Beyond the violence in Gaza

As the world watches the horror in Gaza unfold, Michael Moynihan examines a new book to try and understand why the situation seems so intractable.

LAST week a provincial newspaper in Ireland ran a feature on likely destinations for a novel holiday weekend, and its top recommendation went a bit beyond Prague, or Warsaw, or even Istanbul — Tel Aviv in Israel was the preferred location.

Given the recent and ongoing events in Gaza, this was immediately seized upon by the Twitterati and others as evidence of insensitivity, if not worse, with the description of the Israeli city — “lively” — featuring heavily in the laughs being had.