While I was pleased to see that there was coverage of events in the Middle East in your latest issue, I was disappointed by the way it was reported. Many things were omitted, which made the stories appear one-
sided. For example, in the timeline of events in the print edition, you wrote (correctly) that David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel in May 1948. Out of context, that seems as if he unilaterally created a country. But there was no mention that the declaration followed a vote in the U.N. the previous November calling for Palestine to be partitioned between Arabs and Jews, allowing for the formation of the Jewish state of Israel. The vote was 33 yes, 13 no, and 10 abstentions, as reported then by the New York Times. That timeline noted that the October 7 attack by Hamas killed over 1000 Israelis, but it did not mention that Hamas took over 200 hostages, including children and older people.

Similarly, the page with recommended readings offered texts that tend to speak to one side of the conflict. It should have included readings written from multiple perspectives. This link to The Globe and Mail and this link to Harper’s Bazaar (just to cite a few sources) do exactly that. They list both fiction and non-fiction books.

The conflict in the Middle East is complex and decades, most would say centuries, old. There is heartbreak and suffering and probably blame on both sides. The reporting in your November 8, 2023 did not do justice to these complexities, which I hope that any future coverage will.

-Dr. Nancy Ruth Fox, Professor, Department of Economics