Mona Eltahawy at PostGlobal

Mona Eltahawy

New York City, NY, USA

Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning syndicated columnist and an international lecturer on Arab and Muslim issues. Before she moved to the U.S. in 2000, she was a news reporter in the Middle East, including in Cairo and Jerusalem as a Reuters correspondent. She also reported from the region for Britain's The Guardian and U.S. News and World Report. She has lived in Egypt, the UK, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, and is currently based in New York. Close.

Mona Eltahawy

New York City, NY, USA

Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning syndicated columnist and an international lecturer on Arab and Muslim issues. Before she moved to the U.S. in 2000, she was a news reporter in the Middle East, including in Cairo and Jerusalem as a Reuters correspondent. She also reported from the region for Britain's The Guardian and U.S. News and World Report. She has lived in Egypt, the UK, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, and is currently based in New York. more »

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Israel-Palestine Archives



January 2, 2009 11:25 AM

Israel, Opium of the People

NEW YORK - "Why aren't you as an Arab lady writing about Gaza?"

"Where are your columns about Gaza?"

"Say the Israelis are wrong!"

The messages started to arrive soon after Israel's bombardment of Gaza killed close to 300 Palestinians. Implicit was the pressure to toe the party line, Hamas is good, Israel is bad. Say it, say it! Or else you're not Arab enough, you're not Muslim enough, you're not enough.

But what to say about a conflict that for more than 60 years now has fed Arab and Israeli senses of victimhood and their respective demands to stop everything else we're doing and pay attention to their fights because what's the slaughter of anyone else - be they in Darfur, Congo or anywhere else - compared to their often avoidable bloodletting?

Hasn't it all been said before? Has nothing been learned?

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