Palestine Solidarity: Recommended Books

(Available at Toronto Women’s Bookstore http://www.womensbookstore.com/ or at OPIRG, University of Toronto http://www.opirguoft.org/)

For more titles see bibliography listed at:
Palestinian American Research Centre http://parc.virtualactivism.net/resources/bibliography.htm

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The Wall Must Fall
(CUPE BC International Solidarity Committee: June 2005)

Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation: Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation, edited by Nahla Abdo and Ronit Lentin
(New York: Berghahn Books, 2002)

Stolen Youth: The Politics of Israel's Detention of Palestinian Children,
by Catherine Cook, Adam Hanieh, and Adah Kay
(London: Pluto Press, 2004)

Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, by Uri Davis
(New York: Zed Books, 2003)

Image and Reality in the Israel-Palestine Conflict, by Norman G. Finkelstein
(Verso: London, 2003)

The Other Side of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish-Arab Divide,
by Susan Nathan
(Bantam Dell Publishers Group, 2005)

Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948, by Tanya Rheinhart.
(New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002)

The Myths of Zionism, by John Rose
(London: Pluto Press, 2004)

Palestine, by Joe Sacco
(Seattle: Gary Groth and Kim Thompson, 2002)

The Question of Palestine, by Edward Said
(New York: Vintage, 1979, rpt. 1992)

The One State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock, by Virginia Tilley
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005)

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The Wall Must Fall
(CUPE BC International Solidarity Committee: June 2005)
Synopsis from http://www.cupe.ca/internationalsolidarity/The_Wall_Must_Fall

CUPE BC has released the third edition of its popular booklet, The Wall Must Fall, about the conflict in the Middle East.
There is a popular chant among Israeli and Palestinian protesters against the Israeli government’s continuing occupation of Palestinian territory in the Middle East. They say, “First of all the wall must fall.”
They are referring to the “apartheid” or “separation” wall that Israel is building in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. The wall will dwarf the Berlin Wall and surpass it as a serious impasse to settling one of the world’s major conflicts. It will isolate millions of Palestinians inside walled ghettos.
On July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), determined that the wall is illegal and that Israel must dismantle it.
CUPE BC shares the concerns of the protesters, the ICJ and others who oppose the escalation of retaliatory violence.
At its 2000 convention the B.C. Division adopted resolution 37 calling for:
-An end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in Gaza;
-A cessation of armed attacks on Israeli and Palestinian civilians; and,
-Development of a peace process based on international law and equality.
Now CUPE BC, with the help of CUPE National, has produced a booklet called The Wall Must Fall to educate members and others on the conflict. While the booklet’s message is consistent with convention resolutions, it is not an official position paper. Rather, it is meant as an educational resource for members. To that end, it raises probing questions. For example:
-Why is the Israel-Palestine conflict so important?
-Why does the ICJ condemn the wall?
-What is daily life like under Israeli occupation?
-Why is the world calling for an end to the occupation?
-Is opposing Israeli actions and policies anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish?
-What is the solution to the conflict?
The Wall Must Fall offers some answers, but more importantly it provides current and historical perspectives shared by the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements not found in the mainstream Canadian media. Packed with facts, analysis, maps, charts and photographs, The Wall Must Fall is a powerful primer for CUPE members and others. As Canadian Jewish Outlook editor Carl Rosenberg writes in his foreword: “This CUPE BC booklet is part of a growing educational effort meant to build a solidarity campaign similar to the one created to fight against the apartheid regime in South Africa.” CUPE BC’s international solidarity committee was directed to produce the booklet by resolution at the 2003 provincial division convention.
Contact CUPE BC for your copy. CUPE BC
510-4940 Canada Way
Burnaby, B.C.
V5G 4T3
Phone: 604-291-9119
Fax: 604-291-9043 info@cupe.bc.ca
Available on the web at http://www.cupe.ca/updir/Thewall1.pdf

Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation: Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation, edited by Nahla Abdo and Ronit Lentin
(New York: Berghahn Books, 2002)

Nahla Abdo is Professor of Sociology at Carleton University, Ottawa. Ronit Lentin was born in Haifa prior to the establishment of the state of Israel and has lived in Ireland since 1969.

From the book jacket:
As the crisis in Israel does not show any signs of abating, this remarkable collection, edited by an Israeli and a Palestinian scholar and with contributions from Palestinian and Israeli women, offers a vivid and harrowing picture of the conflict and its impact on daily life, especially as it affects women’s experiences that differ significantly from those of men. The (auto)biographical narratives in this volume focus on some of the most disturbing effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: a sense of dislocation that goes well beyond the geographical meaning of the word; it involves social, cultural, national and gender dislocation, including alienation from one’s home, family, community and society.

