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Rosh Hashanah book thread making a resolution for the Jewish new year? why not make 5781 the year you unlearn a lot of the implicit (and frequently explicit) Zionist narratives that you - like me - probably grew up with! these are the reads I've found most instructive
(please note that this list is in no way meant to be exhaustive or definitive!)
first up - 'The Invention of the Jewish People' by Shlomo Sand: a staggering work of history/historiography, setting out how the myth of the Jewish 'right' to Israel arose
https://www.versobooks.com/books/3048-the-invention-of-the-jewish-people
first up - 'The Invention of the Jewish People' by Shlomo Sand: a staggering work of history/historiography, setting out how the myth of the Jewish 'right' to Israel arose
https://www.versobooks.com/books/3048-the-invention-of-the-jewish-people
Sand's other books are also great. I can recommend 'The Invention of the Land of Israel' and 'How I Stopped Being A Jew'.
next - The Non-Jewish Jew by Isaac Deutscher: skilled commentary on carving out a Jewish identity in line with leftist secularism
https://www.versobooks.com/books/2399-the-non-jewish-jew
next - The Non-Jewish Jew by Isaac Deutscher: skilled commentary on carving out a Jewish identity in line with leftist secularism
https://www.versobooks.com/books/2399-the-non-jewish-jew
(they're not all @VersoBooks, promise!)
roll on 'Palestine' by Joe Sacco: a droll, nuanced and beautifully rendered comic about the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1990s https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/104/1040346/palestine/9780224069823.html
roll on 'Palestine' by Joe Sacco: a droll, nuanced and beautifully rendered comic about the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1990s https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/104/1040346/palestine/9780224069823.html
'Bibi' by @AnshelPfeffer diligently exposits how one man has done so much to shape Israel's repressive policies of Occupation https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/bibi/
now, an essay. Edward Said's 'Permission to Narrate' brilliantly sets out how narratives and language are manipulated to legitimise the actions of Israel and delegitimise Palestinian resistance
https://oldwebsite.palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/38869
https://oldwebsite.palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/38869
growing up, you were probably told that Israel was 'a land without a people for a people without a land'. you were lied to! Mahmoud Darwish's poems are an elegant and lyrical rejoinder to this https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mahmoud-darwish
more into film than reading? 5 Broken Cameras (dir. Emad Burnat) poignantly shows the human cost of Israel's 'security fence' https://player.bfi.org.uk/rentals/film/watch-five-broken-cameras-2011-online
as the primer to the issues discussed in the content listed above, Noam Chomsky's and Ilan Pappe's 'On Palestine' is ace, succinctly setting out almost all of the key issues https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/286/286707/on-palestine/9780241973523.html
this is more of a general read, but 'A History of the Middle East' by Peter Mansfield contextualises Israel's position in the region, and is very good at detailing how US and Israeli foreign policy intertwines https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/309/309631/a-history-of-the-middle-east/9780141988467.html
Israel is often painted as the centre of the Jewish world. it's not. Judaism has SUCH a rich progressive diaspora tradition. read Brossat and Klingberg's 'Revolutionary Yiddishland' to find out more
https://www.versobooks.com/books/2520-revolutionary-yiddishland
https://www.versobooks.com/books/2520-revolutionary-yiddishland
@weizman_eyal is a genius who has critically detailed how Israel manipulates space to create a panoptic architecture of Occupation. His 'Hollow Land' is a staggering text, as is 'The Least of All Possible Evils'
https://www.versobooks.com/books/2500-hollow-land
https://www.versobooks.com/books/2464-the-least-of-all-possible-evils
https://www.versobooks.com/books/2500-hollow-land
https://www.versobooks.com/books/2464-the-least-of-all-possible-evils
finally (!) I can recommend Jean Genet's 'Prisoner of Love', written following his experiences at Palestinian refugee camps in the 1970s https://www.nyrb.com/products/prisoner-of-love?variant=1094930921
i'll probably add to this as and when, but as I've said (a) it's not intended to be a definitive list - just a helpful guide and (b) please send me any recommendations!
chag sameach one and all
chag sameach one and all
