A word on sources

Once I get past these overviewish posts, I'll be responding to specific articles or other publications, so I'll have a link to what I'm referring (to...? how do you not end that sentence with a dangling preposition?). In the meantime, I did want to let you know that I'm not completely making stuff up or cutting and pasting from Wikipedia. My standby reference for historical context is A History of the Modern Middle East by William Cleveland. I use the third edition, although a fourth came out in 2008. It's not exactly light reading, because it's so densely packed with information, but the writing style is reader-friendly. I have been known to read a chapter or two nightly before bed as a refresher every now and then.

Another reference I keep on hand especially for delving into the Arab-Israeli conflict is a packet of documents a college professor of mine (Dr. Ken Stein) assembled. It includes the full text of relevant UN resolutions, maps, and all sorts of other goodies.  It lost its cover long ago, but that just adds character, right?

For news stories, I used to have to check about a zillion different websites daily. Now I pretty much just check my Twitter feed and see what al-Jazeera English, al-Jazeera Arabic, the various US embassies in the Middle East, PJ Crowley, the Brookings Institution, the White House, Human Rights Watch, etc. have to say, all in one stop. Occasionally I also use Library Press Display to take a gander a more locally focused newspapers (I get a kick out of the advertisements, among other things), or watch Youtube videos if I haven't had enough nightmares recently.

As an aside, it has been interesting over the past few months to see al-Jazeera somewhat drawn into the fold of international media. During the Iraq War, al-Jazeera was smeared as an al-Qaeda instrument, a perception that continues to this day in some camps. Interestingly, al-Jazeera has also been denounced as a Zionist entity, so you figure that one out. I could write an entire post about al-Jazeera, and probably will at some point. For now, I will say only that I find it (in whatever language) a useful source of information.

And, of course, my trusty Hans Wehr Arabic-English dictionary is never far from my side. Although somebody really should update it and take "هتلر" (a verb form of Hitler) out, and if I'm feeling lazy or can't find something in Hans, I use Google translate. Don't hate.