Stolen Youth: The Politics of Israel's Detention of Palestinian Children
by Catherine Cook, Adam Hanieh, and Adah Kay
(London: Pluto Press, 2004)
From review at http://fromoccupiedpalestine.org/node.php?id=1122
"Three more people in masks came into the room. They blindfolded me, put a hood over my head... they kicked and slapped me. They beat me with a plastic pipe and whatever they could get their hands on. I couldn't see anything because I was blindfolded. I just felt the blows. That lasted ten to fifteen minutes... Later they stood me on a chair and told me to grab a pipe that was fixed to the wall. They removed the chair from under me and left me hanging in the air, with my handcuffed hands holding onto the pipe and the weight of my body, hanging in the air, drawing my hands downwards. They left the room." - Ismail Sabatin, 17 years old.

So begins Stolen Youth, a book about Israel's detention of Palestinian children that will be released in March 2004. Isma'il Sabatin's story, the authors of the book remind us, is paralleled by the stories of the "nearly 2,000 Palestinian children from the Occupied Palestinian Territories whom the Israeli authorities have arrested over the last three years." Some spend a few days in detention - detained, beaten, and released. Others spend years there. … The authors argue that this situation will not change unless change is "sought on the streets and not simply in the parliaments and halls of government. Activists must move beyond information dissemination confined largely to like-minded groups and build strategic alliances that will create an environment where governmental support for criminal regimes becomes impossible to sustain." Part of building these alliances, they say, is understanding "the common links between the Palestinian struggle and other struggles against oppression around the globe."

These links ought to be dramatically obvious in North America, and especially in the United States, with its prison-industry complex, whose incarcerated population is 2 million and growing, where violations are also routine and systematic, and whose root causes are equally infrequently examined. By shining a bright light on both the brutality and the root of Israel's prison system through the eyes of its most vulnerable victims, the authors of Stolen Youth have provided information that will help people understand those "common links" and make the "strategic alliances" that are so necessary.

Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, by Uri Davis
(New York: Zed Books, 2003)
From “About this Book”
Uri Davis has been at the forefront of the defence of human rights in Israel since the mid-1960s, as well as being at the cutting edge of critical research on Israel and Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In this book, a sequel to Israel: An Apartheid State (Zed Books, 1987), Uri Davis provides a critical insight into how it came about that Jewish people, including the victims of Nazi genocide in the Second World War, subjected the Palestinian people, beginning with the 1948-49 war, to such criminal policies as mass deportation, population transfers and ethnic cleansing; prolonged military government (with curfews, roadblocks, so-called security fences and the like); and economic, social, cultural, civil and political strangulation, punctuated by house demolitions and Apache helicopters strafing civilians in their homes. … The object of this book is to contribute to a moral understanding, political framework and climate of opionion in the west that will support international sanctions against the rogue government of Israel, with the aim of dismantling the state’s apartheid structures as a state for Jews only, and assisting in the establishment of a democratic (whether confederal, federal or unitary) state of Palestine in conformity with the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the standards of international law.

Image and Reality in the Israel-Palestine Conflict, by Norman G. Finkelstein
(Verso: London, 2003)
Norman G. Finkelstein teaches Political Science at DePaul University in Chicago.

From the book jacket:
First published in 1995, this highly acclaimed study scrutinizes popular and scholarly representations of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It begins with a novel theoretical interpretation of Zionism, and then moves on to critically engage the influential studies of Joan Peters, Benny Morris, and Anita Shapira. Carefully rehearsing the documentary record, Finkelstein also challenges the dominant images of the June 1967 and October 1973 Arab-Israeli wars. In a comprehensive new introduction, he provides the most succinct overview available in the English language of the Israel-Palestine conflict, while in several new chapters he juxtaposes Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories against South African apartheid, and demolishes the scholarly pretensions of Michael Oren’s recent bestseller on the June 1967 war.

The Other Side of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish-Arab Divide,
by Susan Nathan
(Bantam Dell Publishers Group, 2005)
A fantastic personal journal of Apartheid Israel from a Jewish British woman
who went to Israel as a "progressive" Zionist, but fairly quickly began to
realize things were not as she believed. She decides to go live in a
Palestinian Israeli town to see for herself what it is like - how Israel
treats its Palestinian citizens. A powerful testimonial.

Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948, by Tanya Rheinhart.
(New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002)
Tanya Reinhart is an Israeli scholar who is known for her works in
linguistics, but also as the author of a biweekly column in the daily
newspaper Yediot Aharonot. Her book demonstrates the hoax suffered by the
Palestinians, sometimes with the complicity of their own Authority. It also
shows that, behind the semantic and cartographic contortions, the main
objective of the Israeli governments has been to give up as little as
possible and to accept but a truncated Palestinian autonomy. According to
her, the solution is simple: 'In order to initiate true negotiations, Israel
has to withdraw unilaterally' from the occupied Palestinian territories.
– Le Monde

The Myths of Zionism, by John Rose
(London: Pluto Press, 2004)
John Rose teaches Sociology at Southwark College and London Metropolitan University in London, UK.

From the book jacket:
“This is an impressive work of deconstruction with many crucial new insights…[It is] written in an accessible way, despite the very complicated issues with which Rose deals: such as the cultural and ideological sources of the Zionist narrative”
-Ilan Pappe, Professor of Middle East History, University of Haifa, Israel

“In a highly charged environment, Jewish authors played an immense role in elevating the debate about Zionism and the birth of the Israeli State. … John Rose’s book is a welcome addition that will defy the pro-Israeli inquisition that seeks, through intimidation, to silence legitimate criticism.”
-Afif Safieh, Palestinian General Delegate to the UK

This controversial book provides a critical account of the historical, political and cultural roots of Zionism. John Rose shows how this powerful political force is based in mythology; ancient, medieval and modern. Rose argues that, as Zionism is a living political force, these myths have been used to justify very real and political ends ¬– namely, the expulsion and continuing persecution of the Palestinians.

Palestine, by Joe Sacco
(Seattle: Gary Groth and Kim Thompson, 2002)

From the book jacket:
“Joe Sacco's Palestine… is a whole that transcends both its medium and its mandate."
-Washington City Paper

“Gripping … a political and aesthetic work of extraordinary originality.”
-From the new introduction by Edward Said

"In a world where Photoshop has outed the photograph to be a liar, one can now allow artists to return to their original function - as reporters."

-Pulitzer Prize-winner, Art Spiegelman

"By combining eyewitness reportage with the political and philosophical perspectives of those he meets, Sacco tells stories in which the experiences, memories, and voices systematically excluded from mainstream news coverage - those pushed aside, to the margins of history - are recuperated."

-Lisa Fischman, Curator,
University at Buffalo Art Gallery

The Question of Palestine, Edward Said
(New York: Vintage, 1979, rpt. 1992)
Note: Edward Said (1935-2003)
For Obituary and active links to Said’s articles, see http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/658/special.htm

From the book jacket (1992):
This original and deeply provocative book was the first to make Palestine the subject of a serious debate ¬– one that is now more critical than ever. With the rigorous scholarship that he brought to his influential [book] Orientalism and an exile’s passion (he is Palestinian by birth and has been a member of the Palestine National Council), Edward W. Said traces the fatal collision between two peoples in the Middle East and its repercussions in the lives of both the occupier and the occupied – as well as in the conscience of the West. He has now updated this landmark work to portray the changed status of Palestine and its people in light of such developments as the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the intifada, the Gulf War, and the ongoing Middle East peace initiative. For anyone interested in this region and its future, The Question of Palestine remains the most useful and authoritative account available.

The One State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock, by Virginia Tilley
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005)

From Review by Iqbal Jassat, The Electronic Intifada, 16 July 2005
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3996.shtml
As Israel's apartheid wall colonizes 30-40 percent more of the 22 percent of Palestine that remains, an increasing number of analysts, activists, and academics have begun to challenge the two-state solution designed to bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With Palestinians eventually ending up with only 12-15 percent of their land, made up of disjointed ghettoes over which they will have no sovereignty- a single, secular polity that would encompass both Israel and the Occupied Territories is looking increasingly attractive. The One-State Solution written by Virginia Tilley, associate professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, lucidly demonstrates why the two-state model "is an idea whose time has passed". … Tilley's persuasive arguments also carries an apt warning: "Looking to the South African experience for guidance or inspiration will avail little unless policymakers also adopt the principles, standards and values that guided that struggle: that is, that ethnic supremacy is illegitimate and cannot generate a just political system ... ." By incorporating a second comparison with the Northern Ireland conflict, the author illustrates how prejudice, fear and suspicion were primary obstacles to a stable peace, since doctrines of ethnic or racial domination impeded trust.

Virginia Tilley has made a significant contribution to the one-state argument. Not only does her book expand on a number of vexing questions, but it also forces the reader to think out of the box and unearth an insightful solution to this brutal conflict.