An Israel-Palestine Reading List
As I mentioned in both episodes published last week, my friend Noam Dworman recently paid me a visit here in Providence, and he came bearing gifts: a bag full of books on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Some of you have asked for the titles, so below you’ll find Noam’s reading list. It’s by no means comprehensive (no one could read everything on the topic), but neither is it one-sided. I’ll be working my way through these books in the coming months—I invite you to read along with me and, if you feel so moved, to share your thoughts on what you’re learning. And if you’ve got recommendations of your own, drop them in the comments below.
If you want another good read, my memoir is available for preorder here or wherever you get your books.
Note: Book descriptions are from publishers’ websites.
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Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (2003)
“First published in 1995, this acclaimed study challenges generally accepted truths of the Israel-Palestine conflict as well as much of the revisionist literature. This new edition critically reexamines dominant popular and scholarly images in the light of the current failures of the peace process.”
Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (2020)
“Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process.”
Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (2008)
“This history of the foundational war in the Arab-Israeli conflict is groundbreaking, objective, and deeply revisionist. A riveting account of the military engagements, it also focuses on the war’s political dimensions. Benny Morris probes the motives and aims of the protagonists on the basis of newly opened Israeli and Western documentation. The Arab side—where the archives are still closed—is illuminated with the help of intelligence and diplomatic materials.”
Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 (2001)
“Tracing the roots of political Zionism back to the pogroms of Russia and the Dreyfus Affair, Morris describes the gradual influx of Jewish settlers into Palestine and the impact they had on the Arab population. Following the Holocaust, the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948 resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel, but it also shattered Palestinian Arab society and gave rise to a massive refugee problem. Morris offers distinctive accounts of each of the subsequent Israeli-Arab wars and details the sporadic peace efforts in between, culminating in the peace process initiated by the Rabin Government.”
Benny Morris, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict (2009)
“The book scrutinizes the history of the goals of the Palestinian national movement and the Zionist movement, then considers the various one- and two-state proposals made by different streams within the two movements. It also looks at the willingness or unwillingness of each movement to find an accommodation based on compromise. Morris assesses the viability and practicality of proposed solutions in the light of complicated and acrimonious realities. Throughout his groundbreaking career, Morris has reshaped understanding of the Israeli-Arab conflict. Here, once again, he arrives at a new way of thinking about the discord, injecting a ray of hope in a region where it is most sorely needed.”
Michael Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (2002)
“Drawing on thousands of top-secret documents, on rare papers in Russian and Arabic, and on exclusive personal interviews, Six Days of War recreates the regional and international context which, by the late 1960s, virtually assured an Arab-Israeli conflagration. Also examined are the domestic crises in each of the battling states, and the extraordinary personalities—Moshe Dayan and Gamal Abdul Nasser, Hafez al-Assad and Yitzhak Rabin, Lyndon Johnson and Alexei Kosygin--that precipitated this earthshaking clash.”
Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2014)
“What was promulgated as an ‘iron-wall’ strategy―building a position of unassailable strength― was meant to yield to a further stage where Israel would be strong enough to negotiate a satisfactory peace with its neighbors. The goal still remains elusive, if not even further away. This penetrating study brilliantly illuminates past progress and future prospects for peace in the Middle East.”
This comment was sent in via email from David Josephson. It's shared with his permission.
Glenn,
Allow me to respond to Noam Dworman's Israel-Palestine reading list.
Every Jew - I can't speak for Palestinians - who cares profoundly about the one Jewish state on this planet no doubt has his own reading list. As you note, no one's list can be comprehensive; and one might argue, as you do, that Dworman's is not one-sided. On the other hand, one might argue that it is at least a tilted list, at best a curate's egg.
Here, for what it's worth, is my take, after a lifetime of reading about the subject. First: the five books by Jewish Israelis, one by a Jewish American, and one by an Arab American on Dworman's list do not constitute balance. Where is an Arab who lives in Palestine, not in tenured comfort on Morningside Heights? He is easily found, and he is brilliant: Sari Nusseibeh, like Rashid Khalidi the scion of a distinguished Palestinian family though unlike him a lifelong resident of Palestine. His Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life and What Is a Palestinian State Worth? are essential reading. Their absence baffles.
Second is the question of political balance in Dworman's list: Benny Morris and Avi Shlaim (a self-described Arab Jew) are superb Israeli historians who have tried to achieve disinterested narratives even as their positions evolved, and in different directions. Michael Oren is a historian, diplomat, politician, and a leading liberal voice of the Israeli Establishment. Khalidi is an outstanding Arab-American historian who has produced an advocate's reading of the conflict. His coruscating anger is palpable; rather than mapping a complex field, he makes a partisan case. A balanced list would offer a counter-narrative, perhaps Robert Spencer's The Palestinian Delusion.
The presence of Norman Finkelstein's outlier diatribe is utterly baffling. It belongs on no serious list of the history of the conflict. Since Dworman insisted on including it, though, he at least ought to have balanced it with the diatribe that aroused Finkelstein's fury, Allan Dershowitz's The Case of Israel. Better yet, he ought to have ignored it altogether and suggested instead some serious contributions: Ari Shavit's My Promised Land; Gershom Gorenberg's The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977; Baruch Kimmerling's and Joel Migdal's The Palestinian People; and Sari Nusseibeh's marvelous books noted above.
And one more: Tom Segev's One Palestine, Complete, a fine counterpart by a Jewish Israeli to Nusseibeh's Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life.
David
I usually value your moderation and willingness to see both sides of an issue. But with all due respect, I have studied both Hebrew and Arabic and have deep knowledge of ME history and geopolitics. This list is overwhelmingly far-left politically. To put it in terms more familiar to Americans, this would be like reading Marxists and CRT theorists … completely ignoring the Chicago School … and then believing you had a balanced view of US economics. If you want some Israeli centrist or center-right perspectives then I’d recommend contacting Dan Senor and Einat Wilf for reading recommendations. Or better yet, have them on your show!