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Palestine/Israel
Reading (& viewing) List

This page supplements the organizations, websites, news sources and selected articles found on the main Connexions Israel/Palestine page. Below is a more extensive selection of books, documentaries, videos, documents and articles. Other organizations may be found in the Connexions Directory, especially under Israel and Palestine in the Subject Index.

 

Selected Books

Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine
Joel Kovel

Pluto Press, 2007
ISBN: 9780745325699
Joel Kovel argues that the inner contradictions of Zionism have led Israel to a 'state-sponsored racism' fully as incorrigible as that of apartheid South Africa and deserving of the same resolution. Only a path toward a single-state secular democracy can provide the justice essential to healing the wounds of the Middle East. Kovel draws on his detailed knowledge of the Middle East to show that Zionism and democracy are essentially incompatible. Ultimately, Kovel argues, a two-state solution is essentially hopeless as it concedes too much to the regressive forces of nationalism, in which lie the roots of continued conflict.


The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Ilan
Pappe
Oneworld, 2007
Israeli historian Ilan Pappe recounts the "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians from Israel during the war of 1948.

Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine
Ghada Karmi

Pluto Press, 2007
ISBN: 978-0745320656
Karmi argues that Israel has never been able to solve the original and unresolved Zionist quandary of how to create and maintain a Jewish state in a land inhabited by another people. She maintains that the problem is unsoluable and that the only solution is a single secular state in which Jews and Palestinians are equal.

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
John J. Mearsheimer & Stephen M. Walt

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007
ISBN: 0-374-17772-4
Mearsheimer and Walt describe the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel and argue that this support cannot be fully explained in either strategic or moral grounds. This exceptional relationship is due largely to the political influence of a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.

The Iron Cage
Rashid Khalidi

Oneworld, 2007

The Roadmap to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003
Tanya Reinhart

2006

Palestine Peace Not Apartheid
Jimmy Carter

Simon & Schuster, New York, 2006
ISBN: 0-7432-8502-6
Former U.S. President Carter calls Israel's treatment of Palestinians 'apartheid' and identifies continuing Israeli control of the occupied territories as the primary obstacle to peace.

Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History
Norman Finkelstein

University of California Press, 2005
ISBN: 0-520-24598-9
A meticulously researched expose of the corruption of scholarship on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Bringing to bear the latest findings on the conflict and recasting the scholarly debate, Finkelstein points to a consensus among historians and human rights organizations on the factual record. Why, then, does so much controversy swirl around the conflict? Finkelstein's answer, copiously documented, is that apologists for Israel contrive controversy. Whenever Israel comes under international pressure, another media campaign alleging a global outbreak of anti-Semitism is mounted.

The Other Side of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish/Arab Divide
Nathan, Susan

Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, New York, 2005
Explores the unequal treatment of Palestinians living in Israel as "citizens", but as second-class citizens in a theocratic state that discriminates against Arabs in many ways.


A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples
Ilan Pappe

Cambridge University Press, 2004

Sharon and my Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries
Suad Amiry

Granta, 2003
A diary of everyday life under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, depicting the Kafkaesque absurdities and injustices Palestinians are forced to live with.

The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent
Roane Carey & Jonathan Shainin (ed.)

New Press, New York, 2002
ISBN: 1-56584-789-X

Blaming The Victims: Spurious Scholarship And The Palestinian Question

Verso, 2001

Israel: A Colonial-Settler State?
Maxime Rodinson

Monad Press, 1973

Underground to Palestine
I.F. Stone

Pantheon, 1946, 1978
ISBN: 0-394-73620-6
Written in the spring of 1946 when I.F. Stone was the first journalists to accompany survivors of the Holocaust on their clandestine journey to Palestine. With a postscript written in 1970.


Film & Video

Occupation 101
A powerful documentary film on the current and historical root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Presents a comprehensive analysis of the facts and hidden truths surrounding the never ending controversy and dispels many of its long-perceived myths and misconceptions. DVD, 2007.

Dr. Makdisi on a one-state solution
A video clip featuring Dr. Saree Makdisi presenting the case for a one-state solution in Israel-Palestine - a democratic secular state. 2007.

