IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
This week, all of the recent articles reference the ongoing Gaza conflict in some way, aiming to show the different aspects to what is occurring. Our ‘classic’ article looks at the Holocaust. If you have any other longreads or explainers about the conflict that you think are of interest, please add them in the comments for other readers.
1. What exactly is happening in Gaza?
If you have questions about the current conflict in Gaza, this explainer by Paul Hosford should help you out.
(TheJournal.ie, approx 9 minutes reading time, 1907 words)
The problem with Palestinian land nowadays is that it is actually two tracts of land on opposite sides of Israel. Confusingly, the West Bank is in the east of the country (it is on the western bank of the River Jordan) and the Gaza Strip is in the west, on the Mediterranean Sea.
Rashid Khalidi believes that the current unrest in Gaza is due to a ‘collective punishment’ of Palestinians. This is one of the week’s most popular New Yorker articles:
(The New Yorker, approx 5 minutes reading time, 1073 words)
We might not like Hamas or some of its methods, but that is not the same as accepting the proposition that Palestinians should supinely accept the denial of their right to exist as a free people in their ancestral homeland.
3. Israel is not my birthright
Demonstrators hold Israeli flags and placards reading All United Against Terrorism and Hamas terrorist during a Pro Israel gathering near the Israeli Embassy in ParisSource: AP/Press Association Images
Shira Lipkin is a Jewish American who was raised to think that Israel "was ours by divine right". But she finds her beliefs challenged by he current unrest.
(Salon, approx 5 minutes reading time, 941 words)
The history we are taught in our Sunday school is that we were there first, and that therefore the Palestinians are occupying our land. How long ago were we there, though? And who, exactly, iswe? I find myself using that we – “We need to stop bombing Palestine,” “we need to give land back,” but I am not Israeli. I have never been to Israel. This is how deep it runs, this idea of possession.
Anna Tinsley talked to 'lone soldiers', Jewish men who travelled to Israel to join the IDF, about their lives.
(Star Telegram, approx 6 minutes reading time, words)
Their beliefs are so strong that they are willing to fight — and die, if necessary, as a Texas man recently did — to protect the Jewish state. They are the Lone Soldiers. In Israel, young men and women have no choice but to join the military.
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A reporter accuses the New York Times of faking photos of Gaza casualties. But he's wrong. James Fallows looks at what this tells us about reporting and truth in the Middle East.
(The Atlantic, approx 10 minutes reading time, 1910 words)
Reporters have different interests and styles and predilections, different strengths and weaknesses, different stories of having ended up in this craft. But there is one thing they—we—have in common. It is the fundamental drive that makes us stick with this odd line of work, the usually unspoken but immensely powerful source of pride in what we do. It is summed up by three words: I saw this.
6. Why were so many civilians killed in Gaza violence?
More than 1200 people have been killed in the recent Israel-Gaza violence, the vast majority of these being civilians, particularly on the Gaza side. Why is this so? Max Fisher investigates:
(Vox, approx 12 minutes reading time, 2445 words)
On the one hand, Hamas appears to be at best indifferent to the fact that, by firing rockets from heavily civilian areas, it knowingly invites or even desires Israeli strikes that will kill civilians. (Hamas is frequently accused of using civilians as human shields for this reason.) On the other, the plain truth is that Israeli bombs are causing most of the civilian deaths.
...AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES...
In 2013, Marisa L Berman met the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, who are helping to keep their legacy alive, whether through art or other means.
(Narratively, approx 14 minutes reading time, 2924 words)
Elena Berkovits was only 16 years old when she first came face to face with Dr. Josef Mengele in the Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz. Mengele, or the “White Angel,” as inmates called him due to his white lab coat, was one of the medical personnel who would inspect people as they arrived. His motioning, left or right, would indicate if he deemed a person strong enough to work and therefore to live another day, or if they would be consigned to immediate death.
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