Ilan Pappé

I thought when I picked up this book it would take about a week to read. It took most of my summer because I had to put it down for days at a time to come to grips with the subject matter. Beyond the killings, beatings, rapes and cultural destruction of the Palestinian people hard to stomach, but the 'whitewashing' of the facts for so many years is yet another dishonor to the innocent people who suffered during the Nakba. Ilan Pappe has done a masterful job of research with details and accounts that have to be told for peace to ever transpire in the Middle East. As we witness this genocide now in 2023-24 in Gaza, nearly all the history that has led up to this point can be traced back to the ethic cleansing and crimes against humanity in Palestine from late 1947 to the early 1950s.… (more)

Thoroughly depressing but illuminating history of Israel's motivations and strategies which have laid the foundation of occupation of Palestine. Using recently declassified materials he surveys the way Israel exerts control over the population of over one million Palestinians in a way that ultimately moves between choices between accepting an ‘open prison’ existence or being punished with a "high security" version if they refuse to comply. His predictions for how this will develop are eerily accurate in the light of developments in 2023-4, nothing new in the way Israel are thinking or behaving-just ramped up massively, as he predicted… (more)

My mother is the only member of my maternal family, besides myself, who isn't a zionist. I've been anti-zionist since the first time I read anything about what's happening in Palestine, in the late '90s or early 2000s. It struck me as one of the most obvious cases settler colonialism imaginable, before I even knew what those words meant. In 2024 it feels like you have to be intentionally blind not to see it, but still, I figured I'd read a book so I could learn more about the history of the area.

This book was published in 2017, six years before the most blatant genocide since the holocaust. Zionists have weird memories these days: they remember biblical times (which may or may not have even happened), the holocaust, and October 7th; but seemingly nothing in between. The reality is a lot different though, and Pappe does a good job of explaining history while dismantling a few commonly believed myths. He admits in the introduction that it isn't a balanced book, but instead it's “yet another attempt to redress the balance of power on behalf of the colonized, occupied, and oppressed Palestinians,” and I appreciate that.

I'd love to write a long review, complete with a breakdown of each of the chapters, but who has time for that? I'll tell you my favorite myth-busting chapters though: “Palestine was an empty land,” “Zionism is Judaism,” and “the Oslo mythologies.” Of all the books I've read about that area of the world, this one has perhaps given me the most things to hold on to.

I would recommend this book for everyone, but I'm afraid the zionists have completely lost their minds. So many liberal zionists have been ruthless to Trump supporters over the past eight years for their inability to comprehend facts that go against their belief system, for their racism and xenophobia, and for their hate-backed anger. Now they are becoming the same people. If facts in their faces every day don't do anything to get them to be against genocide, then reading a book won't either.… (more)