Best products from r/Palestine

In 1936 a Royal Commission was sent to Palestine to rubber-stamp the Zionist demand for partition (on the basis that, with a foothold, they could then seize the rest of Palestine). The Peel Report of 1937 gave them their partition despite it being totally unacceptable to the British Government.

However, Abdullah supported partition - and went much further, plotting with David Ben Gurion to allow the Zionists to seize up to a line almost the same as the Green Line of 1948. Israel could not have East Jerusalem (since Abdullah's father was buried there) but they could have West Jerusalem. (The Zionists ethnically cleansed much of West Jerusalem even before they started on the villages in 1948).

>Avi Shlaim, "Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, The Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine" 1988

>Publishers Weekly - This controversial piece of investigative scholarship is a blockbuster. Shlaim, an Oxford instructor in international relations, documents that Jordan's ambitious, absolutist King Abdullah, who was assassinated in 1951, had clandestine ties with the Zionist movement in Israelan accusation that many of the ruler's cohorts have made in the past.

>To further his own aims of creating a greater Jordanian empire, Abdullah conducted secret diplomacy with David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and other Israeli leaders. Drawing on Israeli government archives as well as interviews with politicians, soldiers and intelligence agents, Shlaim argues that the king's self-serving maneuvers hastened the partition of Palestine, which left more than a million Palestinian Arabs without a homeland.

>His absorbing 686-page narrative, a major reevaluation of the Arab-Israeli conflict, unfolds an Arab world torn by internal rivalry not the monolithic, hostile bloc that some Israelis claim it to be. http://www.amazon.com/Collusion-Across-Jordan-Partition-Palestine/dp/0231068387

Shlaim seems to have been battered into sort-of apologising and the 2nd edition of the book (1998) is even re-named. However, I don't think there's a big difference - he explains why he decided to re-title the book "The Politics of Partition" and update the story (Preface, p. xiii):

>But in all honesty I have to admit that my perspective on the collusion changed after the publication of "Collusion across the Jordan". My first take reflected the novelty of the archival sources and the shock of the discovery that what had been a popular conspiracy theory could actually be documented. ... My attitude towards King Abdullah underwent a significant change. ... In my approach to the Zionist leadership there was a similar shift from an emphasis on morality to an emphasis on realpolitik. ... For my part, I feel as much sympathy for the Palestinians today as I did when my book was first published in 1988. But I also feel that some modesty is called for when sitting in judgment on the other two principal protagonists in the struggle for Palestine."

Which, of course, sounds exactly the same as Goldstone "re-canting" over the Gaza Report, while not actually changing anything!

(In 1948 the agreement was made again, Golda Meir going to see Abdullah in March or so).

Okay, again, that shouldn't have anything to do with the conflict. At the very least, you could include the issue of Jerusalem and who gets to visit, but when you stack that up with all the other issues, it's really quite trivial.

Like I said before, the people who are most concerned about these sites are the surrounding Arab nations (if you want to get a better perspective on what is a Palestinian perspective versus Arab, you should read Arabs and Israelis--they tend to get mixed up a lot, and not by any mistake). In fact, Palestine, by every current definition from every single Palestinian representative group, does not have a religious distinction and in some cases, explicitly welcome Jews and Christians into Palestinian current and proposed society. A very important and respected faction in Palestinian society are the Christians--comprising nearly 10% of the Palestinian population.

Pick up this book: Palestine: A Guide by Mariam Shaheen and George Azar. It really is one of the best books and most importantly, easily accessible, on the history of Palestine and Palestinian culture. It goes through and gives you a history of the entire historic Palestine, including all the villages in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, as well as the Palestinian villages in today's Israel (Haifa, Nasra, etc...). It talks about the history of the food, music, clothing, architecture, agriculture, etc....

Seriously, this book is a must-have for everyone interested in books about Palestinian history.

> The books, the books... first off, name the books.

Since you ask....

• The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times - a reference for scholars, tons of research and first hand documentation.
  
• Jewish Property Claims Against Arab Countries - an analysis of the legal status of properties confiscated and repurposed by various countries and how they line up with international agreements, from Columbia University.
  
• Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands - maps, docs, etc around Muslim and Arab government cooperation during this time, as well as interviews with Muslims that provided shelter to local Jews at times.
  
• Jews of Arab Lands - another scholarly book full of resources, best used for research.
  
• Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco - written by a Muslim scholar, history of expulsion and interviews about how perception of Jews changed over generations.
  
  
  That's a start. Keep in mind, the people in these books make up a majority of Israeli Jews now. The books are not about European Jews.
  

> Your claim about the British politicians is a little bit of a speculation and you would need an historic source for that claim

https://www.amazon.com/Palestine-Reality-Inside-Balfour-Declaration/dp/1566560241/ref=pd_sim_14_2/141-8131783-7582942?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1566560241&pd_rd_r=ae18701f-72a8-11e9-bc3b-5ffc0e2db024&pd_rd_w=sxvNu&pd_rd_wg=QpiDN&pf_rd_p=90485860-83e9-4fd9-b838-b28a9b7fda30&pf_rd_r=S57NA26H3K4BRMAFTKJK&psc=1&refRID=S57NA26H3K4BRMAFTKJK

> the Brits did limit Jewish immigration into Palestine

The British set limits in the late 30s following the decimation of the indigenous Palestinian population when it tried to throw off the British occupation, but the limits that were set were never actually reached, so those limits had no effect on the amount of Zionist immigration to the Levant.

> The British did what they could to rule more efficiantly, and surly didn't do "everything they could" that a Jewish state would be founded

That's just false. Read the book:

https://www.amazon.com/Palestine-Reality-Inside-Balfour-Declaration/dp/1566560241/ref=pd_sim_14_2/141-8131783-7582942?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1566560241&pd_rd_r=ae18701f-72a8-11e9-bc3b-5ffc0e2db024&pd_rd_w=sxvNu&pd_rd_wg=QpiDN&pf_rd_p=90485860-83e9-4fd9-b838-b28a9b7fda30&pf_rd_r=S57NA26H3K4BRMAFTKJK&psc=1&refRID=S57NA26H3K4BRMAFTKJK

> Also I guess calling the "indigenous Jews" a small number doesn't really represent the truth well and makes it sound like there were dozens among a million.

They were less than 5% of the indigenous population of the Levant. Maybe not a 'small number' in absolute terms, but I was speaking in relation to the non-Jewish indigenous population (which was more than 95%).

I haven't read this yet, but from my understanding this is one of the best books on the topic:

Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness
by Rashid Khalidi (an Arab-American (Palestinian/Lebanese) professor at Columbia)

http://www.amazon.com/Palestinian-Identity-Construction-National-Consciousness/dp/B00DPOKOP4

It is offensive because it is a lie. Although easily disputed by anyone
who has actually studied the history of the area, this idea has been
repeated enough in the media that many people accept it as truth.
please see some reasons of why this is deliberately misleading

Most people have never truly studied the history of this region,
at most reading some modern hack looking to further his or her flawed
political ideology via "revisionist historical" accounts, or simply sell
books because they are controversial.

There is, however, plenty of historical accounts from the late 1800's and
on, an excellent primer on the subject is From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine by Joan Peters.
From there one can branch to many of the sources cited, and eventually
gain an unbiased, more comprehensive view of the complex history,
of an even more complex region.

Here you go, it’s a brilliant book
Palestine Collection https://www.amazon.com/dp/156097432X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_0DAiDbS5ZH8E6

The problem of Israel/Palestine is land, and encroachment of property rights. Jewish land ownership in 1947 amounted to, at most, 7% (6.03% in 1945). This is backed up by the JNF and PICA (Palestine Jewish Colonisation Association). This is also backed up by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (you can buy the full report here or you can view it page by page here. )

Palestinian Arab land ownership is stated as being 85% from the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (the people who made the Partition Plan), which states:

"164. The Arab population, despite the strenuous efforts of Jews to acquire land in Palestine, at present remains in possession of approximately 85 per cent of the land. The provisions of the land transfer regulations of 1940, which gave effect to the 1939 White Paper policy, have severely restricted the Jewish efforts to acquire new land."