Avenge But One of My Two Eyes
Israeli director Avi Mograbi documents what he calls the "culture of death" in the psychology of Israel the occupier. DVD, 2006.

The Ramallah Concert
Barenboim, Daniel, and the East-West Divan Orchestra, 2005
This concert by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra took place in August of 2005 in the Palestinian Territory in the city of Ramallah. Also includes a feature-length documentary: "Knowledge is the Beginning", which was filmed over a six-year period and tells the story of Barenboim's development of the orchestra through interviews, rehearsal and concert excerpts. DVD, $37.95

 

Documents

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3092 of 7 December 1973
December 7, 1973.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 (1967) of November 22 1967
Adopted unanimously. November 22, 1967.

Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War
Adopted on 12 August 1949 by the Diplomatic Conference for the Establishment of International Conventions for the Protection of Victims of War, Held in Geneva from 21 April to 12 August, 1949. Entry into force 21 October 1950.

 

Articles

Responsible Speech and Acceptable Truths
April 1, 2008. A statement on responsible free speech and the debate about Israel Apartheid Week on university campuses.

Israeli minister threatens Palestinian holocaust as public demand ceasefire talks
One day after Israeli occupation forces killed 31 Palestinians, nine of them children, one a six-month-old baby, in a series of air raids across the Gaza Strip, Israel's deputy defense minister threatened to unleash a holocaust on Gaza. February 29, 2008.

Criticism is not disloyal
Support for Palestinian rights thus need not come at the expense of concern for Israelis - in fact, advocating changes to Israeli policies that perpetuate war, anger, and resistance is the truest promotion of Israelis' well-being. February 15, 2008.

War Crimes Airbrushed from History
Jonathan Cook. A report written by a respected Israeli human rights organisation, one representing the country's Arab minority not its Jewish majority, has unearthed evidence showing that during the 2006 Lenanon war Israel committed war crimes not only against Lebanese civilians -- as was already known -- but also against its own Arab citizens. 2008.

Celebrate Jewish Glasnost
Karon, Tony. Although you wouldn't know it if you followed Jewish life simply through the activities of such major Jewish communal bodies as the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations and the Anti-Defamation League, the extent to which the eight million Jews of the Diaspora identify with Israel is increasingly open to question (much to the horror of the Zionist-oriented Jewish establishment). 2007.

Why Israeli Anti-Zionists do NOT "recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist as a Jewish state"
Lowi, Henry. States that define themselves with reference to the domination of one ethnic group cannot claim legitimacy. 2007.

Why Israel?
Jason Kunin tackles the question of why Israel deserves sanctions when there are other countries also committing gross human rights violations. August 19, 2007.

Agreement on terms
Luyendijk, Joris. I have come to accept that western journalists cannot accurately, let alone objectively, represent the Middle East and the Arab world. The problem is not that journalists do not always adhere to their own professional codes and methods, though that does happen. It is that even if correspondents strictly obey all the rules, they still present fundamentally biased and skewed picture of the Middle East. 2007.

Carter's Inconvenient Truths: An Honest Man Refutes Propaganda
Roberts, Paul Craig. The reason that Israel has been able to appropriate Palestine unto itself with American aid and support is that Israel controls the explanation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At least 90% of Americans, if they know anything at all of the issue, know only the Israeli propaganda line. Israel has been able to control the explanation, because the powerful Israel Lobby brands every critic of Israeli policy as an anti-semite who favors a second holocaust of the Jews. 2007.

The Wall, Apartheid and Mandela. Will the Wall Bring Down Israel?
Harley, Peter. During his years of struggle in South Africa, Nelson Mandela offered ideas worth examining closely, especially when considering that he and his followers defeated the very condition that Palestinians face today, Apartheid. 2007.

Strip-Searching Children: Humiliation and Child Abuse at Israeli Checkpoints
Weir, Alison. Israeli officials have been regularly strip-searching children for decades. 2007.

Why an Economic Boycott of Israel is Justified
Finkelstein, Norman G. If singling out South Africa for an international economic boycott was defensible, it would seem equally defensible to single out Israel's occupation, which uniquely resembles the apartheid regime. 2006.

