Lara Bitar

Lara Bitar

@larajbitar.bsky.social

media worker & organizer 🗞️ founding editor of Beirut-based publication @thepublicsource.bsky.social 📃 Pitch me: http://thepublicsource.org/write

1,703 Followers 47 Following 5 Posts Joined Oct 2023
5 days ago
Image: Marwan Bou Haidar/The Public Source

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The Public Source invites writers from Lebanon, Palestine, and across the Global South to submit pitches and full-length drafts, in English or Arabic on the latest escalation of the ongoing imperial war on our region. 

thepublicsource.org/write

We are looking for rigorous, well-sourced work — journalistic, historical, or investigative — that is grounded in anti-imperialist and anti-colonial commitments on Lebanon and the region. We are also interested in photo essays, testimonies, and interviews.

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1 month ago

Come work with me and a bunch of awesome people!

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3 months ago
mage: Fatima Joumaa/The Public Source

Underground Networks of Solidarity 

From bread lines to aid networks, how Iranians resisted Israel's 12 days of bombardment. 

By Alex Shams

On June 13, 2025, Israel launched a surprise attack on Tehran. For 12 days, grassroots mutual aid networks helped evacuate students, deliver groceries, & more.

Alex Shams (@alexshams.bsky.social) spoke to Iranians who turned despair into solidarity.

🔗 thepublicsource.org/tehran-solid...

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4 months ago
Preview
Farmers on the Front Line of the War Over Southern Lebanon’s Borderlands Farmers in southern Lebanon return to scorched land, unexploded ordnance, and drone fire — determined to keep the land alive.

And on farmers:
thepublicsource.org/lebanon-bord...

Read these two pieces to learn more about what's happening across southern Lebanon's front lines.

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4 months ago
Preview
South Lebanon's Fishermen Fear the Sea In Southern Lebanon, legacy fishermen lose their livelihoods among repeated Israeli abductions and attacks. The Lebanese state is doing little to help.

Israel's war on Lebanon has been out of int' headlines since the cessation of hostilities agreement in Nov 2024.

Since then, Israel has violated the agreement 100s of times and killed 100s of people.

Even less reported on is its systematic war on fishermen:
thepublicsource.org/fishermen-le...

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6 months ago
Preview
What the Media Won’t Tell You When It Embeds With the Military When reporters embed with an invading army, do we get journalism or propaganda?

In our latest Long Read, journalists Habib Battah (@habibbattah.bsky.social) and Christina Cavalcanti unpack the ethics of military embeds. ⬇️

thepublicsource.org/media-ethics...

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6 months ago
Image: Adem Wijewickrema/The Public Source

Israel’s Willing Propagandists
How journalists who embed with the military legitimize its crimes
By Habib Battah & Christina Cavalcanti

In October 2024, journalists from some of the world’s largest and most influential news organizations — @wsj.com, @nytimes.com, BBC, & others—piled into armored vehicles & Jeeps. The Israeli military was about to take them for a ride: a guided tour of occupied southern Lebanese villages.

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8 months ago
Preview
Popular Front of Grandmothers: A Letter from Golrokh Nafisi to Mohammed el-Kurd Artist Golrokh Nafisi writes to Mohammed el-Kurd about their grandmothers’ shared anti-colonial defiance.

Amidst the war, Iranian visual artist Golrokh Nafisi writes to Palestinian writer Mohammed el-Kurd about burying her 99-year-old grandmother - whose anti-colonialist convictions mirrored his grandmother Rifqa's resistance.

Read the letter here: https://thepublicsource.org/nafisi-letter-el-kurd

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9 months ago

Come work with me and a brilliant team of journalists and editors @thepublicsource.bsky.social

#JournoJobs #MediaJobs #EditorJobs

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9 months ago
Preview
Why Israel Bombs Schools Israel’s war on Palestinian education is part of a larger strategy of control.

In this historical investigation, author Jo Kelcey traces a century of colonial repression and Palestinian defiance, documenting how the right to learn is central to the struggle for liberation.

🔗 Read the piece on The Public Source: thepublicsource.org/scholasticid...

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10 months ago
Preview
On Half a Century of Growing up as a Child of the War What does it mean to be someone who lived through Lebanon's civil war?

As Lebanon marks 50 years since the war began on April 13, she traces how its legacy still shapes her present.

In Mounzer’s moving testimony, she reflects on life in the malja’, and growing up in the long shadow cast by Lebanon’s now 50-year old civil war.

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1 year ago

One of the most important pieces we've recently published.

Part oral history devoted to preserving the memories of our elders, part storytelling, and ultimately a huge part of setting the historical record straight & passing it down—so that the old can die knowing that the young will never forget.

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