Palestine

Until its liberation in the Six-Day War, Jews were not allowed to climb beyond the seventh step outside Ma’arat HaMachpelah, the Cave of the Patriarchs. Despite being built on land purchased by Abraham almost 4000 years ago, despite being the burial place of the patriarchs and matriachs of Judaism, despite the stone walls around the location being erected under King Herod, successive Arab and Islamic occupiers forbad Jews access to their second holiest site. Unesco has kicked Jews back down the steps. The UN body nominally responsible for promoting peace through culture has voted to designate Ma’arat HaMachpelah a Palestinian heritage site. It is a grim act of historical revisionism,

On the Israeli side of the Syrian border, near al-Quneitra, you can watch the war. From my vantage point on the hill, I see a town held by Jabhat al-Nusra and another held by Nusra’s enemy, Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Behind a hill in the distance, I’m told by my Israeli guide, is an area controlled by Isis. Near a road blockade, a sign reads ‘Mortal Danger. Any person who passes endangers his life’ — a point reinforced by the rumble of mortars exploding and the screams that follow. I’ve never heard anything like it. The photographer I’m with is braver than me, or perhaps more foolish. He ventures past the

Why, do you suppose, are people getting worked up about the nepotism angle of Donald Trump appointing his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as a senior policy adviser, with particular responsibility for the Middle East, when there’s so much else to worry about it? The one thing that should concern us is that it means that a friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, perhaps the most destabilising figures in Israeli politics, is now effectively in charge of policy in respect of the Israel–Palestine question. That’s right; Kushner is the young man who introduced Netanyahu to Trump. He was also presumably behind Trump’s incandescent response to the US abstention on the UN Security Council vote on

A Methodist church in Hinde Street, London, is exhibiting ‘You cannot pass today: Life through a dividing wall’, a reconstruction of a border control point between Israel and the occupied territories. The purpose, needless to say, is not to show how to deal with a terrorist threat, but to attack Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. A Jewish human rights group which has written to protest has been told, soapily, by the minister, ‘I respect your passionate concern for these issues…This exhibition… has been carefully curated… to promote reflection and prayers for peace.’ I have noticed these wall protests popping up on campuses etc., and they never seem either reflective or prayerful.

I see that law students at Oxford University were told that if they found the contents of a lecture on rape and sexual assault ‘distressing’, they would be permitted to absent themselves. This is an interesting approach for future lawyers and barristers. Perhaps, further down the line, they will excuse themselves in court when the evidence is a bit gamey and go to a safe space for a good cry. Or should we be more concerned about those students who remained in the lecture theatre because they did not find the contents remotely distressing, but actually ‘a bit of a hoot’ or ‘bloody hilarious — especially that bit with the

‘I want a woman to be President,’ declared one of the ambulance drivers interviewed by Sherief Elkatsha for his film Cairo Drive. I don’t think he was joking. He was fed up with the struggle to do his job in the chaos of the Egyptian capital’s streets clogged by 14 million vehicles. Elkatsha’s feature documentary took five years to make and takes us from 2009 through the Tahrir Square uprising up to the most recent elections purely through looking at the traffic, the lifeblood of the city. He set out to give us voices, not tell a political story, and this lies behind many of the films shown in last