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Coming to Palestine
In this incredible volume of essays, collected over 30 years, Sheldon Richman exposes the true history of Israeli dispossession of the Palestinians. Coming to Palestine turns the typical story most Americans have been told about Israel's founding on its head. It is a ringing endorsement of reason, freedom, peace, and toleration in Palestine and Israel.
200 pages, Paperback
Published September 25, 2019
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388 people want to read
About the author
Sheldon Richman
16 books20 followersSheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute, senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society, and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies, former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education, and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest book is Coming to Palestine.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 4, 2020
Good piss boiler. If you like getting mad, this is a good book for that.
Sheldon Richman is one of those Swiss Army Knife libertarians. He's written about and thought about just about every issue for several decades. Compiling his thoughts on a particular subject into one volume is a great service. I hope the Libertarian Institute is able to do this for Richman on other topics as well.
Israel in it's current state is atavistic and cruel experiment. If it were not for the cruelty, it would just be considered a stupid and racist county. But with the cruelty, it is problem that needs addressing. Since the late 80s Richman has been mining this topic from several different vantage points. Some of the book gets repetitive, but it's good stuff to reiterate: Israel has been the party objecting to rational peace negotiations from its founding.
Sheldon Richman is one of those Swiss Army Knife libertarians. He's written about and thought about just about every issue for several decades. Compiling his thoughts on a particular subject into one volume is a great service. I hope the Libertarian Institute is able to do this for Richman on other topics as well.
Israel in it's current state is atavistic and cruel experiment. If it were not for the cruelty, it would just be considered a stupid and racist county. But with the cruelty, it is problem that needs addressing. Since the late 80s Richman has been mining this topic from several different vantage points. Some of the book gets repetitive, but it's good stuff to reiterate: Israel has been the party objecting to rational peace negotiations from its founding.
March 13, 2020
This is one of the most eye opening books on the Palestinian/Israeli issue I've ever read. As someone who has lived in Israel and seen things up close and personal, I can vouch for many of the things Mr. Richman writes about. His insights into the founding and history of Israel and their relations with the indigenous people of Palestine is forthright and honest. I highly recommend this book of essays to anyone who has an interest in the issues of the region.
May 24, 2025
Given the current horrors going on in Gaza, and that Israel/Palestine is largely a blind spot for me, I figured this was worth a look, especially given that I haven’t read anything on the subject since Peace not Apartheid (2007!) and a lot of blood has flowed under the bridge since then. The book is published by the Libertarian Institute, many of whose books I’ve read, and Sheldon Richman is an author that Scott Horton frequently praises.
Coming to Palestine is largely a collection of essays with an Israel-Palestine connection: most were published at the Institute itself, but some are book reviews, and the book reviews can date back to the 1990s. All are sharply critical of Zionism and the State of Israel. As an atheist and an arch-libertarian, Richman has no regard for the idea of a Jewish community at all, let alone one with historic ties to the area and an especial tie to the city of Jerusalem. His critique (beyond detailing chronic human rights abuses) is moored entirely in individualism and property rights: individual Palestinians owned land, and individual Palestinians were wrongfully robbed of it. Although this makes the general scope of the work predictable — Israel is always the bad guy — the volume is not a dozen essays arguing the same thing. Some offer histories of Zionism and Israel’s expansions; some explore Israel’s bipartisan command of US policy, and so on. There are essays on how many conflicts in the Middle East owe to Great Britain and France’s arbitrary line-drawing after the Ottoman Empire fell, for instance, and an essay on how he came to his present beliefs, followed by another condemning the expansion of “anti-semitism” to mean “any critique of the State of Israel”.
I have never looked into the process why which Israel became a nation, so there was quite a bit to learn here, especially early (19th century) settlement and the hostile reaction of Reform rabbis to the idea of an Israel recreated by man rather than God. Richman argues that while settlers did “buy” land in what became Israel, they did so through absentee landlords who had no connection to the property beyond legal title, and who cared nothing for the farmers that the new owners would displace. (That it was legal title, though, would seem to undercut Richman’s pure-property-rights approach.) Other expansion has more the more straightforward pointy-stick approach.
This was an interesting if very partisan collection, one I’d rather evaluate with more knowledge of the subject matter. I did some fact-checking along the way, enough to realize Richman’s views were charged, let’s say. He announced that Israel, Britain, and France attacked Egypt, failing to mention the context of Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal twelve years before the 99-year concession was due to expire, an act viewed by Britain and France as a direct violation of the treaty governing its custody. Unfortunately for Gazans, things have only gotten worse since this book’s publication, as the obscene evil of October 7 has led to an absolute orgy of violence since then, Israel appearing intent on creating a desert and calling it peace. One interesting oversight here was the lack of commentary on Netanyahu’s history of indirectly supporting Hamas for his own cynical reasons. Richman definitely doesn’t like Bibi, and I know Scott Horton is familiar with the topic, so it’s odd that that subject wasn’t addressed, this being a Libertarian Institute publication.
