One noticeable aspect of the debate on the Middle East is not the lack of opinions, rather the inability to render history with any competence or accuracy.
I can understand polemics, they might be unhelpful but that’s what people do.
The problem in the West is the shaky grasp of facts that comes out whenever the Middle East is discussed.
One example of that phenomenon is the strikingly poor cartography found recently at the New Statesman, as shown below:
The top left image purports to show Palestine under the British Mandate between 1920-48.
However, it misses off over 32,000 square miles, ceded to Transjordan in the early 1920s.
That is a major omission for a modern publication.
After all it is entitled: Palestine British Mandate.
Missing a few miles might have been acceptable, but losing more than 32,000 sq. miles is incredibly sloppy for the New Statesman.
This Dartmouth College’s map of the region, just prior to division of the British Mandate in 1922:
