Palestine

Bertrand Russell’s Last Message

This statement on the Middle East was dated 31 Jan 1970, and was read to an International Conference of Parliamentarians meeting in Cairo on February 3 Feb 1970, the day after Bertrand Russell’s death. His message remains just as relevant today as it was then.

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Books on Palestine

As always, inclusion does not imply agreement.

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2 Quotations on Palestine

“All who want to see an end to bloodshed in the Middle East must ensure that any settlement does not contain the seeds of future conflict.”

Bertrand Russell

“To invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy.”

Bertrand Russell

Recommended Reading


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Orientalism

– Edward W. Said
Discusses the situation of the Palestinians, including the history of the Nakba, the dispossession and scattering of the Palestinian diaspora, and the misrepresentation of the Palestinian cause in the Western world. Said also examines the development of Palestinian political movements, particularly the Palestine Liberation Organization led by his then friend, Yasser Arafat, and the changing perceptions of Palestinian groups towards the question of Jewish identity and Israeli statehood.

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Out of Place

– Edward W. Said
From one of the most important intellectuals of our time comes an extraordinary story of exile and a celebration of an irrecoverable past. A fatal medical diagnosis in 1991 convinced Edward Said that he should leave a record of where he was born and spent his childhood, and so with this memoir he rediscovers the lost Arab world of his early years in Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt.

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The Question of Palestine

– Edward W. Said
  Published: 1979
For a long time, Edward Said was the most high-profile and internationally recognized of Palestinian intellectuals. His untimely death in 2003 was a blow for Palestinian advocacy, especially in the US, where few Palestinian voices are allowed to rise to general public awareness.

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In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story

– Ghada Karmi
This widely acclaimed memoir draws you into the life of Ghada Karmi; a childhood spent in Palestine and a life of displacement and struggle in Britain. Here is the human cost of the loss of one’s home and the reshaping of one’s identity written with wit, humour and often heart-breaking insight.

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The Balfour Declaration

– Jonathan Schneer
Issued in London in 1917, the Balfour Declaration was one of the key documents of the twentieth century. It committed Britain to supporting the establishment in Palestine of ‘a National Home for the Jewish people,’ and its reverberations continue to be felt to this day. With new material retrieved from historical archives, Jonathan Schneer recounts in dramatic detail the public and private fight to depopulate and colonize a small strip of land in the Middle East

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Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid

– Jimmy Carter
Carter argues that Israel’s continued control and construction of illegal settlements has been the primary obstacle to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Middle East. That perspective, coupled with the use of the word Apartheid in the titular phrase ‘Peace Not Apartheid,’ and what critics said were errors and misstatements in the book, sparked an intense backlash. Carter has defended his book and countered that response to it ‘in the real world… has been overwhelmingly positive.‘Later events in the ongoing bombing, dispossession and occupation of Palestinian lands confirm Carter’s conclusions.

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Looking for Palestine

– Najla Said
The daughter of the famous intellectual and outspoken Palestinian advocate Edward Said and a sophisticated Lebanese mother, Najla Said grew up in New York City, confused and conflicted about her cultural background and identity. Said knew that her parents identified deeply with their homelands, but growing up in a Manhattan world that was defined largely by class and conformity, she felt unsure about who she was supposed to be, and was often in denial of the differences she sensed between her family and those around her. She may have been born a Palestinian Lebanese American, but Said denied her true roots, even to herself–until, ultimately, the psychological toll of her self-hatred began to threaten her health.

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Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians

– Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé
In Gaza in Crisis, Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé, two of the issue’s most insightful and prominent critical voices, survey the fallout from Israel’s conduct in Gaza and place it into the context of Israel’s longstanding occupation of Palestine.

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On Palestine

– Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé
An erudite and nuanced account of Palestine’s history. First published in 2015, it is an essential guide to understanding the shifting situation and is itself a sequel to their acclaimed book, Gaza in Crisis.

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I Saw Ramallah

– Mourid Barghouti
Barred from his homeland after the ‘Six-Day War’ in 1967, the poet Mourid Barghouti spent thirty years in exile–shuttling among the world’s cities, yet secure in none of them; separated from his family for years at a time; never certain whether he was a visitor, a refugee, a citizen, or a guest. As he returns home for the first time since the Israeli occupation, Barghouti crosses a wooden bridge over the Jordan River into Ramallah and is unable to recognize the city of his youth. Sifting through memories of the old Palestine as they come up against what he now encounters in this mere ‘idea of Palestine,’ He discovers what it means to be deprived not only of a homeland but of ’the habitual place and status of a person.’

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Overcoming Zionism

– Joel Kovel
A call to transform Israel into a secular democracy. This book is fundamental for those who reject the unfortunate confusion between Jews, Judaism, Zionism and the State of Israel – a confusion which is the basis for systematic manipulation by the imperialist power system. It argues in favor of a single secular state for Israelis and Palestinians as the only democratic solution for the region.

Zionism creates a contradiction that eats at the soul and conscience of the Jewish people. The problem is that it is a moral and logical impossibility have a democratic state for only one ethnic group while excluding others. The notion of democracy derives from universal ideals based on universal human rights; it cannot exist where there is systematic inequality, and all the more so when the ‘others’ are the indigenous population.