Writer and Educator
Sari Nusseibeh is the kind of Palestinian that we Canadians love to embrace. An Oxford educated, philosophy professor who is president of al-Quds University in Jerusalem, Nusseibeh has been a steadfast moderate within the Palestinian national movement for decades…
Back in 1979, the New York Times unwittingly broke the taboo against American Jews serving as Middle East correspondents, when it appointed David Shipler its Jerusalem bureau chief. Shipler isn’t Jewish – but many readers assumed he was. He was followed by Thomas Friedman, who does happen to be Jewish, just as many subsequent Jerusalem-based correspondents for American and Canadian newspapers have been – including myself…
When the latest Palestinian uprising erupted nearly three years ago, Americans–let alone Israelis–reacted with shock. For seven years there had been a peace process, however halting and grudging. How had we gone from the inspiring 1993 handshake on the White House lawn between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to suicide bombers on Israel’s streets and soldiers shooting children?
