1) “29 Life lessons learned in traveling the world for 8 years straight“, by Benny Lewis. The title really says it all here. I found many of his lessons a nice refresher to how I to try live my life every day such as, ‘There is no such thing as Destiny. This is excellent news!’, ‘Deferring your happiness to the future is terrible idea’, and ‘Seek out people with different beliefs and views of the world to yours and get to know their side of the story’. This one post and Benny’s other posts on his website inspired me to ‘become fluent in Hebrew‘ earlier in the week! Even if you’re not looking to learn a new language in the coming few months, it’s excellent read.
2) “The CIA’s impunity of ‘torture tapes“, by Glenn Greenwald. This is the second post by Greenwald on my must read articles list and believe it or not, it’s been very hard to limit him to every other week thus far. Between 95 and 98% of his posts are as close to perfect examples of writing you can find; I’m still surprised every week that a single human can be so consistently analytical and inquisitive. This op-ed details an example of the codified system of lawlessness in the United States: how CIA officials obstructed justice by burning the evidence of their illegal activity and no one has been indicted or investigated! His new book, With Liberty and Justice For Some, along with most of his posts exemplify this thesis and it’s an important message for everyone, especially American citizens to know; there is very little that is more harmful to a free society than a two-tiered system of justice that removes the powerful from the rule of law.
3) “Why Jews need to talk about the Nakba“, by Noam Sheizaf. This is a detailed narrative of a Jewish Israeli’s journey to understanding and coping with the reality of the Nakba,’…we were engaged in the wrong kind of questions, such as the debate on whether more Palestinian were expelled or fled. The important thing is that they weren’t allowed to come back, and that they had their property and land seized by Israel immediately after the war (as some Jews had by Jordan and Syria, but not in substantial numbers).’ I think the prevailing Jewish narrative that the period surrounding 1948 was of one of heroism and moral courage, with no mention of the massive campaign of ethnic cleansing, is one of the main obstacles to peace; the state and society of Israel needs to take moral responsibility for the refugee problem before any technical solutions can be discussed. Here is the story of one man who is helping to pave the way for peace.
Zach Resnick: Thoughts from Jerusalem 