So, on what basis do Jews have claim to land which is already possessed by Palestinians? Remember, it's the Jews demanding the land in 1945-1948. If they demand it, they need to come up with the proof. That’s what ‘possession is 9/10ths’ means.

A claim of ethnicity? By that logic, Germans were right in expelling Jews because if you're ethnic to a place, you're somehow more entitled to land? No. It doesn't work that way - that's ethno-nationalism. I'm sure fellow Jews would be staunchly against a concept like that.

A claim of previous ownership - 2000 years ago? Fair enough, but each Jew must have one deed or document, with the name of the ancestors who owned the land, as well as prove how much the ancestors actually owned (land has borders, surely - even by biblical standards, property rights amongst people was a thing ), and proof that that the particular Jewish person is actually directly related to that ancestor. Would you accept anything less in a court of law if some random person came and claimed your house? No? So why should Palestinians?

That's why Zionists from 1880 and onwards were buying land - their claim isn't strong enough - and that is why they used the method of buying land as a means of colonisation. The problem arises when they see that Palestinians will not sell more/when they couldn’t appropriate more land based on Ottoman laws - and ask people who were not the owners of the country to give the country away (UN / Britain / Ottomans / etc.).

Israel was born out of colonialism, which is still going on today - in Area A.

This doesn't happen to be this book does it? http://www.amazon.com/Ramallah-its-history-genealogies/dp/B0007AWS94


Cuz if so...we're cousins. :)

Professor Chomsky's views of the Palestinian situation are no secret after all of these years of his interviews and writings, and therefore that he would say this ought to bring no surprise. However, here are sources:

After his visit in 2012:

http://antiwar.com/blog/2012/11/18/it-is-not-a-war-it-is-murder/

"Impressions of Gaza" by Noam Chomsky Nov. 4, 2012:
http://chomsky.info/articles/20121104.htm

Another source:

http://israelandpalestine.org/chomsky-on-israels-war-on-gaza-it-is-not-a-war-it-is-murder/


I believe we are all intelligent enough to infer what Professor Chomsky is talking about here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV3YnZnL99M

Does anyone have this book? The direct quote is most likely here: http://www.amazon.com/Gaza-Crisis-Reflections-Israels-Palestinians/dp/B0078XQB6Y

Dude... there's a vast history of Jewish philosophy, scholarship, & disputation, you just don't know it yet. Here, I'll help you get started:
http://www.amazon.com/I-Thou-Martin-Buber/dp/1578989973

A book I recommend is Army of Shadows by Hillel Cohen. He researched the Haganah archive in the 1930s and 1940s. It will shock you how the current situation in the Palestinian national movement resembles that of that period, especially the 1940s.

Eventually the offered deal will be something between Haifa/Nazareth (total surrender) or Jaffa: Live like dogs or GTFO. In between, the major part of the Palestinian hinterland will be just swept away without even having done anything or taken any side.


https://www.amazon.com/Army-Shadows-Hillel-Cohen/dp/0520259890

I would read Karen Armstrong's Holy War to get a sense of the rich history of Jewish-Arab coexistence and the wide context of Western aggression against the Arab world.

The main problem with the PLO were they were bourgeois, so much so that they lived in different worlds materially and philosophically and had left Palestine, and so had problems a) maintaining credibility with the people back home b) essentially sold out to the colonial power, recognizing its legitimacy when it has none. Fast forward to 2017 and the PA basically acts as Israel's proxy force, literally traitors. I could go on, but there are lots of books about the history of Palestine. I recommend this one.

The author of the review of 1948 is Avi Shlaim, who is an Iraq-born Israeli who has spent his academic career in the UK.

You might also find his 1999 book The Politics of Partition: King Abdullah, the Zionists, and Palestine 1921-1951 interesting. It looks at the role Jordan played in the birth of Israel and the isolation of the Palestinians.

This one is ok if you already know some Arabic.

If you want you could try to find the Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature. It is almost 800 pages of poetry and short stories by Palestinian authors. It is all translated into English.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0850458005