Recent Reading Worth Reading

On Palestine

AfricaFocus Notes on Substack offers short comments and links to news, analysis, and progressive advocacy on African and global issues, building on the legacy of over 25 years of publication as an email and web publication archived at http://www.africafocus.org. It is edited by William Minter. Posts are sent out by email once or twice a month. If you are not already a subscriber, you can subscribe for free by clicking on the button below. More frequent short notes are available at https://africafocus.substack.com/notes, and are also available in an RSS feed.

When events are fast moving, as in recent weeks of in the war on Gaza, the flow of information is a virtual tsanami. By the time I can select a few to repost on AfricaFocus, there are already more than ten more recent ones of equal or greater interest.

My interim solution is to skim quickly and record ones that I think might be of interest to my readers in a spreadsheet. But writing an introduction and making a selection of the most important ones to share takes time. So I am trying a different format, sharing the spreadsheet with you on Google drive so that you can see the most recent by simply clicking on this link.

See below a selection of a few that I found particularly useful. I don’t think anyone would want to read them all. But take your pick of what interests you. If many readers click on these links, I will continue to do posts like this occasionally.

As of this morning, here are a few recent articles and videos that I found useful.

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Debunking Hateful Propaganda about Jews & Muslims

A viral meme claims Jews and Muslims have warred for thousands of years, but the facts prove this myth dangerously false—and the exact opposite as true. By Qasim Rashid, May 16, 2024

Israel Wants Endless War. Biden's Going Along for the Doomed Ride

The U.S. enables Israel’s continued digging of this ditch, despite overwhelming international consensus that it is violating international law. The unquestioning support and diplomatic cover it has received from successive U.S. governments, most recently from the Biden administration, has allowed a small country to defy global norms and public opinion, as it descends into a North Korea-like posture of paranoia and defiance. By Murtaza Hussain, May 15, 2024

Union Theological Seminary Votes to Divest from Israel’s War on Gaza

Last week, Union Theological Seminary, across the street and affiliated with Columbia University its Board of Trustees had endorsed a divestment plan from, quote, “companies profiting from war in Palestine/Israel.” In a statement, they wrote they have, “taken steps to identify all investments, both domestic and global, that support and profit from the present killing of innocent civilians in Palestine, whose numbers are now over 34,000 — and a humanitarian crisis of ever-growing magnitude.” Democracy Now, May 14, 2024

Israel Can’t Win This War—Palestinians Told Us That From the Beginning

And so, now that Israel has killed 40,000 or so Palestinians, forced 90% of Palestinians in Gaza from their homes, the population of people that will be easy recruits for future attacks against Israel is that much greater than it was before. And so, Israel is less safe. And this war, it seems to me, is likely to drag on for a very, very long time, leaving more and more Palestinians devastated in the more Israelis endangered and dead. And what’s so depressing to me is that this was predictable. Indeed, this was predicted. And the people who predicted it most clearly, not coincidentally, were Palestinians who have been saying from the very beginning that Israel’s fundamental problem is not with Hamas, it’s with the Palestinian people, and that Israel has to offer a solution to that fundamental problem. By Peter Beinart, May 13, 2024

Only a fool doesn't understand that eventually there will be a Palestinian state

And we Israelis are the biggest fools. Everything we Israelis experience right now, this whole "situation," the lingering despair of "now what?," this dead end we're caught in, the helplessness, this immense human tragedy – this entire situation is nothing but the outcome of our sheer stupidity. Yes, we are unfortunately terribly stupid. Smart, but also really dumb. By Alon Idan, in Haaretz, May 10, 2024