Personal testimony of an Israeli refusnik
Oron, Asaf. Why would a regular guy get up one morning in the middle of life, work, the kids and decide he's not playing the game anymore?

Sanctions on Israel: If not now, when?
How much longer are we prepared to watch Lebanon and Palestine burn, before we act? July 28, 2006.

How to Deal with the Lobby: the De-Zionization of the American Mind
Countering the influence of the Zionist lobby.

An Interview with Tanya Reinhart: The Roadmap to Nowhere
Persistent struggle can have an effect, and can lead governments to act. Such struggle begins with the Palestinian people, who have withstood years of brutal oppression, and who, through their spirit of zumud--sticking to their land - and daily endurance, organizing and resistance, have managed to keep the Palestinian cause alive. 2006

Health care and children in crisis in Gaza
These days one hears a lot about Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, adults who have been specifically trained for warfare, who are nevertheless traumatized by the experience of seeing comrades injured or killed, or suffering injuries or danger themselves. The trauma goes on, long after the experience has ended and they are back in a place of safety. How much worse then for children in Gaza who witness and experience these events day after day, week after week with no end and with no place of safety. March 26, 2007.

Israel boycott may be the way to peace
The non-violent international response to apartheid was a campaign of boycott, divestment and UN-imposed sanctions which enabled the regime to change without bloodshed. We should try to follow the same route to a just peace. December 15, 2006.

We must speak out
By John Berger. A world-wide appeal to teachers, intellectuals and artists to join the cultural boycott of the state of Israel.

Addressing the Violence: My Roadmap to Peace
By Eyad El Sarraj. 2006.

On the US-Israeli Invasion of Lebanon
By Noam Chomsky. The supposed justifications for the invasion are a cynical fraud. August 23, 2006.

Amnesty International Report - Israel/Lebanon: Deliberate destruction or “collateral damage”? Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure
August 23, 2006.

Building Blocks for Peace in the Middle East
By Johan Galtung. The minimal demands of both sides are compatible and legitimate; the maximum demands lead to endless war.

Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need To Know
By Alexander Cockburn. We are supposed to think that the current crisis in the Middle East has no historical roots. Counterpunch , July 21, 2006.

Shame on you, Mr. Harper
Open letter initiated by members of Shalom-Salaam, a Jewish-Arab Montreal dialogue group. July 19, 2006.

The propaganda war
By Henry Lowi. Nothing will change until the people of Palestine, Arabs and Jews, rise up to change the rules of the game, and rebuild the country on a new basis that respects democracy and human rights and good-neighbourly relations. July 18, 2006.

“Stop that shit”
By Uri Avnery. Whoever longs for a solution must know: there is no solution without settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. July 18, 2006.

If Israel Has the Right to Use Force in Self-Defense, So Do Its Neighbours
By Amad Samih Khalidi. There is no reason why Israel should be able to enter Arab sovereign soil to occupy, destroy, kidnap and eliminate its perceived foes — repeatedly, with impunity and without restraint — while the Arab side cannot do the same. July 18, 2006.

The real aim of Israel's attacks on Lebanon
By Uri Avnery. The real aim is to change the regime in Lebanon and to install a puppet government. July 16, 2006.

Palestinian Civil Society Calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Against Israel
A call for sanctions against Israel until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights. July 9, 2006. See also: Boycott Fact Sheet .

Starving in the Dark: Israel's Appalling Bombing of Gaza
By Virginia Tilley. Destroying the only power source for a trapped and defenseless civilian population is an unprecedented step toward barbarity. It reeks, ironically, of the Warsaw Ghetto. June 30, 2006.

With a little help from outside
By Gideon Levy. The world sees a great and ongoing injustice. They want a just Israel. They see an Israel that occupies and is clearly unjust, and they believe they should do something. We should thank them for this from the bottom of our hearts. June 12, 2006.

South African trade union congress supports CUPE boycott of Israel
South African workers will never forget the support given by the Israeli state to the apartheid South African regime. In the same way we will never forget the thousands of acts of solidarity of ordinary citizens around the world who sustained our struggle through the boycott weapon. June 6, 2006.

A reply to B'nai Brith's “Manifesto Denouncing CUPE-Ontario's Boycott of Israel”
By the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid. June 3, 2006.

