[whatshisface]

We know and work with Israelis and former Palestinians, and it is difficult enough to navigate the stresses without the added complexity of each side reading totally different news outlets and never talking about it in the same forums. I always try to handle this stuff at work (and political issues are absolutely part of the lunchtime tapestry that impacts the cohesion of engineering teams) by sticking to the facts, but we need to agree on some shared reality for the facts to be a safe "home base" for diplomatic answers to the tough questions we can't avoid... I think it is very important for some amount of news to leak into the common spaces, as long as we can keep from arguing about it on a level higher than its veracity or importance.