lyssaelisa

[lyssaelisa]

#palestine #influencers #freepalastine🇵🇸

[lyssaelisa]

I was shelving some books when the American journalist walked in… The journalist asked me for the best book I had on the Middle East. I generally try not to judge people who ask such questions: it often comes from a tourist, on a one-off, long-planned trip or pilgrimage to the Holy Land. But coming from a journalist, it was unsettling.

I wearily suggested he try T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He earnestly replied that he was looking for a book about the current situation. I was struck by the word ‘current’ – after all, we’ve been going through this for 75 years – but I proposed either Hamas Contained by Tareq Baconi or The Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein.

It isn’t new for me or other Palestinians to see waves of journalists make their way here when there is a ‘major development’. They visit my bookshop because they’re hoping for a sense of the ‘word on the street’ or the ‘Palestinian mood’. It has been noted before that the spread of unmanned vehicles in the Middle East makes it harder for journalists to rely on the opinions of local taxi drivers. They’ll be really stuck if our bookshop goes out of business too.

…

According to recent Israeli data, 2050 foreign journalists have arrived since the beginning of the war, including 358 from the United States, 281 from Great Britain, 221 from France and 102 from Germany. Many of them are based in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, some are in the north, and a few venture out to Ashkelon, the closest they can get to the Gaza Strip. Only a very few agencies, such as al-Jazeera, have reporters actually in Gaza.

The Israeli Government Press Office (GPO) has members of the foreign press on a WhatsApp list, and they are ‘kept informed’ of the situation. Their names have also been added to other Israeli ‘independent resource groups’ lists, which send them contact details of experts they can interview. Unable to enter the destroyed Strip, they are covering the story using three main resources: the GPO and its affiliated sources for ‘updates’, taxi drivers for opinions, and the bookseller for all other business. Some of them will also check X (formerly Twitter), and maybe even ‘share’ some of their ‘reflections from the ground’.

After a brief chat with another foreign journalist who came into the shop, I learned that she was being rotated out after a couple of weeks ‘on the ground’ (i.e. stuck in a hotel). I asked about her assessment of the situation and she said things were really awful. I agreed. She asked me for a book to help her understand the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I recommended The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi (three hundred pages) or Enemies and Neighbours by Ian Black (six hundred). She said they sounded a little long. I suggested Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer by Phyllis Bennis. ‘It’s a great book,’ I said, ‘makes things really simple and short, and it’s only two hundred pages.’ That was a successful sale for a proud bookseller on a quiet day.

[lyssaelisa]

A number of publishers have come together to make a whole bunch of ebooks by Palestinians and about Palestine available for free. There's poetry books, non-fiction, and fiction available.

This is an opportunity to hear from voices that are rarely given space in Western media.

Follow the link and have a scroll through to find something of interest.

[lyssaelisa]

Goðafoss - Iceland (by Modes Rodríguez)

[lyssaelisa]

A Haunting in Venice (2023)

[lyssaelisa]

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[lyssaelisa]

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[lyssaelisa]

not gonna lie. this is hilarious.

[lyssaelisa]

[lyssaelisa]

[lyssaelisa]

brooklyn nine-nine // out of context 2/?

[lyssaelisa]

AIRPLANE! (1980) dir. David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker

[lyssaelisa]

[lyssaelisa]

How You Can Help

It's the question I'm getting most often. This was just up on Twitter:

Go to

Hit Donate, and when it asks where you want to donate to, Film and Television.

[lyssaelisa]