From the friendly confines of Ashland, the war in the Middle East can seem a world away. It is much closer to home for one visitor to Ashland; Jonathan Weighter grew up in Ashland and attended Ashland High School, but he now calls Beirut, Lebanon home.
Weighter is a teacher, and fluent in Arabic, and fully up-to-date on the various tensions in the region and their tendency to explode, as they have. He connects his students at the International College in Beirut with fellow students elsewhere in the world, to promote understanding.
His seasonal trip to visit family in the Rogue Valley gives us a chance to get an expatriate's view of the Israel-Hamas war and other major Middle East issues.