Post-Zionism Zionism
By Avi Zer-Aviv. What do we need to do to let go of all fear that separates Jew and Arab, and embrace a truly pluralistic, secular, democratic, multicultural and loving society? March 7, 2006.

A Threat from Within: Jewish Opposition to Zionism
Michael Neumann reviews a book on Jewish Orthodox opposition to Zionism. See also excerpt in “New book describes a century of Jewish opposition to Zionism” . January 2006.

Telling it Like It Isn't
By Robert Fisk. Let's call a colony a colony, let's call occupation what it is, let's call a wall a wall. December 28, 2005.

Sanctions Against the Israeli Occupation: It's Time
A call from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) for sanctions as the next logical step in the global campaign to end the Occupation. January 29, 2005.

Disaster and Mental Health: The Palestinian Experience
By Eyad El Sarraj and Samir Qouta. The continuing Israeli military occupation of Gaza is the cause of deep and widespread trauma for Palestinian children and adults. 2005.

Words Have Failed
By Amira Hass. The written word is a failure at making tangible to Israeli readers the true horror of the Occupation. March 3, 2004.

Truth Against Truth
By Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom . Challenges the myths, conventional lies, and historical falsehoods on which most of the arguments of both Israeli and Palestinian propaganda rest. The truths of both sides are intertwined into one historical narrative that does justice to both. Without this common basis, peace is impossible. 2003.

America's Last Taboo
By Edward Said. The unspoken premise of the mainstream press is that no Palestinian or Arab position on Israeli police terror, settler-colonialism, or military occupation is worth hearing from. November 2002.

Quest for Justice
Judith Stone, an American Jew, argues that Jews of conscience must support the right of return of the Palestinian people. November 2002.

Do I Divest?
By Archbishop Desmond Tutu. If apartheid ended, so can this occupation, but the moral force and international pressure will have to be just as determined. November 2002.

Israeli violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in the occupied Palestinian territories
Speech by Professor Jeff Halper, Coordinator Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. Halper focuses on the fact that “virtually all of Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands violates human rights conventions and especially the Fourth Geneva Convention that forbids an occupying power from making its presence a permanent one.” June 20, 2002.

A truly fragile identity
By Edward Said. Israel has equated modern identity not with actual live people, with rights and obligations, but with a vast collectivity with no limits either in the past, the present, or the future. March 2002.

What is Anti-Semitism?
Neumann, Michael. Inflating the meaning of 'antisemitism' to include anything politically damaging to Israel is a double-edged sword. It may be handy for smiting your enemies, but the problem is that definitional inflation, like any inflation, cheapens the currency. The more things get to count as antisemitic, the less awful antisemitism is going to sound. 2002.

When journalists forget that murder is murder
By Robert Fisk. When Israelis are involved, our moral compass, our ability to report the truth, dries up. August 2001.

Anti-racists who question Zionism are not racists
By Stephen Gowans. Anyone who criticizes the actions of the Israeli government runs the risk of being labelled anti-Semitic by those who want to silence all criticism of Israel. July 2001.

Israel's approved ethnic cleansing
By Edward Herman. Israel's treatment of the Palestinians has always presented a moral problem to the West, as that treatment has violated every law and moral standard on the books. June 2001.

Israeli apartheid and terrorism
By Edward Herman. If Jews in France were required to carry identification cards designating them Jews, could not acquire land or buy or rent homes in most of the country, were not eligible for service in the armed forces, and French law banned any political party or legislation calling for equal rights for Jews, would France be widely praised in the United States as a “symbol of human decency” and paragon of democracy? May 1994.

Israel will withdraw only under pressure.
By Israel Shahak. The overwhelming majority of the Jewish public has been determined since 1967 not to relinquish any territory except if forced to do so. 1991.

The Life of Death
By Israel Shahak. The really great form of courage and honesty that could be witnessed under the conditions of the Holocaust was when a Pole opposed the opinion or the silence of other Poles, when a Jew opposed other Jews, and when Germans opposed other Germans or Nazism in general. This is the type of courage which we should learn about and emulate. 1985.

