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Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics by Mitchell Plitnick, Marc Lamont Hill
neelamreadsalot's review
3.0
It’s a good summary on the history of Palestine with regards to the US involvement. However, it continues to emphasize the right for Israel to exist which contradicts the facts being presented in the book. The trying to explain Palestine without “upsetting” Israelis negates the point of the conversation about Palestine. I appreciate Marc Lamont Hill’s discourse in his interviews and personal opinions on both Palestine as well as Black Lives Matter, so I give it 3 stars. Otherwise I would say there are other less two-sides narratives that provide better details and explanations of the history of Palestine.
lizziaha's review against another edition
5.0
Really clear detailing of how the USA has handled Israel in a way that’s completely different to any other foreign state. I feel like this is a quick easy to read starting point for any American who wants to better understand israel’s occupation of and unfair dealings with Palestine.
Content Warnings
Graphic: War, Colonisation, Murder, Death, Deportation, and Confinement
fatimaelf's review against another edition
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
This was a good, if brief, look into the injustice of Israel’s actions in Palestine, outlining in particular the hypocrisy of American so-called progressives in allowing such injustice to continue with few calls to address it.
This book was published in 2021, so obviously before the events of October 7, which make what’s discussed ever more salient. It’s composed of four chapters and an introduction and a conclusion, so it’s not very long. The first chapter examines the demand that Israel imparts on the Palestinians of its right to exist, and how that demand made specifically to the one group of people it undermines is wrong and unacceptable. It was especially interesting to learn about the history of Israel, and how its early leaders viewed Palestine, acknowledging that they were occupying land but ultimately dismissing it as a problem because they believed they had a divine right to be there.
The second chapter focused on BDS, the boycott, divest, and sanction movement to support Palestine and how, despite its nonviolence, the U.S. attempts to criminalize it and Israel’s demonizing of it suggest they consider it as problematic as violence. I liked this chapter the best, I think, because in the context of now — how dare they resort to violence — it’s fascinating to see how even nonviolence is met with aggression and antipathy. The U.S.’s bipartisan agreement to try and criminalize a nonviolence movement is both unsurprising but important to note.
The third chapter focuses on Trump, and how despite all appearances, Trump’s actions regarding Israel and Palestine were not a break with existing establishment policies, especially not those of previous presidents. While he did, in classic Trump fashion, make things worse, he didn’t do anything other presidents hadn’t already expressed support for, nor did he do anything that Congress hasn’t already indicated it would do too. Though this chapter was interesting enough, it was far too long, and it got repetitive about halfway through. Honestly, it felt like the writers didn’t want to publish a book with less than two hundred pages of content, so we got a whole lot of the same information in this chapter that we received in others.
The fourth chapter, about Gaza specifically and Israel’s policies there, was essential to understanding uprising, terrorism, and oppression. This chapter got repetitive as well, but each section still provided some new information about Gaza that made the issue of what’s happening now even more clear, and though it wasn’t an easy chapter to get through — none of the book was particularly easy to get through, considering it’s infuriating to see such blatant human rights violations, only to be met with either apathy or excuses for it — it, paired with the first chapter, made it the most important one to read to understand Hamas and Israel today.
Though the information was good, there was far less analysis than I wanted there to be. The question posed was, why is Palestine to exception to progressive values? But rather than answer that question, the authors spotlighted the ways in which it was the exception. Now, inherently there’s nothing wrong with that. But I think if the writers could have posited ideas, drawn from psychology or sociology, presenting similar historic moments in an effort to offer some sort of explanation. Why is this their exception? Well, let’s look at the Civil Rights Movement, and see which progressives preferred to look the other way. Pull from MLK and Malcolm X, from Assata Shakur and Angela Davis. We could have more closely examined South African apartheid; how come it was the students that had to lead the charge? Where were the progressives through the decades of open hostility and discrimination then? Why not examine the Irish freedom movement while we’re at it, taking into account the IRS and outside views to their struggle? Were the progressives vocal about the Ireland and their struggle for independence?
