Lately, I’ve been on a big Russian literature kick. I read Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace for the first time a couple of months ago, and I’m working my way through some Dostoyevsky right now. There seems to be something magnetic about Russian literature; it stands apart from other genres in a way that’s difficult to describe. I find the genre intensely relatable yet foreign enough to provide a novel perspective on human nature. The stories are gripping, with just enough romance to give them a patina of tragedy. They are full of timeless moral dilemmas and social quandaries that remain pertinent across time and space, despite the innumerable cultural divides that exist between 19th-century Russia and 21st-century America. I credit the timelessness of the Russian greats to the fact that their writing is rooted in and constructed around the humanness of their stories. At the end of the day, the plots rely only nominally on time and place and substantively on people and relationships—the setting is merely a catalyst for the social entanglements that are so distinct in Russian literature.

Israeli-Palestinian relations rapidly deteriorated last week following a series of violent events that erupted in the West Bank city of Jenin and in East Jerusalem. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government made one of its first major moves last Thursday when Israeli security forces conducted a raid on the West Bank city of Jenin, killing 7 gunmen and 2 civilians. According to Philip Luther at Amnesty International, “[f]or almost a year, Jenin refugee camp has been at the center of Israel’s escalating military crackdown. Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead in the camp last May, and its residents continue to be subjected to relentless military raids which amount to collective punishment.”