The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine 
By Ilan Pappe

Renowned Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe’s groundbreaking book revisits the formation of the State of Israel. Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called “ethnic cleansing”. Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the current crisis in the Middle East. (Amazon)

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine
Rashid Khalidi

A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history. In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.” Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective.

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.

Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day. (Amazon)

The Way to Spring—Life and Death in Palestine
Ben Ehrenreich

From an award-winning journalist, a brave and necessary immersion into the everyday struggles of Palestinian life.

Over the past three years, American writer Ben Ehrenreich has been traveling to and living in the West Bank, staying with Palestinian families in its largest cities and its smallest villages. Along the way he has written major stories for American outlets, including a remarkable New York Times Magazine cover story. Now comes the powerful new work that has always been his ultimate goal, The Way to the Spring.

We are familiar with brave journalists who travel to bleak or war-torn places on a mission to listen and understand, to gather the stories of people suffering from extremes of oppression and want: Katherine Boo, Ryszard Kapuściński, Ted Conover, and Philip Gourevitch among them. Palestine is, by any measure, whatever one’s politics, one such place. Ruled by the Israeli military, set upon and harassed constantly by Israeli settlers who admit unapologetically to wanting to drive them from the land, forced to negotiate an ever more elaborate and more suffocating series of fences, checkpoints, and barriers that have sundered home from field, home from home, this is a population whose living conditions are unique, and indeed hard to imagine.

In a great act of bravery, empathy and understanding, Ben Ehrenreich, by placing us in the footsteps of ordinary Palestinians and telling their story with surpassing literary power and grace, makes it impossible for us to turn away. (Amazon) 

Tasting the Sky

By Ibtisam Barakat
(RR Donnelley & Sons Company, 2007)
172 pgs.

Tasting the Sky is Ibtisam Barakat’s memoir of her experiences as a child forced into exile in Jordan by Israel’s 1967 war against Jordan, Egypt, Syria and the people of Palestine. Ibtisam is only three years old when the war starts; her childhood is defined by her family’s efforts to find safety in Jordan and then back in Ramallah.

The book is a compelling story that will engage students. The first chapter, however, starts in 1981, when an adult Ibtisam is stopped at a checkpoint between Ramallah and Birzeit. This can be confusing to young readers; we suggest starting with the second chapter of the book. Tasting the Sky is an accessible entry point to an often neglected section of Palestinian history.

Unlike the rest of the book, the “Historical Note” that introduces the book leans toward equating the responsibility for resolving the “conflict,” as if Palestinians and Israelis have played equivalent roles in creating the current situation. This creates an opportunity for encouraging critical thinking among students. After reading Tasting the Sky, what do they think justice looks like?

Grade Level: High school and above