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A review by amethysthunter
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi
challenging
dark
informative
inspiring
sad
5.0
Instrumental, foundational text that everyone must read. It is the tale of over 100 years of occupation and settler colonialism and the attempted erasure of an indigenous people and their history. It details the ways that the US pays lip service to the existence of the Palestinians but in the end has provided political, diplomatic, legal, and military aid (and literally !! billions of dollars a year) towards the cause of advancing Israel’s colonization of Palestine.
This took me months to read because I found myself so angry and upset at many points that I had to take breaks…but it was extremely illuminating. The author combines generations of familial and cultural knowledge and lived experience as well as his expertise as an academic and foremost expert on the issue to concisely sum up the approaches that have been effective in expanding the way in which the reality in Palestine is understood and why these approaches have or haven't worked and the path towards Palestinian liberation. One quote that I think sums up how I felt reading the story: “The Palestinians’ resistance, their persistence, and their challenge to Israel’s ambitions are among the most striking phenomena of the current era.”
This took me months to read because I found myself so angry and upset at many points that I had to take breaks…but it was extremely illuminating. The author combines generations of familial and cultural knowledge and lived experience as well as his expertise as an academic and foremost expert on the issue to concisely sum up the approaches that have been effective in expanding the way in which the reality in Palestine is understood and why these approaches have or haven't worked and the path towards Palestinian liberation. One quote that I think sums up how I felt reading the story: “The Palestinians’ resistance, their persistence, and their challenge to Israel’s ambitions are among the most striking phenomena of the current era.”