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What Does Israel Fear From Palestine?
A poignant, incisive meditation on Israel’s longstanding rejection of peace, and what the war on Gaza means for Palestinian and Israeli futures.
When apartheid in South Africa ended in 1994, dismantled by internal activism and global pressure, why did Israel continue to pursue its own apartheid policies against Palestinians? In keeping with a history of antagonism, the Israeli state accelerated the establishment of settlements in the Occupied Territories as extreme right-wing voices gained prominence in government, with comparatively little international backlash.
Condensing this complex history into a lucid essay, Raja Shehadeh examines the many lost opportunities to promote a lasting peace and equality between Israelis and Palestinians. Since the creation of Israel in 1948, known to Palestinians as the Nakba, or catastrophe, each side’s perception of events has strongly diverged. What can this discrepancy tell us about Israel’s undermining of a two-state solution? And will the current genocide in Gaza finally mark a shift in the world’s response?
With graceful, haunting prose, Shehadeh offers insights into a defining conflict that could yet be resolved.
When apartheid in South Africa ended in 1994, dismantled by internal activism and global pressure, why did Israel continue to pursue its own apartheid policies against Palestinians? In keeping with a history of antagonism, the Israeli state accelerated the establishment of settlements in the Occupied Territories as extreme right-wing voices gained prominence in government, with comparatively little international backlash.
Condensing this complex history into a lucid essay, Raja Shehadeh examines the many lost opportunities to promote a lasting peace and equality between Israelis and Palestinians. Since the creation of Israel in 1948, known to Palestinians as the Nakba, or catastrophe, each side’s perception of events has strongly diverged. What can this discrepancy tell us about Israel’s undermining of a two-state solution? And will the current genocide in Gaza finally mark a shift in the world’s response?
With graceful, haunting prose, Shehadeh offers insights into a defining conflict that could yet be resolved.
125 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 6, 2024
272 people are currently reading
5283 people want to read
About the author
Raja Shehadeh
46 books341 followersRaja Shehadeh (Arabic: رجا شحادة) is a Palestinian lawyer, human rights activist and writer. He is the author of Strangers in the House (2002), described by The Economist as “distinctive and truly impressive”, When the Bulbul Stopped Singing (2003), Palestinian Walks (2007), for which he won the 2008 Orwell Prize, and A Rift in Time (2010). Shehadeh trained as a barrister in London and is a founder of the human rights organization Al-Haq. He blogs regularly for the International Herald Tribune/The New York Times and lives in Ramallah, on the West Bank.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 495 reviews
October 12, 2024
a brief and necessary summation of the events of and leadup to October 7th, 2023. may israel fall in our lifetime ! one star knocked off for being pro 2 state solution seemingly
July 22, 2024
Informative. Educational. Inquisitive. Reading material about the devestating events in the Middle East can only bring us closer to understanding what is happening and how peace can be achieved.
Raja Shehadeh is a brilliant writer, whom I have followed since 2017. His writings are sensitive, logical, and inquisitive. He writes from experience, and one thing we must always be aware of is negating someone's experience even if it sits at odds with what we think.
Raja Shehadeh is a brilliant writer, whom I have followed since 2017. His writings are sensitive, logical, and inquisitive. He writes from experience, and one thing we must always be aware of is negating someone's experience even if it sits at odds with what we think.
April 29, 2025
"Niezmiernie wysokie koszty ludzkie i materialne wojny w Gazie dowodzą, że tym, czego boi się Izrael ze strony Palestyny, jest samo jej istnienie."
April 22, 2025
This is an odd book. On its final page, Shehadeh writes: “the only future is for the two peoples to live together.” This is a respectable closing message. However, you would NEVER guess that was going to be his conclusion from the previous 107 pages. He talks the talk of peaceful coexistence, but he cannot walk the walk. To achieve peace, it is not enough for each side to accept the others existence, to begrudgingly acknowledge that our apartment has a second tenant that we simply cannot get rid of. Israelis and Palestinians each need to appreciate that both peoples have legitimate historical claims to the land, and both peoples have the right to live in peace and dignity in the present day. At this second hurdle, a challenge of basic empathy, Shehadeh fails spectacularly. He lacks the insight (or perhaps the imagination) to break with a single tenet of a rigidly narrow Palestinian nationalist view that is extreme to the point of bordering on racist- to tack a vague platitude of peaceful coexistence onto the end of such a narrative is almost offensive. This wouldn't be an unforgivable problem if he simply acknowledged that he was presenting a perspective and acknowledged the legitimacy of other viewpoints, but he writes with the cloyingly smug tone of someone who thinks that their subjective views represent absolute reality. Shehadeh cannot accept that the Jewish claim has a single shred of legitimacy, that the Palestinians have ever committed a single atrocity, or that Palestinian leaders have played their own role in preventing peace. More than anything, this book left me disappointed and a little hopeless. Though Shehadeh's take is marginally better than those of other, more radical voices I have encountered, it seems that even “Palestine’s leading writer” is ultimately still too narrow-minded in myopic nationalist dogma to recognize the conflict’s nuances. The road to peace is long indeed.
