Catastrophe
Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . Every Friday I receive in my email inbox a Shabbat reading list from Jewish Currents , "a magazine committed to the rich tradition of thought, activism, and culture of the Jewish left." Last Friday, the reading list consisted of articles and links about the crisis unfolding in Palestine/Israel. I found one recommended online event organized by The Middle East Institute and Project48 to be particularly informative. For an instance, I had the misconception that the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland was a result of the wars between Israel and the Arab states. In the video, the historian Rashid Khalidi corrected that error. 300,000 Palestinains were expelled before the wars, and were followed by another 450,000 Palestinians after the wars began. The 9.1 million Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons is the largest in the world, and the displacement is still going o...