A Fictional Account of Middle East Reporting and a Gentile’s Love for Israel

Aug. 24 2015

Louis Marano worked for over two decades as a journalist, and based his recent novel The Tribalist—about a non-Jewish journalist covering the Middle East—on his own experiences. Edward Alexander describes the book as “a love song by a Gentile journalist for the state of Israel.” He writes in his review:

In Marano’s novel, politics becomes primary and in fact more interesting than the romantic adventures and misadventures of the book’s protagonist, the reporter and columnist Frank DiRaimo, a barely disguised fictional version of the author. His first love is not really any of these women but the land of Israel and the people of Israel. He knows, almost by instinct, that Israeli Jews, including (if not especially) the secular ones, really belong to a community of faith.

He is powerfully impressed by young Jewish soldiers: “These young people were standing guard, protecting their tribe. Something about this was so elemental, so primal, that it stirred Frank’s soul. . . . He felt the presence of something precious that had been devalued, discarded, and finally redeemed. It was like discovering a unicorn on a lost island.”

Read more at Algemeiner

More about: Israel & Zionism, Jewish-Christian relations, Journalism, Literature, Middle East

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023