I will begin with perhaps the most problematic example of this, which is demonstrative of the bigger issue with Shehadeh’s narrative. Shehadeh mocks how Israelis view the 1948 War as Israel’s 'War of Independence', as “by doing so the country is suggesting it gained independence from the British. But it was the British who, in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, […] promised the land […] to the Jews” (p6). This smug attempt at a ‘gotcha’ conveniently ignores the fact that Britain abandoned the Balfour Declaration in 1939: under Arab pressure, the Mandatory Government banned Jewish immigration. By this point, the Jewish Yishuv (community in Palestine) was the last place European Jews could flee to from the rising tide of Nazi Germany. In this respect, it could certainly be argued that the British Mandatory Government was, in a small but significant respect, complicit in the Holocaust. Indeed, the Palestinian Arabs themselves were quite supportive of the Axis Powers: their de-facto leader, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, personally visited Nazi Germany and chillingly expressed his support for Germany’s “definitive solution to the Jewish danger.” Britain subsequently strongly favoured the Arab side of the developing Arab-Jewish struggle and abstained from supporting the UN Partition Plan for the region. Meanwhile, Jewish militias became increasingly committed an armed struggle for independence from British rule. In view of this, fuller historical account, Israel clearly does have at least some legitimacy in viewing its independence from Britain as a triumph, and Shehadeh’s suggestion that the modern Israeli State is some kind of British Imperial creation is laughably incorrect. It is painfully ironic that Shehadeh wants Israelis to hear the “Palestinian story” and recognize their nation’s sin of the 1948 Nakba, whilst he whitewashes his own nation’s history at the very same time. Shehadeh wishes to hide from scary, complicated historical questions by painting an easy, simplistic picture of wicked, colonising Jews and innocent, oppressed Arabs—the truth is highly inconvenient to such a narrative.
There is a greater problem with Shehadeh’s presentation of Israel that runs deeper than the smudging of individual historical details: he fundamentally refuses to accept that the Jewish claim to the land holds even the slightest degree of historical legitimacy, dismissing Zionism as a movement of religious fanaticism. He asserts that the Israeli claim is rooted in the idea that the land was “promised to them by the Almighty” (p7) and that the only proof they can offer of this is “the Bible” (p13.) This is absurdly ignorant: the Jews are an ethnic and national group as well as a religious one, and the Zionist movement was, from its inception, secular (indeed, it often cast itself in explicit opposition to the backward-looking attitudes of the religiously devout.) Zionism asserted, then, that the Jews out to return to their indigenous homeland as the site of their renewal as a modern nation-state. This was rooted in the fact (for it is indisputable historical fact confirmed by archaeological and textual evidence, Bible or no Bible) that the Jews are the original inhabitants of the land which they have always called ‘Israel’ and were its dominant population from 1200 BCE to 132 CE (and were only driven out by the forces of Imperialism, namely the Roman Empire.) None of this is derived from fanatical religious beliefs in divine promises—Religious Zionism does exist, but it was never the mainstream of the movement. Indeed, there are occasional suggestions that Shehadeh doesn’t recognize the Jewish people’s status as an ethnic / national group at all, for example he at one point refers to “members of the Jewish faith” (p23), a bizarre stylistic choice given the option of the far simpler “Jews.” Such erasure of a portion of a people’s identity is nothing short of racist. It is strange that Shehadeh doesn’t acknowledge these facts—unlike in the previous case, none of this necessarily reflects badly on Palestine. The fact that the Jewish claim to the land holds at least some historical legitimacy does not have to erase the historical legitimacy of the Palestinian claim (the region’s population was majority-Arab from at least the time of the Crusades to 1948, and they certainly have a right to the land too.) This is a failure of both empathy and maturity—Shehadeh seems unable to escape the childish, zero-sum mentality that even the smallest concession to the legitimacy of Israel must bode ill for Palestine. This sort of thinking (on both sides) is one of the biggest mental barriers to peace. It’s disappointing that even “Palestine’s leading writer” is not above it.
The most glaring absence from Shehadeh’s account of the conflict’s history is the Israeli-Palestinian peace process of the late 1990s and early 2000s. This is a truly staggering elision. We came within a hair’s breadth of a permanent peace deal and two-state solution in 2000 and 2001—it is by far the most vital and instructive moment of the conflict’s history for anyone who truly wants to understand how we could achieve peace in the future. But given the cherry-picked narrative Shehadeh is pushing here, it isn’t surprising. Shehadeh claims that “the Israeli government has rejected every opportunity for reconciliation” (blurb): it does not suit this narrative to mention that, in 2000, Israel’s Ehud Barak willingly sat down with Palestine’s Yasser Arafat at the negotiating table of peace, and Barak offered him the most generous peace terms ever received by a Palestinian leader. It doubly doesn’t suit the narrative to acknowledge that it was primarily Arafat’s nationalist intransigence, not any sin of Barak or Israel, that scuttled the peace process. And it triply doesn’t suit the narrative to acknowledge that this Palestinian extremism played a major role in damaging Israel’s pro-peace movement and cultivating the rise of the Far-Right, the brutal consequences of which both Palestinians and Israelis are now suffering. Shehadeh is almost comically unwilling accept the fact that the entire conflict cannot be blamed on Israel, that both Israeli and Palestinian societies contain extremist elements that feed off each other and perpetuate a cycle of violence. Shehadeh claims to know ‘what Israel fears from Palestine.’ I will tell him what Palestine fears from Israel: the truth. The messy, complicated truth.
I don’t think this book is entirely bunk. Shehadeh does, briefly but significantly, express some admiration for the Israeli Pro-Peace movement - more than can be said of more extremist Pro-Palestinian voices. Additionally, many of Shehadeh’s criticisms of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and Netanyahu’s current brutal war on Gaza, are valid and even insightful. But he frames these not as criticisms of the Israeli right or the current Netanyahu government, but as criticisms of Israel itself. It is oxymoronic to engage in such distorted criticism one moment, and then purport to believe in peaceful coexistence in the other.
Narrow-minded extremism is the foundational fuel of this conflict, and, though I'm sure Shehadeh's calls for peace are genuine, in its substance this book far does more to promote it than rennounce it. These sorts of narratives will not save the children of Gaza. These sorts of narratives will not free Palestine.
I will begin with perhaps the most problematic example of this, which is demonstrative of the bigger issue with Shehadeh’s narrative. Shehadeh mocks how Israelis view the 1948 War as Israel’s 'War of Independence', as “by doing so the country is suggesting it gained independence from the British. But it was the British who, in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, […] promised the land […] to the Jews” (p6). This smug attempt at a ‘gotcha’ conveniently ignores the fact that Britain abandoned the Balfour Declaration in 1939: under Arab pressure, the Mandatory Government banned Jewish immigration. By this point, the Jewish Yishuv (community in Palestine) was the last place European Jews could flee to from the rising tide of Nazi Germany. In this respect, it could certainly be argued that the British Mandatory Government was, in a small but significant respect, complicit in the Holocaust. Indeed, the Palestinian Arabs themselves were quite supportive of the Axis Powers: their de-facto leader, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, personally visited Nazi Germany and chillingly expressed his support for Germany’s “definitive solution to the Jewish danger.” Britain subsequently strongly favoured the Arab side of the developing Arab-Jewish struggle and abstained from supporting the UN Partition Plan for the region. Meanwhile, Jewish militias became increasingly committed an armed struggle for independence from British rule. In view of this, fuller historical account, Israel clearly does have at least some legitimacy in viewing its independence from Britain as a triumph, and Shehadeh’s suggestion that the modern Israeli State is some kind of British Imperial creation is laughably incorrect. It is painfully ironic that Shehadeh wants Israelis to hear the “Palestinian story” and recognize their nation’s sin of the 1948 Nakba, whilst he whitewashes his own nation’s history at the very same time. Shehadeh wishes to hide from scary, complicated historical questions by painting an easy, simplistic picture of wicked, colonising Jews and innocent, oppressed Arabs—the truth is highly inconvenient to such a narrative.
