The Hundred Years' War on Palestine

Excellent book has a lot of information

This isn’t just a history book—it’s a wake-up call. It challenges dominant narratives and presents the Palestinian struggle not as a conflict between equals, but as a sustained campaign of dispossession against a people who have been denied their voice for far too long. Anyone who cares about justice, truth, and the power of historical memory should read this.

This book turned out to be very well balanced. It critiques the UK, USA, Israel, Arab nations and Palestinians. It does a good job of laying out an unvarnished history of the whole conflict. How it starts with the UK using Jewish people to control the population of the middle east. How the USA (and its religious right), over some 70-80 years, gives its (1) blind (2) unlimited and (3) unconditional support to Israel. How Israel, despite being established by a UN decision, has violated international law and UN resolutions in its continuing efforts to for the Palestinians out of their land. How the underdog is blamed, cornered and squashed, every time they try to rebel against Israel.

The book is a good source of information, giving a timeline of the last hundred years. It’s obviously from a different perspective, and a strongly partisan and sanctimonious one at that. But it’s a good thing to hear the Palestinian perspective, even if Khalidi can be in an insufferable perpetual victim mode. As such, he ducks or superficially addresses some of the most serious issues that are the Palestinians own problem.The first is the shocking violence they have committed, with a level of cruelty that is incomprehensible to many Westerners. Deliberately targeting and trying to inflict as much bloodshed on innocent civilians, including elderly, women, and children. ‘Deliberate’ the operative word there. He talks about this savagery in the abstract, but his only apparent problem with it is that is can be a PR setback. And, of course, even his scant mentioning of it is always preceded with a denunciation of Israeli use of force, as if it’s only a reaction to the Israeli violence, and as if that justifies it. While the disproportionate use of force by Israel is a legitimate issue, the moral equivalence argument falls short because Khalidi only seems to be troubled by one side of it. He just can’t face that there is a very real depraved cruelty, and it’s not just a false image propagated by Israeli propaganda with their influence on the US media. It’s real, its wrong, it has a hugely negative effect on sympathy for Palestinians, and it’s a Palestinian problem.The other issue he ducks, and scarcely mentions, is Islam. And how it affects the entire issue. His book reads as if everyone is non-religious. In reality, the Palestinian issue is a huge for Muslims, including the radical element, who have made it their rallying cry. Whether he likes it or not, Palestine is given as a reason for almost every genuine Islamic terror attack, and it is reflexively given as an excuse afterward. And this includes 9/11, which, incredibly, Khalidi doesn’t even mention in the book. Khalidi has no problem being judgmental throughout the book, but he hides under the table when it comes to how Palestine is a raison de guerre and a rationalization for real, and savage, Islamic terror worldwide.On the bright side, he gives a good account of the United States’ role in the negotiations. It was interesting to read that James Baker and George Mitchell had a more balanced view in the conflict, but they were overrun or outmaneuvered by the hardline pro Zionists, like Dennis Ross. The United States position became so one sided that they may as well have just sat on the Israel side of the table. Something that is evident to anyone paying attention on the matter.So read the book to get a lot of historical information and to get a different perspective, even if the perspective, while interesting, includes denial.

I've recently read a number of books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, most of them by Jewish historians, and providing good overall accounts of the history. But the most informative book I found on the conflict was written by a Palestinian-American historian, Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017. It was written before the current war, but is able to shed considerable light on it. The author's family was living in Palestine in the 1800 when it all began, included many prominent officials. and kept a detailed family archive, to which the author had full access. The result is a rich history and a relatively balanced one. There is criticism of the PA, the PLO and Hamas, though the author was unaware of Israel's financing of Hamas, as well as of Israel. It's well-written and a highly recommended read.

Excellent fact-based history

Excellent read, very informative about such a sad situation.

Very informative and well written. This is a must read.