O Jerusalem!

This is a page or so from Collins and LaPierre’s excellent book O Jerusalem, which is billed as a “blow by blow account of the founding of Israel” and they’re not kidding. In some bits it gets down to hour by hour breakdowns of what happened. “What happened” is generally horrible for everyone involved, whether they were the winner or the loser. [wc] Most Americans have no real understanding of the history of Israel, and consequently they fall for false narratives. I suspect that most Israelis, now, also fall for the propaganda. It makes it much easier for the state to do what it wants to do, and easier for it to promote a false moral history.

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Fascinating and Depressing

Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson’s podcast Citations Needed is one of my favorites; they never fail to illuminate their topic, and their research appears to be impeccable. I also like the slightly unsophisticated un-slick audio and editing; podcasting is metastasizing into a big business full of well-funded corporate drones that milk advertising opportunities, so it’s refreshing that there are a few hold-outs that stay resolutely old school. They’re just about the information.

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A Little Whiff of Shiro Ishii

Shiro Ishii goes right in the book next to Josef Mengele; a “failed intellectual” in the description of William Shirer (The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich) who noted that many of Hitler’s nihilistic genociders were, like Hitler himself, academics and philosophically-inclined people who veered off the normal track and careened into the dark woods.

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