There is a greater problem with Shehadeh’s presentation of Israel that runs deeper than the smudging of individual historical details: he fundamentally refuses to accept that the Jewish claim to the land holds even the slightest degree of historical legitimacy, dismissing Zionism as a movement of religious fanaticism. He asserts that the Israeli claim is rooted in the idea that the land was “promised to them by the Almighty” (p7) and that the only proof they can offer of this is “the Bible” (p13.) This is absurdly ignorant: the Jews are an ethnic and national group as well as a religious one, and the Zionist movement was, from its inception, secular (indeed, it often cast itself in explicit opposition to the backward-looking attitudes of the religiously devout.) Zionism asserted, then, that the Jews out to return to their indigenous homeland as the site of their renewal as a modern nation-state. This was rooted in the fact (for it is indisputable historical fact confirmed by archaeological and textual evidence, Bible or no Bible) that the Jews are the original inhabitants of the land which they have always called ‘Israel’ and were its dominant population from 1200 BCE to 132 CE (and were only driven out by the forces of Imperialism, namely the Roman Empire.) None of this is derived from fanatical religious beliefs in divine promises—Religious Zionism does exist, but it was never the mainstream of the movement. Indeed, there are occasional suggestions that Shehadeh doesn’t recognize the Jewish people’s status as an ethnic / national group at all, for example he at one point refers to “members of the Jewish faith” (p23), a bizarre stylistic choice given the option of the far simpler “Jews.” Such erasure of a portion of a people’s identity is nothing short of racist. It is strange that Shehadeh doesn’t acknowledge these facts—unlike in the previous case, none of this necessarily reflects badly on Palestine. The fact that the Jewish claim to the land holds at least some historical legitimacy does not have to erase the historical legitimacy of the Palestinian claim (the region’s population was majority-Arab from at least the time of the Crusades to 1948, and they certainly have a right to the land too.) This is a failure of both empathy and maturity—Shehadeh seems unable to escape the childish, zero-sum mentality that even the smallest concession to the legitimacy of Israel must bode ill for Palestine. This sort of thinking (on both sides) is one of the biggest mental barriers to peace. It’s disappointing that even “Palestine’s leading writer” is not above it.
The most glaring absence from Shehadeh’s account of the conflict’s history is the Israeli-Palestinian peace process of the late 1990s and early 2000s. This is a truly staggering elision. We came within a hair’s breadth of a permanent peace deal and two-state solution in 2000 and 2001—it is by far the most vital and instructive moment of the conflict’s history for anyone who truly wants to understand how we could achieve peace in the future. But given the cherry-picked narrative Shehadeh is pushing here, it isn’t surprising. Shehadeh claims that “the Israeli government has rejected every opportunity for reconciliation” (blurb): it does not suit this narrative to mention that, in 2000, Israel’s Ehud Barak willingly sat down with Palestine’s Yasser Arafat at the negotiating table of peace, and Barak offered him the most generous peace terms ever received by a Palestinian leader. It doubly doesn’t suit the narrative to acknowledge that it was primarily Arafat’s nationalist intransigence, not any sin of Barak or Israel, that scuttled the peace process. And it triply doesn’t suit the narrative to acknowledge that this Palestinian extremism played a major role in damaging Israel’s pro-peace movement and cultivating the rise of the Far-Right, the brutal consequences of which both Palestinians and Israelis are now suffering. Shehadeh is almost comically unwilling accept the fact that the entire conflict cannot be blamed on Israel, that both Israeli and Palestinian societies contain extremist elements that feed off each other and perpetuate a cycle of violence. Shehadeh claims to know ‘what Israel fears from Palestine.’ I will tell him what Palestine fears from Israel: the truth. The messy, complicated truth.
I don’t think this book is entirely bunk. Shehadeh does, briefly but significantly, express some admiration for the Israeli Pro-Peace movement - more than can be said of more extremist Pro-Palestinian voices. Additionally, many of Shehadeh’s criticisms of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and Netanyahu’s current brutal war on Gaza, are valid and even insightful. But he frames these not as criticisms of the Israeli right or the current Netanyahu government, but as criticisms of Israel itself. It is oxymoronic to engage in such distorted criticism one moment, and then purport to believe in peaceful coexistence in the other.
Narrow-minded extremism is the foundational fuel of this conflict, and, though I'm sure Shehadeh's calls for peace are genuine, in its substance this book far does more to promote it than rennounce it. These sorts of narratives will not save the children of Gaza. These sorts of narratives will not free Palestine.
July 4, 2024
Bardzo zgrabny i potrzebny dziś esej znakomitego p.skiego pisarza, dziennikarza, aktywisty i prawnika. Shehadeh rzeczowo wyjaśnia historię relacji dwóch narodów, tłumaczy czym w tym kontekście jest okupacja, pokazuje na czym polega i.ski apartheid i jak ten kraj wytrwale realizuje swoją długoterminową politykę pozbycia się sąsiadów, tłumaczy skąd wynika takie a nie inne podejście środowiska międzynarodowego i dlaczego cały świat potrafi w końcu nazywać rzeczy po imieniu, a USA nadal nie, pokazuje w jaki sposób I.el manipuluje przekazem, przesuwa granice własnych mieszkańców i wykorzystuje wojnę do tłumienia wewnętrznych niepokojów, do czego potrzebuje Ha.su i i jak to wszystko doprowadziło do dzisiejszej sytuacji. Jednocześnie nie traci nadziei na pokój i pisze co musiałoby się wydarzyć aby nastał.
