Books we're reading this month

A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples by Ilan Pappe (Cambridge University Press, 2004)

It’s hard to compress into a short review a book that is as insightful, informative, or as passionate as this one. A professor of politics at Israel’s Haifa University, Pappe’s stated goal is to write a history that is “humanist, not nationalist, ethnic, or religious.” He successfully injects the many Palestinian perspectives on the region’s history into the once-unquestionable official Israeli version of events (a story most Israelis now know to have been falsified, though North Americans tend to still believe it quite rigidly). Pappe sees the writing of history as central to overcoming the problems between Palestinians and Israelis: “The violent symbolic and real exclusion of people from the hegemonic narrative of the past is the source of the violence of the present.”

By restoring narratives that were once hidden, the nuances of the region’s history overcome the popular conception of it being inhabited by two groups who have always hated each other. The most interesting sections of the book discuss the many successful instances of social or economic cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis that were quashed by either the nationalist Palestinian leadership, the colonial Israeli government, or both. Other insights include a damning indictment of the Arab notables who sold land to the early Zionists, a critique of Israel’s caste system and the plight of non-European Jews in Israel, and a re-examination of women’s roles in the Palestinian resistance. There is almost too much to recommend here. As an introduction to the region’s history or as a revision of what you think you know, Pappe’s History of Modern Palestine is an exceptional read.

- Chris LaVigne <clavigne@republic-news.org>