A Palestinian-Jewish Experiment in Pluralism

In today’s newsletter, divided together, and then:
•Should we cull predators to save their prey?
•The meaning of Hunter Biden’s conviction
•Richard Linklater breaks down a scene from “Hit Man”

Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom was founded on a total belief in the power of dialogue. In the wake of Hamas’s attack and amid Israel’s war in Gaza, a “very loud silence” has fallen.

The name Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalommeans Oasis of Peace, in Arabic and Hebrew. Founded around 1970 by an Egyptian-born Jew who fled the Nazi invasion of France, the village is situated halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and comprises Jewish Israeli and Palestinian Israeli families. “Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom’s mission,” Masha Gessen writes inthis profound piece of reporting, for this week’s issue, was to create “a miniature model of a future in which Arabs and Jews share a land and govern it jointly—co-living, not just coexistence.”

Six months after the Hamas attack on October 7th, Gessen visited the community, meeting with residents to learn “what the war had done to the village and, more broadly, to the Israeli peace movement.” What Gessen finds is that the town’s foundational hope—“that peace would come in this lifetime”—has been shaken, with its people becoming taciturn and tense toward each other in unfamiliar ways. “It’s not the fear of the police—it’s the fear of hearing the reactions of people being not as compassionate as you want them to be,” one resident remarks, of a newfound shared silence. “It’s realizing who your partners are.”

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After a short deliberation, a jury in Delaware found Hunter Biden guilty on three felony counts related to a federal firearms application from 2018. Katy Waldman, who has covered the trial forThe New Yorker, sends word today that the verdict compounded what had already “clearly been a wrenching experience” for the defendant. She adds, “When I was in the courtroom, Hunter often looked deeply uncomfortable, covering his mouth with his hand or slumping down in his seat.” Earlier, Waldman explored the meaning of the case in terms of political scapegoating, personal entitlement, and the pain of addiction. As she notes, “The portrait that has cohered at his trial is of a precious commodity, a man whom others conspire lovingly to shield.”Read more »

Hannah Goldfield and Helen Rosner,New Yorkerstaff writers, have both received James Beard Media Awards, recognizing outstanding food writing. Goldfield won in the Profile category for her piece onthe chef Kwame Onwuachi, who has brought Afro-Caribbean cooking to the center of New York City’s fine-dining scene. And Rosner won the Craig Claiborne Distinguished Criticism Award for reported essays and reviews on such subjects asthe greatest pizza in New York,sublime hummus in New Jersey, and theeternal question of food versus service.

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P.S. Would the psychoanalystand author Robert Jay Lifton consider the war in Gaza an “atrocity-producing situation,” by his definition? Last year,he sat down with Masha Gessento discuss his terminology in the context of contemporary conflicts. “I have a temperament toward hopefulness,” he explained. “But for me to sustain that hopefulness, I require evidence.”