Dla mnie ten esej ma szczególną wartość z dwóch powodów. Po pierwsze jest bardzo świeży, pisany już po 7.10, więc odnosi się do bardzo aktualnych wydarzeń. Po drugie nie jest ani trochę antysemicki, ani konfrontacyjny, nie gra na emocjach, nie skupia się na pojedynczych tragediach, tylko jest bardzo konkretną, trzymającą się faktów, wypełnioną informacjami analizą sytuacji.
Nie będę tu wrzucać cytatów, bo całość jest króciutka (78 stron ebooka, w tym 10 przypisy i 10 aneks), a uważam, że powinna go przeczytać każda i każdy, kto chce wyrobić sobie własną opinię, a nie tylko polegać na mainstreamowym przekazie (który w polskich mediach zasadniczo w ogóle nie istnieje), ale też z takiej ludzkiej uczciwości i oddania P.ńczykom szacunku. Tak że czytajcie koniecznie.
Dla mnie ten esej ma szczególną wartość z dwóch powodów. Po pierwsze jest bardzo świeży, pisany już po 7.10, więc odnosi się do bardzo aktualnych wydarzeń. Po drugie nie jest ani trochę antysemicki, ani konfrontacyjny, nie gra na emocjach, nie skupia się na pojedynczych tragediach, tylko jest bardzo konkretną, trzymającą się faktów, wypełnioną informacjami analizą sytuacji.
Nie będę tu wrzucać cytatów, bo całość jest króciutka (78 stron ebooka, w tym 10 przypisy i 10 aneks), a uważam, że powinna go przeczytać każda i każdy, kto chce wyrobić sobie własną opinię, a nie tylko polegać na mainstreamowym przekazie (który w polskich mediach zasadniczo w ogóle nie istnieje), ale też z takiej ludzkiej uczciwości i oddania P.ńczykom szacunku. Tak że czytajcie koniecznie.
August 19, 2024
Αν επιλέξεις να διαβάσεις ένα -μικρής έκτασης- βιβλίο, που θα αφηγείται το χρονικό των ισραηλινοπαλαιστινιακών συγκρούσεων (μέχρι και σήμερα) με απλό, κατανοητό αλλά και επιχειρηματολογικά τεκμηριωμένο λόγο…
τότε ας είναι αυτό.
τότε ας είναι αυτό.
July 5, 2025
2 eseje o wojnie Izrael-Palestyna wykładające sprawę Palestyny i jej kontekst.
Pierwszy, „Jak do tego doszło?” pokazuje tło historyczne, przyczyny tego, że dwa narody zasiedlają to samo terytorium, a także dlaczego dotychczasowe, wieloletnie próby wprowadzenia rozwiązań pokojowych nie przynoszą zakładanych rezultatów.
Drugi, „Wojna w Gazie 2023-2024” pokazuje obecne zaostrzenie, które po przeczytaniu pierwszego eseju wydaje się wręcz oczywistą konsekwencją, której należało się spodziewać z wielu względów; w jakich warunkach Palestyńczycy bytują, jakie zbrodnie były i są na nich dokonywane i jak bardzo nikogo to nie obchodziło. Dochodzą do tego wewnętrzne podziały i polityka Izraela będącego bez wroga zewnętrznego realnie zagrożonym wojną domową.
Świetna na początek, krótka, polecam.
Pierwszy, „Jak do tego doszło?” pokazuje tło historyczne, przyczyny tego, że dwa narody zasiedlają to samo terytorium, a także dlaczego dotychczasowe, wieloletnie próby wprowadzenia rozwiązań pokojowych nie przynoszą zakładanych rezultatów.
Drugi, „Wojna w Gazie 2023-2024” pokazuje obecne zaostrzenie, które po przeczytaniu pierwszego eseju wydaje się wręcz oczywistą konsekwencją, której należało się spodziewać z wielu względów; w jakich warunkach Palestyńczycy bytują, jakie zbrodnie były i są na nich dokonywane i jak bardzo nikogo to nie obchodziło. Dochodzą do tego wewnętrzne podziały i polityka Izraela będącego bez wroga zewnętrznego realnie zagrożonym wojną domową.
Świetna na początek, krótka, polecam.
November 16, 2024
Ένα βιβλίο σύντομο και ευκολοδιάβαστο που σου παρουσιάζει το μεσανατολικό με ένα μεστό και ακέραιο τρόπο. Δεν αναλώνεται σε λεπτομέρειες γιατί ορθώς υποθέτει ο Shehadeh ότι για να το διαβάσεις ξέρεις τι έχει ήδη συμβεί.
