Gaza: an essential and urgent reading list as an antidote to fake news

Israel’s disproportionate response to Hamas’s October 7 attack has been widely condemned as violating international humanitarian law.

So far, no international pressure has been able to stop Israel’s war crimes and the killing of over seven thousand innocent civilians in Gaza most of whom were women and children, as well as over a hundred in the occupied West Bank.

Internet and mobile networks have been cut off in Gaza. The United Nations and many countries such as Türkiye, Spain, Ireland, Russia and China have called for an immediate ceasefire, and Oxfam has stated that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war. António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, stated a historical fact, that Hamas’ attack “did not happen in a vacuum.”

Even though Guterres emphasised that this does not condone Hamas’s attack, Israel’s response has been swift, and clear. Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilan Erdan, has called for Guterres’ resignation and cancelled travel visas for UN Officials in order to teach the UN a ‘lesson’.

What lesson might this be? That speaking the truth, based on a historical fact, is a crime and must be punished? What era are we living in? In the age of information or George Orwell’s 1984?

But most importantly, what does this tell us about what is really going on?

What has become clear is our naïve expectation that the internet would provide a neutral platform as a source of information. Censorship, fake news, and bias are reigning supreme over the facts of what happened – and is happening – in Gaza.

As an antidote to the proliferation of powerful self-serving agendas circulating in the media and online, I have put together a list of books to help understand what is happening in Gaza, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Israel.

For many years, I worked at Al Saqi Books, a Middle Eastern specialist bookshop, and developed a strong grasp of the literature in the field. Together with my academic training in history, literature, colonial and postcolonial studies, I believe that it is more urgent than ever that we arm ourselves with the most powerful weapon available to us – knowledge.

I have arranged this list of books thematically in order to introduce key ideas.

Language and how we understand Palestine and Israel: (settler) colonialism, ethnic cleansing and apartheid

For decades, terms such as ‘Arab-Israeli conflict’ were used, which set the tone for how the situation was understood. Declassification of documents and subsequent historical work has challenged dominant narratives:

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance, Rashid Khalidi, 2020

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappe, 2007

Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide, Ben White, 2014

Ideological drives: Political Zionism, Christian Zionism and Jewish Fundamentalism

Political Zionism, which emerged in the late nineteenth century, was committed to establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

For a highly readable introduction to the political contexts of the British Empire, the Second World War, Zionism and Palestine, see:

Legacy of Empire: Britain, Zionism and the Creation of Israel, Gardner Thompson, 2019

See also my chapter about inter-war Britain and Europe. It discusses political concerns of the time, and the ultimate failure of the League of Nations and its successor the United Nations to prevent the catastrophes of the Second World War because key nations flouted the law. These issues had a direct bearing on attitudes towards a Jewish homeland in Palestine:

“The Dark Continent: minorities, race, and the law in Europe,” in The Politics of Integration: Law, Race and Literature in Post-war Britain and France, Chloe Gill-Khan, 2018, pp. 36-66.

Is it important to differentiate political Zionism from how certain religious Jews viewed Palestine as a sacred place for pilgrimage, and not as a potential state for Jews. Many Ultra-Orthodox Jews are anti-Zionist.

Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People, David M. Crump, 2021

Crump’s breathtakingly honest book details his rejection of the Christian Zionist milieu he grew up in. He explores how Christian Zionist beliefs that Palestine is a biblical promise to Jews turn a blind eye to Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians, pouring wealth into sustaining Israel’s power:

‘The largest, most powerful pro-Israel lobbying block in the United States is the evangelical church (Crump, 2021: 38).

See also:

Christian Zionism: Road-Map to Armageddon?, Stephen Sizer, 2021

And:

The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland, Donald M. Lewis, 2014

Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel: Second Edition, Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, 2004

This classic book examines the history and development of Jewish religious fundamentalism and extremism and its destructive control over Israeli politics.

The Israeli and Jewish opposition to Zionism

The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist: A Personal and Political Journey, Antony Lerman, 2012

Wrestling with Zionism: Jewish Voices of Dissent, Daphna Levit, 2020

The Myths of Liberal Zionism, Yitzhak Laor, 2017

Historic and post-1948 Palestine and Palestinian lives

Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History, Nur Masalha, 2022

On Palestine, Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe, 2015

A History of Modern Palestine, Ilan Pappe, 2022

The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories, Ilan Pappe, 2017

Gaza: An Inquest into its Martyrdom, Norman Finkelstein, 2021

Gaza in Crisis: Reflections of Israel’s War Against the Palestinians, Ilan Pappe and Noam Chomsky, 2011

The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel, Ilan Pappe, 2013

Law

Justice For Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, Noura Erakat, 2019

A History of False Hope: Investigative Commissions in Palestine, Lori Allen, 2020

Linguistic acrobatics: anti-Semitism

Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, Norman G. Finkelstein, 2008

‘Jewish settlers stole my house. It’s not my fault they’re Jewish’, Mohammed El-Kurd, 2023 (essay)

The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Norman G Finkelstein, 2015

Literature, Culture and Art

There is a wealth of Palestinian literature. The following are select suggestions:

The Butterfly’s Burden, Mahmoud Darwish, 2007

Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape, Raja Shehadeh, 2008

I Was Born There, I Was Born Here, Mourid Barghouti, 2012

Mornings in Jenin, Susan Abulhawa, 2010

Nabil Anani: Palestine, Land and People, Anani, 2018 (beautiful artworks of Anani).