David Brooks. Photo: Wikipedia.

David Brooks

New York Times columnist

As one of the few representatives of conservative opinion at The New York Times, it’s easy to imagine that David Brooks lives a lonely life in professional terms. If that’s the case, then it certainly doesn’t show in the robust, lively columns which he pens each week. Brooks goes against the grain of the New York Times on many issues, among them Israel. A welcome tonic to the “Old Gray Lady’s” habit of blaming Israel for the ills of the Middle East, Brooks wrote a particularly perceptive column in the wake of the summer 2014 war in Gaza, in which he argued that the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become just a stage on which the regional clashes in the Arab world are being expressed.” For Brooks, it’s also personal, as his own son serves in the IDF. It’s a subject he’s understandably reluctant to talk about, but after the Gaza war, he told an interviewer, “I’m more convinced that it’s the right thing to do.”