2024 All Media: Commentary, Analysis, Opinion and Critique

Writing is an act of bridge-building and peace-making for David Leser, whose three opinion pieces were written in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the slaughter unfolding in Gaza since.

Leser has, in his own words, “considerable skin in this game”. His father a German Jew who escaped the Holocaust, his mother an Australian-born Jewish woman who lost 41 relatives to the Nazis in Latvia. Leser himself has been visiting the region, to witness and report, since 1977. His increasing recognition of the Palestinian people’s plight and despair is not an easy position for a Jew to hold.

Leser says that to write is sometimes to bleed onto the page, and adds: “I believe that it is possible to bleed for both sides, even if the other side is your so-called ‘enemy’.”

David Leser has been a journalist for 45 years and has worked as a feature writer for The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, HQ magazine, The Bulletin, Good Weekend, The Australian Women’s Weekly, Vanity Fair, Newsweek and The Daily Beast. He is a regular contributor to Good Weekend.