Coming to Palestine is quite partisan, but makes me want to learn more about the subject matter, if only to better evaluate this book. It’s informative, albeit biased, but I don’t think any level of bias can mitigate the fact that the state of Israel has acted horribly towards its neighbors, and has an adverse effect on DC’s foreign policy– whether that consists of enraging the Arabs against DC and America, or making it advocate things like “Erase Gaza and replace it with a resort managed by the president”.
Coming to Palestine is largely a collection of essays with an Israel-Palestine connection: most were published at the Institute itself, but some are book reviews, and the book reviews can date back to the 1990s. All are sharply critical of Zionism and the State of Israel. As an atheist and an arch-libertarian, Richman has no regard for the idea of a Jewish community at all, let alone one with historic ties to the area and an especial tie to the city of Jerusalem. His critique (beyond detailing chronic human rights abuses) is moored entirely in individualism and property rights: individual Palestinians owned land, and individual Palestinians were wrongfully robbed of it. Although this makes the general scope of the work predictable — Israel is always the bad guy — the volume is not a dozen essays arguing the same thing. Some offer histories of Zionism and Israel’s expansions; some explore Israel’s bipartisan command of US policy, and so on. There are essays on how many conflicts in the Middle East owe to Great Britain and France’s arbitrary line-drawing after the Ottoman Empire fell, for instance, and an essay on how he came to his present beliefs, followed by another condemning the expansion of “anti-semitism” to mean “any critique of the State of Israel”.
I have never looked into the process why which Israel became a nation, so there was quite a bit to learn here, especially early (19th century) settlement and the hostile reaction of Reform rabbis to the idea of an Israel recreated by man rather than God. Richman argues that while settlers did “buy” land in what became Israel, they did so through absentee landlords who had no connection to the property beyond legal title, and who cared nothing for the farmers that the new owners would displace. (That it was legal title, though, would seem to undercut Richman’s pure-property-rights approach.) Other expansion has more the more straightforward pointy-stick approach.
This was an interesting if very partisan collection, one I’d rather evaluate with more knowledge of the subject matter. I did some fact-checking along the way, enough to realize Richman’s views were charged, let’s say. He announced that Israel, Britain, and France attacked Egypt, failing to mention the context of Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal twelve years before the 99-year concession was due to expire, an act viewed by Britain and France as a direct violation of the treaty governing its custody. Unfortunately for Gazans, things have only gotten worse since this book’s publication, as the obscene evil of October 7 has led to an absolute orgy of violence since then, Israel appearing intent on creating a desert and calling it peace. One interesting oversight here was the lack of commentary on Netanyahu’s history of indirectly supporting Hamas for his own cynical reasons. Richman definitely doesn’t like Bibi, and I know Scott Horton is familiar with the topic, so it’s odd that that subject wasn’t addressed, this being a Libertarian Institute publication.
Coming to Palestine is quite partisan, but makes me want to learn more about the subject matter, if only to better evaluate this book. It’s informative, albeit biased, but I don’t think any level of bias can mitigate the fact that the state of Israel has acted horribly towards its neighbors, and has an adverse effect on DC’s foreign policy– whether that consists of enraging the Arabs against DC and America, or making it advocate things like “Erase Gaza and replace it with a resort managed by the president”.
July 9, 2024
“To repeat, it’s a secondary matter whether these individuals thought of themselves as “Palestinians” or whether they perceived themselves to be living in a country called Palestine. They were individuals with rights, and they were dispossessed and made into refugees when they weren’t murdered. As individual human beings, they obviously cared about their homes and communities, whether rural or urban, and thus could be counted on to resist proposals that they be “transferred”—expelled—from their homes to somewhere else—even to places where people spoke a similar language (though the dialects might differ) and practiced the same religion. To assume otherwise is to see these individuals as less than human.”
February 17, 2025
Overall very good collection of articles by Sheldon Richman on the Palestine issue. While the articles are great, this isn’t a 5 star from me because there could have been more work put into how it’s organized. Related too, is a lot of the history is left out and more information could have been put in by further editing these articles into a more typical book format.
January 4, 2024
It’s amazing how consistent Sheldon Richman is in his arguments throughout the years. It’s equally amazing how much of this history is out in the open; it seems hidden but it’s really not.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews