enticing the two sides to the negotiating table. The real question now is whether an agreement can be reached before the window of opportunity closes again. Surprisingly, a new round of negotiations began Monday in Washington D.C. after a three-year hiatus. 

Arabs and Palestinians also relive history in this land. I remember a song from my youth that begins with the words, “The land speaks Arabic.” Sung in the classroom, it is meant to emphasize the ancient connection linking Palestinians to the land of Palestine. Indeed, the Arab names of many villages today date back to the pre-Israelite era. In many cases even Israeli archeologists will use the Arabic names to identify Biblical sites. 

The killing of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi, Libya, on the anniversary of September 11 should provoke a similar examination of the Obama presidency. Here was a quintessential ambassador – an Arabic speaker, popular among ordinary Libyans, who had worked with the revolutionaries to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi – killed in the line of duty.  It was a colossal failure, marking a nadir in a presidency that boasted a break with Bush-era unilateralism and a promise to “commit ourselves to an effort – a sustained effort – to find common ground” with the Muslim world. 

The world continues to keep a wary eye on Iran’s nuclear program, in nearby Syria the pro-Iranian government of Bashir al-Assad is on the brink of collapse and Tel Aviv accuses Tehran of being behind the fatal suicide bombing of a bus in Bulgaria which carried Israeli tourists. Yet chicken, or lack thereof, makes daily front-page headlines and is the obsessive subject of scores of cartoons that appear in both state-owned and independent media in Iran.