Anti-semitism and the Beirut Pogrom
By Fredy Perlman. The long exile is over; the persecuted refugee at long last returns to Zion, but so badly scarred he's unrecognizable, he has completely lost his self; he returns as anti-Semite, as Pogromist, as mass murderer; the ages of exile and suffering are still included in his makeup, but only as self-justifications. 1983.

Reflections and Meditations Thirty Years After
Two pieces written by I. F. Stone 30 years after the publication of his 1946 book
Underground to Palestine. Part I is called "Confessions of a Jewish Dissident", Part II is called "The Other Zionism". (1978).

Bertrand Russell's Last Message
Written by Bertrand Russell on the day before his death in 1970. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate?

Israel's Arab Minority: The Beginning of a Tragedy
Draper, Hal. Without in the least derogating this moral indignation at the treatment of the Arab minority, which is richly justified, one aspect of the denunciation misses the mark. The moral indignation should not be visited in the first place against the miserable, harassed, driven Jewish DPs from Europe who, in their fear and need, were used as pawns to grab the land and property of the dispossessed Arabs. They were steered and pushed into this position by those who knew what they were doing – Zionist arms like the Jewish Agency, Zionist authorities in the armed forces and government, both by design and by toleration. (1956).

On the Irresponsible Handling of the Palestine Question
Cliff, Tony. The American and English working class must not support the Zionist drive for a Jewish State (or what, under existing conditions means the same thing, a drive for Jewish immigration and colonisation) which, while befitting imperialism, opposes the most elementary interests equally of the Arab masses as of the Jewish. (1947).

Terrorism in Palestine: Are the Terrorists Anti-Imperialist?
Cliff, Tony. Terrorist activity in Palestine has been revived on a larger scale than formerly, calling the attention of the entire press to the organisations of the Hagana, the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the Stern Gang and their activities. Socialist internationalists must answer the question: what is the character of these organisations? Are they an anti-imperialist factor in the liberatory struggles of the colonial peoples? (1946).

Epilogue to 'Underground to Palestine'
I. F. Stone's epilogue to his first-hand account of the movement of Jewish refugees from Europe to Palestine. (1946).

The Jewish-Arab Conflict
Cliff, Tony (writing as L. Rock). The conflict between the Arab masses and Zionist aspirations can only be solved to the extent that Jewish masses in Palestine renounce Zionist exclusivism. (1938).

 

Main Connexions Israel/Palestine page


Related topics from the Connexions Library Subject Index:

Aggression - Anti-Semitism - Apartheid - Arab Affairs/Politics - Arab/Israeli Issues - Boycotts - Canada-Israel Relations - Canadian Jews/Attitude to Israel - Censorship - Children/Violence - Crimes Against Humanity - Discrimination - Disinvestment - Double Standards - Foreign Policy - Gaza Strip - Hate - History/Arab - Holocaust - Human Rights Abuses - Human Rights Abuses/International - International Law - Israel - Israel/Doing Business in - Israel/Investing in - Israeli Apartheid - Israeli Settlements - Jewish History - Jews - Jews in Arab Lands - Jews in Canada - Labour Movement - Media Bias - Media Coverage/Middle East - Middle East - Middle East Conflict - Middle East Peace Process - Middle East Politics/History - Militarism - News Bias - News Coverage/International - Occupied Territories - Palestine - Palestine/Occupation - Palestinian Authority - Palestinian Refugees - Palestinians - Peace - Peacebuilding - Propaganda - Racism - Refugees - Rule of Law - Sanctions - Solidarity - South Africa - Torture - United Nations - War Crimes - Zionism

Keywords for finding groups in the Connexions Directory of Organizations:

Anti-Semitism - Apartheid - Arab Affairs/Politics - Arab/Israeli Issues - Boycotts - Censorship - Disinvestment - Foreign Policy - Gaza Strip - History/Arab - Human Rights Abuses - Human Rights Abuses/International - International Law - Israel - Israeli Apartheid - Media Bias - Media Coverage/Middle East - Middle East - Middle East Conflict - Middle East Politics/History - Militarism - News Bias - Occupied Territories - Palestine - Palestine/Occupation - Palestinian Refugees - Palestinians - Propaganda - Racism - Refugees - Solidarity - Torture - United Nations - War Crimes - Zionism

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