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4.57 AVERAGE
4.57 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
Content Warnings
Graphic: Genocide, Racism, Colonisation, War
Moderate: Child death, Death, Rape, Torture, Police brutality
informative
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
informative
medium-paced
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
informative
sad
I'm glad I read this book. It taught me a lot and helped to dispel the myths that I was taught about Israel in Hebrew school. There is definitely a lot more to learn about the topic but it was a good starting point.
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
informative
medium-paced
Reading different perspectives on the establishment of Israel gives you whiplash. In one book the Israelis are indigenous people reclaiming their land from the ruins of the Arab empire using sheer guts and resilience, surrounded by people who want to destroy them. In the next, they're genocidal monsters and painfully white and the Palestinians are the poor, brown indigenous people ergo good. You can tell where the sympathies of the author lie by this definition of who is indigenous and where everyone stands on the oppressor/oppressed axis because that's the framing device that the rest of the narrative will hinge on.
Pappé is definitely in the "Israel Bad" camp, so no Arab atrocities are mentioned and if there's ever hint they have acted with impropriety it is waved away as self defence or retribution. There's obviously a case to answer here and other historians have picked holes in the facts, but I think I have the most sympathy with someone who, in a review of the book referred to the creation of Israel as a Caesarian birth. That seems a pretty good comparison since something good was born (Israel itself) but holy shit, as this book shows, it wasn't a relaxing pool birth with scented candles and whalesong.
Pappé is definitely in the "Israel Bad" camp, so no Arab atrocities are mentioned and if there's ever hint they have acted with impropriety it is waved away as self defence or retribution. There's obviously a case to answer here and other historians have picked holes in the facts, but I think I have the most sympathy with someone who, in a review of the book referred to the creation of Israel as a Caesarian birth. That seems a pretty good comparison since something good was born (Israel itself) but holy shit, as this book shows, it wasn't a relaxing pool birth with scented candles and whalesong.