Το ζήτημα όμως είναι να το διαβάσουν άτομα που δεν ξέρουν τι έχει συμβεί. Όλοι εκείνοι που νομίζουν ότι τα ήθελαν και τα έπαθαν οι Παλαιστινιοι ή αναπαραγουν προπαγανδισμους τύπου "τους δόθηκε δυνατότητα 105 φορές να φτιάξουν κράτος και αρνηθηκαν".
Αυτό το βιβλίο είναι για όλους αυτούς. Για να καταλάβουν τι θα πει εποικισμος και μεσσιανισμος και πως αυτά τα δύο χαρακτηριστικά που είναι φορεμένα στην σημερινή εκδοχή της Ισραηλινης κοινωνίας την έχουν καταδικάσει σε μια αέναη πάλη με αυτούς που η ίδια αδυνατεί να δει ως ανθρώπους. Αυτό το βιβλίο είναι, με λίγα λόγια, για όσους έχουν απανθρωποποιησει τους Παλαιστίνιους.
Υγ. Στο χορηγουμενο ποστ των εκδόσεων Μεταίχμιο, κάτω στις αντιδράσεις και στα σχόλια, βρίσκονται όλοι αυτοι στους οποίους απευθύνεται το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο.
Υγ2. Και τα υπόλοιπα βιβλία του Shehadeh είναι εξαιρετικά.
Το ζήτημα όμως είναι να το διαβάσουν άτομα που δεν ξέρουν τι έχει συμβεί. Όλοι εκείνοι που νομίζουν ότι τα ήθελαν και τα έπαθαν οι Παλαιστινιοι ή αναπαραγουν προπαγανδισμους τύπου "τους δόθηκε δυνατότητα 105 φορές να φτιάξουν κράτος και αρνηθηκαν".
Αυτό το βιβλίο είναι για όλους αυτούς. Για να καταλάβουν τι θα πει εποικισμος και μεσσιανισμος και πως αυτά τα δύο χαρακτηριστικά που είναι φορεμένα στην σημερινή εκδοχή της Ισραηλινης κοινωνίας την έχουν καταδικάσει σε μια αέναη πάλη με αυτούς που η ίδια αδυνατεί να δει ως ανθρώπους. Αυτό το βιβλίο είναι, με λίγα λόγια, για όσους έχουν απανθρωποποιησει τους Παλαιστίνιους.
Υγ. Στο χορηγουμενο ποστ των εκδόσεων Μεταίχμιο, κάτω στις αντιδράσεις και στα σχόλια, βρίσκονται όλοι αυτοι στους οποίους απευθύνεται το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο.
Υγ2. Και τα υπόλοιπα βιβλία του Shehadeh είναι εξαιρετικά.
October 9, 2024
Jokaisen tulisi lukea tämä teos.
Jos tässä vaiheessa et tiedä, miksi Israel toteuttaa kansanmurhaa Gazassa, alat olla sulkenut silmäsi jo ihan tahallasi.
Jos tässä vaiheessa et tiedä, miksi Israel toteuttaa kansanmurhaa Gazassa, alat olla sulkenut silmäsi jo ihan tahallasi.
August 12, 2025
obowiązkowa lektura na start
August 14, 2024
A quick read- every fact about the conflict is observed through a lens of humanity and morality. Loved it!
This was one of the Staff Picks at Shakespeare and company.
This was one of the Staff Picks at Shakespeare and company.
August 17, 2024
If you have time to read only one book right now, that book be this.
Read
September 17, 2024Nie jestem w stanie pojąć tej zbrodni.
"Niezmiernie wysokie koszty ludzkie i materialne wojny w Gazie dowodzą, że tym, czego boi się Izrael ze strony Palestyny, jest samo jej istnienie."
"Niezmiernie wysokie koszty ludzkie i materialne wojny w Gazie dowodzą, że tym, czego boi się Izrael ze strony Palestyny, jest samo jej istnienie."
October 5, 2024
treściwy, świetnie skrojony materiał, dobra podstawa do dalszego pogłębiania wiedzy
February 2, 2025
From the river to the sea 🇵🇸🍉
November 9, 2024
Nie ma tu czego oceniać, trzeba czytać. Po prostu
August 3, 2025
bardzo polecam - to niewielkich rozmiarów esej w przystępny sposób rozjaśniający temat historii izraelskiej okupacji w Palestynie, tego jak Izrael proboje wymazac historię Palestyny i dlaczego to robi czy tego dlaczego Izraelowi tak bardzo „opłaca się” nie zawieranie pokoju w żadnej jego formie.
March 26, 2025
Succinct outline of this issue covering 1947 – 2024 by Palestine’s leading writer, lawyer and founder of the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq.
