Going Home: A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation by Raja Shehadeh, 2020
In Going Home , Raja Shehadeh, the Orwell Prize–winning author of Palestinian Walks , takes us on a series of journeys around his hometown of #Ramallah. Set in a single day—the day that happens to be the fiftieth anniversary of Israel's occupation of the West Bank—the book is a powerful and moving record and chronicle of the changing face of his city.
I've only read a few Palestinian prisoners stories and I have to stop each time. I'm usually one who can sit and read for hours. It's devastating but necessary reading - we MUST get these stories to as many eyes as possible.
Any of the Palestinian memoirs/biographies are great in so many ways. You can come in with little idea of the Middle East and get a human story as well as where that falls in the history/context of something people call complicated, but isn't.
One shows humor in the face of such circumstances as Palestinian refugees face and another shows that this carnage (by Israel) you see today has been happening a very long time (British+Zionists).
#IDF /the "topics document" [מסמך הצירים] was drafted in 1988 to regulate the release of sensitive documents from state archives [*]
The criteria according to which the governmental archives (the IDF Archive and the State Archive) decide whether to expose or conceal historical documentation - are not sufficiently transparent to the public. These criteria are also not fixed and have changed over the years.
"The Topics Document" [מסמך הצירים], alongside additional related historical documentation, was itself concealed and closed to review for many years. Only after three years of insistence with the State Archive was it finally transferred to the #Akevot ["footprints"] Institute.
So what are the sensitive issues, pertaining to IDF's image, Israel might like to conceal from scrutiny by researches?
One of those "sensitive topics" defined in the document is material that portrays the IDF as an occupying army devoid of moral foundations, which could harm its image as a moral army. Under this topic, eight concrete issues were listed, including:
Violent conduct against the Arab population and acts of cruelty (killing, murder not necessitated by combat, rape, looting, pillage)
Desecration of holy sites (desecration of churches, mosques and cemeteries)
Criminal acts (theft, looting of property, forgeries and destruction of evidence)
Atrocities committed against Jewish women (rape)
Atrocities committed by IDF divisions [in the War of Independence]: (Hula, Khisas, Eilaboun, Duwayma, etc.).
Another topic is aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself, Israel would like to avoid making public due to national security concerns:
Expulsion of Palestinians: Policy of retaliation against infiltrators; orders to harm infiltrators even in case of doubt
Establishing policy against return of Palestinians to their lands
Evacuation of Palestinian settlements and residents (Majdal, today "Ashkelon")
Violent conduct against prisoners contrary to the Geneva Convention (killing); not taking notice of white flags
Bombing of civilian facilities (bombing of hospitals to refugee camps Gaza, El Burj)
[*] Declassification of government papers according to the thirty years limit, by law, led to the emergence of the "New Historians" in Israel [Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappe, Benny Morris ...], who are known, collectively, to have challenged Israel's Zionist narrative of the Israel-Palestinian conflict
#IDF /on the "topics document" [מסמך הצירים] was drafted in 1988 to regulate the release of sensitive documents from state archives [*]
The criteria according to which the governmental archives (the IDF Archive and the State Archive) decide whether to expose or conceal historical documentation - are not sufficiently transparent to the public. These criteria are also not fixed and have changed over the years.
"The Topics Document" [מסמך הצירים], alongside additional related historical documentation, was itself concealed and closed to review for many years. Only after three years of insistence with the State Archive was it finally transferred to the #Akevot ["footprints"] Institute.
So what are the sensitive issues, pertaining to IDF's image, Israel might like to conceal from scrutiny by researches?
One of those "sensitive topics" defined in the document is material that portrays the IDF as an occupying army devoid of moral foundations, which could harm its image as a moral army. Under this topic, eight concrete issues were listed, including:
Violent conduct against the Arab population and acts of cruelty (killing, murder not necessitated by combat, rape, looting, pillage)
Desecration of holy sites (desecration of churches, mosques and cemeteries)
Criminal acts (theft, looting of property, forgeries and destruction of evidence)
Atrocities committed against Jewish women (rape)
Atrocities committed by IDF divisions [in the War of Independence]: (Hula, Khisas, Eilaboun, Duwayma, etc.).
Another topic is aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself, Israel would like to avoid making public due to national security concerns:
Expulsion of Palestinians: Policy of retaliation against infiltrators; orders to harm infiltrators even in case of doubt
Establishing policy against return of Palestinians to their lands
Evacuation of Palestinian settlements and residents (Majdal, today "Ashkelon")
Violent conduct against prisoners contrary to the Geneva Convention (killing); not taking notice of white flags
Bombing of civilian facilities (bombing of hospitals to refugee camps Gaza, El Burj)
[*] Declassification of government papers according to the thirty years limit, by law, led to the emergence of the "New Historians" in Israel [Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappe, Benny Morris ...], who are known, collectively, to have challenged Israel's Zionist narrative of the Israel-Palestinian conflict
Mornings in Jeninis a multi-generational story about a Palestinian family. Forcibly removed from the olive-farming village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejos are displaced to live in canvas tents in the Jenin refugee camp. We follow the Abulhejo family as they live through a half century of violent history.
According to Jon Bakos on Bluesky, 🍉 (to show Palestinian solidarity) is the Political Word of the Year in the American Dialect Society voting. #Woty2023
Hey book people, I would like to read up on the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict and am looking for book recommendations. Either English or German would be fine, and preferably written fairly recently (aka not 30 years ago).