Israel and Gaza, Held Hostage by Fundamentalism (shared)

Apart from mourning the attack on the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, which felt like it happened while U2 was onstage at Sphere Las Vegas, I have generally tried to stay out of the politics of the Middle East. This was not humility, more uncertainty in the face of obvious complexity. In recent months, I have written about the war in Gaza in The Atlantic and spoken about it in The Observer, but I circled the subject.

As a co-founder of the ONE Campaign, which tackles AIDS and extreme poverty in Africa, I felt my experience should be focused on the catastrophes facing that work and that part of the world. The hemorrhaging of human life in Sudan or Ethiopia hardly makes the news. The civil war in Sudan alone is beyond comprehension, leaving 150,000 dead and 2 million people facing famine.