Hard not to conclude that the Palestinian people have been screwed and so it will continue and we all know why.
Hard not to conclude that the Palestinian people have been screwed and so it will continue and we all know why.
June 19, 2024
a super concise view on the reality of the war on palestine. if you haven’t read anything yet, this is your sign
November 15, 2025
eseje są niewielkie objętościowo, jednak zawierają w sobie ogrom informacji bardzo potrzebnych dla zrozumienia palestyńsko-izraelskich kontekstów oraz skali okrucieństwa wobec palestyńczyków.
jeśli nie wiecie od jakiej książki zacząć czytanie o palestynie, przeczytajcie ten esej, bo naprawdę rozjaśnia w głowie kilka kwestii.
jeśli nie wiecie od jakiej książki zacząć czytanie o palestynie, przeczytajcie ten esej, bo naprawdę rozjaśnia w głowie kilka kwestii.
November 29, 2024
Κατατοπιστικο με ανάλυση της ιστορίας και παραθέτοντας γεγονότα.
September 10, 2024
Esej palestyńskiego prawnika i pisarza rzucajacy trochę światła na złożoność konfliktu izraelsko-palestyńskiego poprzez pryzmat emocjonalnych i psychologicznych uwarunkowań, które kształtują wzajemne relacje obu narodów. Odrzucając jednostronne narracje, Shehadeh wnikliwie bada, jak historia, trauma i kulturowe dziedzictwo wpływają na współczesne postrzeganie siebie nawzajem oraz na trudności, z jakimi się borykają.
Szczególną uwagę autor poświęca lękom Izraelczyków, które nie są ograniczone do obaw związanych z bieżącymi wydarzeniami, ale mają swoje korzenie w dramatycznych doświadczeniach historycznych, takich jak Holokaust czy wojny w przeszłości. Przez wieki przezwyciężali oni liczne zagrożenia, co wytworzyło głębokie poczucie potrzeby bezpieczeństwa. W takim kontekście Palestyńczycy często postrzegani są jako potencjalne zagrożenie, a ich działania mogą być interpretowane jako atak na istnienie Izraela. To z kolei z kolei prowadzi do wyostrzenia polityki obronnej oraz militarnej, a także do tworzenia stereotypów, które wpływają na relacje i dalsze eskalacje konfliktu.
Z kolei z perspektywy Palestyńczyków, Shehadeh ukazuje, jak okupacja oraz codzienne zmagania wpływają na ich tożsamość i poczucie przynależności. Utrata ziemi, praw człowieka i podstawowych wolności wprowadza do życia Palestyńczyków głęboki niepokój, poczucie niesprawiedliwości oraz przymus walki o godność. Te doznania manifestują się w zbiorowej pamięci i narracji, które dominują w palestyńskim społeczeństwie. Współczesne trudności, z którymi się borykają, są niezatarte i zostają przekazywane pokoleniowo, co tylko zwiększa ich ból i obawy.
Shehadeh, poprzez swoje przenikliwe obserwacje, konfrontuje nas z ideą, że empatia musi być fundamentem do budowania pokoju. Niezwykle ważne jest, aby każda ze stron zrozumiała emocje i doświadczenia drugiej, co jest kluczem do przełamania negatywnych stereotypów i wzajemnych lęków. Jego praca stanowi apel do całego świata, aby nie ignorować ludzkich tragedii, ale raczej starać się zrozumieć ich źródła.
Szczególną uwagę autor poświęca lękom Izraelczyków, które nie są ograniczone do obaw związanych z bieżącymi wydarzeniami, ale mają swoje korzenie w dramatycznych doświadczeniach historycznych, takich jak Holokaust czy wojny w przeszłości. Przez wieki przezwyciężali oni liczne zagrożenia, co wytworzyło głębokie poczucie potrzeby bezpieczeństwa. W takim kontekście Palestyńczycy często postrzegani są jako potencjalne zagrożenie, a ich działania mogą być interpretowane jako atak na istnienie Izraela. To z kolei z kolei prowadzi do wyostrzenia polityki obronnej oraz militarnej, a także do tworzenia stereotypów, które wpływają na relacje i dalsze eskalacje konfliktu.
Z kolei z perspektywy Palestyńczyków, Shehadeh ukazuje, jak okupacja oraz codzienne zmagania wpływają na ich tożsamość i poczucie przynależności. Utrata ziemi, praw człowieka i podstawowych wolności wprowadza do życia Palestyńczyków głęboki niepokój, poczucie niesprawiedliwości oraz przymus walki o godność. Te doznania manifestują się w zbiorowej pamięci i narracji, które dominują w palestyńskim społeczeństwie. Współczesne trudności, z którymi się borykają, są niezatarte i zostają przekazywane pokoleniowo, co tylko zwiększa ich ból i obawy.
