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books_ergo_sum 's review for:
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
by Rashid Khalidi
challenging
informative
medium-paced
So informative. So easy to understand. I expected this to be full of information about the history and politics of Palestine. And it was.
But there were also a bunch of things I didn’t expect:
✨ I didn’t expect this book to have such an “inside scoop". From his grandfather, the mayor of Jerusalem, corresponding with Theodor Herzl, the author of Der Judenstaat and father of Zionism (we got some on-page evidence that Herzl lied to Palestinian leaders about the colonial nature of his Zionist project); to his father working for the UN; to the author himself being present at the Oslo II Accord’s negotiations, almost dying when Israel bombed Lebanon, meeting with key figures like Yasser Arafat… it was firsthand accounts all the way.
✨ I didn’t expect the ideological roots of Israel to date back so far. Naïvely, I’ve always thought of Israel as a post-WWII, post-Holocaust entity. But its roots are in the Jewish Colonization Association. It was important for me to learn about the colonial nature of Israel’s relationship to Palestine, not as a loaded buzzword, but in this meticulously researched way. Especially, how the colonial relationship has gotten stronger, not weaker, throughout history and continues today.
✨ I did not expect to feel this much déjà vu while reading. What’s going on in Gaza right now and the accompanying media firestorm felt so unprecedented, to me. Except, an event almost exactly like this, discussed and justified by politicians and journalists with exactly the same language, has occurred at least once a decade since the 1940s. I was grateful for the context (like, insisting on Israel’s right to self-defense? Happens every time, it’s for legal reasons) but also, I needed to understand how un-unprecedented (precedented?) todays events really are.
This book explained how complicit western governments, particularly the US, have been in all this. It explained how annoyingly ‘in bad faith’ Israel’s leaders have negotiated peace every dang time. All the nitty gritty.
I think it’s an essential read. And the audiobook was great.
But there were also a bunch of things I didn’t expect:
✨ I didn’t expect this book to have such an “inside scoop". From his grandfather, the mayor of Jerusalem, corresponding with Theodor Herzl, the author of Der Judenstaat and father of Zionism (we got some on-page evidence that Herzl lied to Palestinian leaders about the colonial nature of his Zionist project); to his father working for the UN; to the author himself being present at the Oslo II Accord’s negotiations, almost dying when Israel bombed Lebanon, meeting with key figures like Yasser Arafat… it was firsthand accounts all the way.
✨ I didn’t expect the ideological roots of Israel to date back so far. Naïvely, I’ve always thought of Israel as a post-WWII, post-Holocaust entity. But its roots are in the Jewish Colonization Association. It was important for me to learn about the colonial nature of Israel’s relationship to Palestine, not as a loaded buzzword, but in this meticulously researched way. Especially, how the colonial relationship has gotten stronger, not weaker, throughout history and continues today.
✨ I did not expect to feel this much déjà vu while reading. What’s going on in Gaza right now and the accompanying media firestorm felt so unprecedented, to me. Except, an event almost exactly like this, discussed and justified by politicians and journalists with exactly the same language, has occurred at least once a decade since the 1940s. I was grateful for the context (like, insisting on Israel’s right to self-defense? Happens every time, it’s for legal reasons) but also, I needed to understand how un-unprecedented (precedented?) todays events really are.
This book explained how complicit western governments, particularly the US, have been in all this. It explained how annoyingly ‘in bad faith’ Israel’s leaders have negotiated peace every dang time. All the nitty gritty.
I think it’s an essential read. And the audiobook was great.