(CBC) In an era when demagogues flourish on social media, reason gives way to rhetoric and opinion masquerades as fact, it’s easy to understand how ordinary, decent people have grown weary and wary of all sorts of political and cultural debates.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a new source of debate. But dispassionate discussions about the complex political realities on the ground in the Middle East have been complicated by newer forms of ideological tribalism, where everyone on every side is both aggrieved party and victim, nuance is unappreciated and moral outrage trumps logic.
Into this morass wades Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American activist who is one of the leading figures in the annual U.S. Women’s March.
Sarsour has been praised as a positive force for social change and derided as a reactionary hatemonger.