Shehadeh, poprzez swoje przenikliwe obserwacje, konfrontuje nas z ideą, że empatia musi być fundamentem do budowania pokoju. Niezwykle ważne jest, aby każda ze stron zrozumiała emocje i doświadczenia drugiej, co jest kluczem do przełamania negatywnych stereotypów i wzajemnych lęków. Jego praca stanowi apel do całego świata, aby nie ignorować ludzkich tragedii, ale raczej starać się zrozumieć ich źródła.
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October 1, 2024although i believe that shehadeh and i agree politically, i can clearly see what he is leaving out of his essay, which i find disappointing. his narrative makes it impossible to understand how israeli society could have gotten to the horrifying state they are in now - the implication of the text seems to be that it is due to decades of propaganda in schools and the media, engineered by greedy zionists of centuries past. obviously, propaganda does play a vitally important role, but it is not the full story. it would also be disingenuous to claim that it was all created by evil people in the 1940s, rather than by a persecuted people, under siege at every turn (a situation that is not entirely dissimilar to the one the palestinians find themselves in now - i concede that they are not the same, but they are not dissimilar). at the very least, one must consider the shoah and the wars of 1967 and 1973 as deeply important events that influenced the thinking of entire generations. all of these are at most a footnote or a throwaway mention in shehadeh's account, though they desperately need to be included in any cogent analysis of the conflict. that is irresponsible and unhelpful, because it weakens shehadeh's point, which is ultimately a good one: we must be able to see a future in which palestinians and israelis can live side by side in peace, a future in which israel pursues this peace as a policy, seeing and treating palestinians as fellow citizens and fellow human beings - something that the state of israel has been making utterly impossible. and yet. we must have hope. for that, one must understand how israelis AND palestinians EACH got into the situation and state of mind that they are now in, or we can never meaningfully change anything. obviously, shehadeh is a great thinker that i deeply respect, which is why i'm getting so hung up on all of this - palestinian voices need to be heard, and i believe he can reach so many more people if his analysis goes deeper.
July 16, 2024
Short and to the point. Very well done.
September 22, 2024
Απλό και τεκμηριωμένο βιβλίο από μια ψύχραιμη φωνή για όσες και όσους αναζητούν μια εισαγωγή σε μια κατάστασταση που δεν βρίσκεις λόγια να περιγράψεις.
April 16, 2025
Decent, but not an essential read by any means. Suffers from repeated comparisons with apartheid South Africa, which, if anything, are far too charitable to Israel, considering the Afrikaner regime in its entirety never committed crimes remotely as monstrous as Israel's on any given day of the year. The author also uses the phrase "right wing" to describe various Israeli governments past and present, which is a paradigm that cannot really be applied to Israeli politics. For example, David Ben-Gurion, who was as despicable a scoundrel as any in Zionism's sordid history, was/is considered "left wing" as the leader of the dominant Labor establishment. As arguably the point man behind the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Ben-Gurion would be considered the furthest fringe of far-right extremism according to how these terms are commonly understood today.
Shehadeh does write compellingly of the humanitarian catastrophe taking place in Gaza at the hands of the Jewish state, however.
Shehadeh does write compellingly of the humanitarian catastrophe taking place in Gaza at the hands of the Jewish state, however.
July 18, 2024
This was a brief look into the history of the colonization of Palestine, focusing on the political situation from the Nakba to the Oslo Accords, to Gaza in 2023/24. The first part focuses on Israel/Palestine relations in the beginning and how events surrounding apartheid in South Africa impacted that. It also reveals the social tensions between Israel and Palestine as well as tensions within each of them. The second part focuses on events since October 7, including the global response.
I think this is good, especially for those beginning to look into what is going on in Palestine. This certainly isn't an an all-encompassing history, but it put into focus certain issues that we are seeing today. It's not THE book on the region but is a great starting point in learning about the current events there.
I think this is good, especially for those beginning to look into what is going on in Palestine. This certainly isn't an an all-encompassing history, but it put into focus certain issues that we are seeing today. It's not THE book on the region but is a great starting point in learning about the current events there.
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January 1, 2025I don’t ever rate nonfiction because it feels wrong to rate a telling of historical events but this was very eye opening on the history of Israel/Palestine and Israel’s view of the Palestinian people, specifically from 1948 through the 1980s. I somehow feel even more angry at Netanyahu than I did before. Highly recommend to anyone and everyone
June 17, 2024
Krótkie wprowadzenie do całego konfliktu, zawierające nie tylko opis obecnych wydarzeń, ale też tło historyczne
June 12, 2024
Dobry start dla pogłębienia wiedzy
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