Ariel Sharon Kicked My Cousins Out of Gaza

Ariel Sharon died on Saturday, and his last major political act was to evict my cousins from the Gaza Strip.

When Israel “disengaged” from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005, I was The Economist’s Jerusalem correspondent, and spent quite a bit of my time reporting on how Israel mistreated Palestinians. Two of my cousins were settlers in Gaza who believed it was part of the land God had promised to the Jews. I was gay, atheist, and single; they were strictly religious, married, and had 16 children between them. Aside from our common great-grandfather, we might as well have come from different planets. But they were at the center of the biggest story of the year, I was a journalist, and they were my relatives. So I went to talk to them.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/01/ariel-sharon-kicked-my-cousins-out-of-gaza/283010/

Interesting piece.