Many people don’t realize this, but I wrote my doctoral thesis, at Oxford University, about US foreign policy toward Israel and its neighbors. Subsequently, I taught Middle East 101 to undergraduates. I think my students emerged from that class well-prepared to make sense of the news from the Middle East right now. But I don’t see how anyone who didn’t take my class, or something equivalent to it, could possibly make any sense of it. Unless you know a fair bit of history—most of which isn’t taught at the high-school or the college level—the news emerging from Israel and Gaza could only be confusing.
It occurred to me that I could offer a useful benefit to my paid subscribers—and it might persuade free subscribers to become paid subscribers, too. So I asked: “When you read the news from the Middle East, do you have an uneasy sense that there are lots of things you should know, but don’t? Would you be interested in taking a class in t…