Obviously these situations are not perfectly equatable to the Israel-Palestinian problem, as acknowledged by our authors themselves in the introduction. But using them for study and analysis to better understand why we look the other way, and have been for seven decades, would have made the reading of this book deeper. Because if you’re not going to answer why, who exactly is the book for? They come swinging for Palestine right off the bat, so it’s not meant for right wingers or centrists. It’s not meant for the very progressives it repeatedly criticizes, who likely wouldn’t pick up a book calling them out like that. So if the audience is people who do support Palestine, then there’s no real need to convince them that our policies regarding the problem are hypocritical. It offers good information to use as rebuttal for arguments with right wing, centrist, and progressive people, but it does not tell us why the disconnect exists, or how to overcome it.
Unfortunately, the conclusion also fell flat for me — these types of conclusions always do. Books like these often end on positive, “we should change and we can, together!” notes, but there’s little in the way of suggestions for how to do so. The authors provided the reader with a list of “musts” that need to be met before we can consider justice done in the conflict, but not much in how to achieve them. The few positives provided were marginal, small, which yes, is how change is enacted, and I will give them credit that there did not seem to be any reason for them to think that something might happen to so radically call attention to the area in the American consciousness, nor that there’d be such a marked shift in support from Israel to Palestine in the interim. For that reason — because I, as the reader, and they, as the authors, exist functionally in two different times despite the three years since publication, I don’t necessarily fault them for the idealistic conclusion. I was just left wanting a bit more.
Finally, I’m kinda annoyed that so much information was left in the end notes. Some of it felt very relevant, and some of it could have been included in the actual body of the book. I think if the authors had recognized the book based on different areas to examine — rather than just four very specific ones — then they could have incorporated more information and minimized repetition. After all, these four topics are not the only ones progressives ignore in favor of hypocritically defending Israel, and some of Israel’s human rights violations were very much lost in the sauce for various reasons.
Despite all that, the book provided essential information for understanding the horrors of Israeli and American policy regarding Palestine, and why the situation there is both criminal and horrifying from a human and legal standpoint. This is the first book I’ve read specifically on the topic, so perhaps, as I read more, I’ll feel differently, but I think this book has a good amount to offer any resistant progressives who are brave enough to read it.
mmontgomery's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Hill and Plitnick set out to argue that U.S. progressives contradict their beliefs and principles when it comes to Israeli actions and stances on Palestinian liberation and they accomplish it.
The books is short and separated into 4 sections,
The books is short and separated into 4 sections,
- The Right to Exist, which centers around the idea that Palestinians are consistently demanded to recognize Israel’s right to exist
- Criminalizing BDS, talking about how the U.S. aids in legitimizing the argument that BDS is illegal
- Trumped-Up Policy, which highlights that, no, Trump did not create new policy in regard to Israel and Palestine, but acted on long established, bi-partisan policy
- The Crisis in Gaza, examining the U.S.’s key involvement in creating the conditions in Gaza
The book is short and focuses on key events, policies, and players on the Israeli, U.S., and Palestinian side to make its point that U.S. progressives have made it their policy to treat their views on Israel as exceptional on the national and international stage to the detriment of Palestinians. The arguments are solid and the footnotes important (and tbh the content of the footnotes warrants more discussion in the book, but then it would have been a much longer book). The writing is approachable and doesn’t assume too much knowledge of U.S. policy as it provides a lot of the information for you (and provides a bit more, in footnotes, and directs you towards lots of additional sources to learn more, in the footnotes).
A good read for anyone who has pro-Palestinian values as it summarizes the essence of many main talking that we constantly drudge through and highlights the hypocrisy in the party that we’re expected to support. Additionally, it reminds us to constantly be critical of our assumptions and positions to avoid betraying our ideals. A good introduction for people who are looking to align their views on Palestinian liberation with their ethics and morals. And I imagine a good read for anyone else, who wants to better understand the positions of U.S. Americans working to bring pro-Palestinian policy to their government.
While the book does end on a hopeful note, highlighting shifting public opinion and key players in the Democratic party in 2021 (when the book was published) whose work in the government don’t make an exception for Palestine, given the events of 7 October 2023 and on, we can all decide if that optimism was warranted.
The people of Gaza live in a situation much too precarious to be ignored. The end of the Gaza siege cannot be delayed until the broader question of Israeli occupation is answered. The universal values of compassion, justice, and human rights demand that the siege be ended. Decimating the Gazan economy and starving the people living there have devastated an already depressed and overcrowded area. Moreover, these actions have not improved the situation for Israelis. Americans share significantly in the blame for this situation. Our overwhelming silence is a betrayal of the noble, definitive ideals that liberals and progressives profess to hold dear. (p 150)