The Useful Charts series is excellent and rooted in genuine scholarship
And I 100% endorse his endorsement of Ground News!
I cannot recommend this Canadian treasure too strongly. There are so many over-simplified, twisted and just plain wrong accounts circulating online on both sides of the argument about Israel/Palestine! This sweeps ALL of them off the table and gives you an idea of what the past of this area really has been. It does not take sides, but certainly laments from the historian’s viewpoint the awful damage the Israeli military has wrought, not forgetting the human cost. In the last minutes the compiler expresses his own opinions as a Jew opposed to the current actions of the Israeli government but through the entire presentation he has to that point been scrupulously dispassionate.
This is a shameful time and much of that shame rests with Israel and their more mindless supporters — but not only with them.
Again I say, watch this and be disabused of some of the awful disinformation that chokes the internet at the moment.
Mosab and his many friends
Such GOOD NEWS on Facebook overnight!
And what a back story is there! In my January 2024 post Keeping your balance in this polarising world I said:
I share many of Mosab’s posts because they are so often gems — but also they keep us grounded in the reaity of Gaza/Palestine. I otherwise select carefully what I share in this space, preferring things which seem to me well considered or made by people whose expertise and experience command attention. I make a point of avoiding the purely propagandist on either side, or those who curate otherwise useful material selectively and for propaganda purposes. I admit my choices are fallible, but I hope what I DO share is useful.
Mosab — a sampling
10 hours ago: Whenever I post about the killing of our children in Gaza, some inhumane people comment, asking H*a*m*a*s to surrender.
How shameful!
The problem is not only about this logic.
What about us in Palestine? Are the I*srae*lis the only people who have the right to exist and show the brutal power to protect their state?
Even if there was no H*a*m*a*s or Fatah, would Palestinians have a free state?
What parties did we have before 1948?
My choice has been to avoid many of the memes and tropes some use, including even at times Mosab, which provide horrific images and stories of dead or mutilated children and other examples of the crimes that all wars bring. Just as powerful, in my mind, are these two images, the second one provided by Mosab in the past couple of days.
In December 10, 2023 I shared this from Mosab:
Breaking, my heart is broken, my friend and colleague Refaat AlAreer was killed with his family a few minutes ago.
Refaat is a university professor and writer and editor of Gaza Writes Back.
I don’t want to believe this. We both loved to pick strawberries together. I took this photo of him this summer.
This is very brutal….
This year, there are no strawberries, no books (my destroyed library in the second photo), no English literature, no sea, no Refaat.
Please Refaat, come back!
Now we read on Facebook:
I just found this photo of Refaat, where he was carrying some olive oil he could salvaged from his family’s bombed house, days before he got murdered in an air strike.
If you look at the photo I shared of Refaat with the strawberries and then look at this picture, you will realize how much Refaat went through even before his murder.
RIP, loved one!
For Mosab’s story see this from PBS — there is a warning but I urge you to see this. It cannot be seen too often.
Neil's Commonplace Book 