Hello, and happy New Year! I hope your 2023 is off to an auspicious start. Mine has so far consisted of trying to wean myself off of the Trader Joe’s dried mango addiction I developed over the holidays and getting back into running after a very extended sabbatical. So far, so good.
Our next correspondence will be coming to you from the frigid alpine town of Davos, where I’ll be covering the World Economic Forum for TIME. If you’ll be there, please say hello! Any tips on how to keep warm in business attire is also much appreciated.
What I’ve written
This week, I wrote about Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s provocative visit this week to the Al Aqsa Compound—otherwise known as the Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif—and what it tells us about the fate of Jerusalem’s holiest site:
The tensions over the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, much like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more broadly, is best understood not as a religious conflict, but a territorial one. The holy site has become a proxy for who controls Jerusalem (the eastern part of which remains occupied under international law and which both Israelis and Palestinians claim as their capital) and of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict writ large.
“Ben-Gvir’s visit there had absolutely nothing to do with piety,” says Seidemann. “It had everything to do with sticking it to the Arabs and the Palestinians and showing them who’s boss and courting his base.” Keep reading here
I also wrote about the countries imposing new entry requirements on travelers arriving from China as the country undergoes its latest COVID surge:
Some countries, including the United States and Britain, are reintroducing compulsory pre-flight COVID-19 tests for people flying from China. Others, such as Japan and Italy, are requiring testing upon arrival and quarantine for those who test positive. One country, Morocco, has even decided to ban entry to all travelers coming from China outright. Read more here
What I’ve read
This piece on why Extinction Rebellion is calling it quits on disruptive protests (TIME)
But it’s also hard to avoid the perception that Extinction Rebellion is doing this because, after four years of campaigning, they’ve realized that the strategy simply isn’t working, or that they’ve decided that other, younger groups have gone too far. Civil resistance generated more attention than ever before last year, but the groups shutting down roadways aren’t exactly popular. More people in the U.K. disapprove of Extinction Rebellion than support it, according to YouGov polling, and more than three times more people opposed Just Stop Oil’s tactics of blocking roadways than agreed with them, according to a separate poll in November.
This long read about the Harvard Kennedy School’s decision to deny a fellowship to Human Rights Watch alum Ken Roth over his criticism of Israel (The Nation)
The Palestinian presence at the Kennedy School is sparse and discussion of the Israel-Palestine issue fleeting. According to people knowledgeable about the school’s programs, its administration is terrified of touching anything related to Palestine, and Palestinian voices have largely been silenced. That’s due not to any particular administrator, they say, but to “the ethos of the place” and the people who fund the Belfer Center.
I’ve mostly avoided the latest coverage surrounding Harry and Meghan, but I made an exception for this piece by Caitlin Flanagan—and I wasn’t disappointed (The Atlantic)
Harry is a grown man, he’s had a lot of experience with women (and “bedroom promises”), and he married the one he loved. When she was miserable, the way his own mother had been miserable, he didn’t do what his grotesque father had done—cheat on her, treat her like a broodmare, ignore her suffering; he moved her and his family far away. Considering that three of his grandmother’s four children got divorced, he seems to have a better idea of what constitutes marital obligation than most of his in-house role models.
What I’m thinking about
How many of these new geopolitical terms I can squeeze into everyday conversation.
2023 is shaping up to be one hell of a polycrisis, huh?
Hmm, I’ll keep working on it.
Until next time,
Yasmeen