I understand that it's a big world, and it's impossible to keep up with everything happening everywhere.
But still, it's kind of creepy and shocking to discover that the Middle East's version of the Berlin Wall was (temporarily) knocked down a month ago, and nobody I know has heard anything about it. Described by one commentator as "the biggest prison break in the history of man", Joel Beinin, Professor of Middle East History at Stanford University, described it thusly:
About 3:00 am on Wednesday morning Jan. 23, well-coordinated explosions demolished the iron wall built by Israel to seal the southern border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt (the Philadelphi axis). Tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed across the border and entered the Egyptian side of the town of Rafah, which had been bisected by the wall, in search of food, gasoline, and other basic commodities which have been in short supply for many months in Gaza. The first wave of Palestinians to cross consisted of hundreds of women who were met with water canons and beatings by Egyptian security forces.
Read the rest of his op-ed here.
For that matter, most people I know didn't even know there is a Wall cutting off Palestinians from their own farms and jobs, or that it has already lead to the avoidable deaths of innocents.
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