A review by 100booksyearly
The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories by Ilan Pappé

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

The monstrous mega-prison Israel contemplated in 1963, and then built in 1967, is fifty years old as this book comes to a close. The third generation of inmates are still there waiting for the world to acknowledge their suffering and to realize that, as long as their oppression continues, it will be impossible to engage constructively with oppression elsewhere in the Middle East, and in particular in Syria. The immunity Israel has received over the last fifty years encourages others, regimes and oppositions alike, to believe that human and civil rights are irrelevant in the Middle East. The dismantling of the mega-prison in Palestine will send a different, and more hopeful, message to everyone living in this troubled part of the world.