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A review by pink_distro
The Revolution of 1936–1939 in Palestine: Background, Details, and Analysis by Ghassan Kanafani
5.0
i definitely see why this is considered an essential Palestinian revolutionary writing. many people rightly emphasize at starting with the Nakba in 1948 to understand Palestine, but going further back to the mid 30s, as Kanafani does here, really shows what processes actually sowed the seeds of the Nakba.
i learned a ton from the extensive analysis of how the British Mandate government led the construction of a settler zionist economy & society — where Palestinian peasants are dispossessed and land transferred to Jewish settlers, where settler Jewish workers are structurally advantaged while Arab workers were fired and saw their wages plummet, where Britain channels investment to settler Jewish corporations and builds infrastructure to defend British and zionist economic interests, etc. He also shows how Britain was essential in raising up and training the zionist militias / terror squads that helped repress the 1936-1939 revolt, and eventually enacted the Nakba and cohered into the IOF.
his analysis of Palestinian resistance, its structural causes, its bases, its powerful cultural/poetic expressions, its traitorous 'part-feudal, part-clerical leadership,' and the Palestine Communist party, was great. it did well to balance focusing on the material conditions while also considering important subjective elements, like organizational talent and the qualities of Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, for example.
this text is short, important reading, and is available free online from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and other sites.
i learned a ton from the extensive analysis of how the British Mandate government led the construction of a settler zionist economy & society — where Palestinian peasants are dispossessed and land transferred to Jewish settlers, where settler Jewish workers are structurally advantaged while Arab workers were fired and saw their wages plummet, where Britain channels investment to settler Jewish corporations and builds infrastructure to defend British and zionist economic interests, etc. He also shows how Britain was essential in raising up and training the zionist militias / terror squads that helped repress the 1936-1939 revolt, and eventually enacted the Nakba and cohered into the IOF.
his analysis of Palestinian resistance, its structural causes, its bases, its powerful cultural/poetic expressions, its traitorous 'part-feudal, part-clerical leadership,' and the Palestine Communist party, was great. it did well to balance focusing on the material conditions while also considering important subjective elements, like organizational talent and the qualities of Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, for example.
this text is short, important reading, and is available free online from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and other sites.