On Palestine...

Some historical context for the attacks

Hello everyone, I hope you are well and welcome to the first newsletter by Soulful Productivity. Well, technically not the first as this newsletter existed earlier in a different niche and under a different name. But first in the sense of being a newsletter about connecting spirituality and Islam to productivity.

This place was originally intended to be an extension of my podcast with the same name, but I haven’t been active on there for quite some time and won’t be posting anything in the near future. At the same time, I am used to creating written content and have some ideas on what this newsletter can be about as a standalone platform, hence this first email today.

So, I really wish I could have started this newsletter on a more positive note, but the events of the past 10 days or so have saddened me and compelled me to start writing about this, and start writing now.

I don’t know where your pre-existing notions about the Israel-Palestine conflict come from, but I do know that for many people, it comes from mainstream media, which is unfortunately overwhelmingly one-sided in this particular situation.

As such, I believe it’s the responsibility of people who know more about it and have the liberty to speak up that they should do so however they can.

Personally, I plan to make a few short posts about what’s happening in Palestine which is not being covered by the mainstream media, or being conveniently ignored in favour of their preferred narrative. So with that in mind, let’s get into it:

1. The attack by Hamas and why it happened

The first thing we need to know is that this is not a one-time conflict and Israel’s actions are not just a retaliation of what Hamas did.

Rather, Israel has been launching attacks on Palestine since Israel was formed in 1948, in order to expand its territory.

The western media is making this into a one-time war situation, and it is anything but that. Here’s a quick explainer video by Vox that does a good job of getting into the details of it:

That’s it for this one. You can expect future newsletters to be much shorter than this one due to no prolonged introductions. I will be posting a series of these short contextual newsletters in the next few days or weeks, along with occasional updates on the current situation and some detailed explainers.

I hope you find them useful and share them far and wide, because with the mainstream media turning the other way, this is really the only way to bring Palestinian voices to the forefront.

See you in the next one,

Atiba