I'm keeping a catalogue of answers to the Dershofoxmanitz question, Why do we single out Israel amid the sea of man's inhumanity to man? Here's Julian Kossoff in the Telegraph, with another good answer: the cynosure answer, Israel/Palestine is at the center of the western historical/religious/intellectual crossroads right now in a way, alas, that the Congo is not.
In a recent Jewish Chronicle interview playwright David Hare discussed his latest Royal Court work, Wall, set on both sides of the security/separation barrier constructed by Israel to keep out terrorists but built, in parts, across tracts of the West Bank earmarked (in many a dust-gathering peace plan) as part of a future Palestinian homeland.
He was asked, Why Israel? and he replied: "Put it this way, I recognise it. It answers to something in me."
The [Chronicle] writer unfairly rubbished this as existential nonsense.
The fact that Hare's wife, Fashion designer Nicole Fahri, is Jewish, is good enough reason to spark his interest, while his education at Lancing College (with its glorious chapel) and Jesus College, Cambridge, would be another to explain the "something in him."
The playwright like hundreds of millions, is nominally Christian.
When they listen to news of dramatic events taking place in Jerusalem, Nazareth and the Galilee (Bethlehem is now almost completely encircled by the Security Wall) it has an educational, cultural and religious resonance, in a way that dispatches from Kashmir, divided Cyprus or indeed the Western Sahara will never have.
That said, who wouldn't be interested? The story of Israel is a gripping epic; religion and ideology, nationalism and democracy, war and peace.
