Educating myself about Palestine

I feel it's important to start this review of three books that I have read in recent months on Palestine by giving a little context and making my standpoint clear. I freely admit that I previously had only a basic understanding of the history of Palestine, the formation of Israel, and of the events that shaped where we are today. I have a degree in History and I have always thought of myself as a social historian. I have a passionate interest in the impact on people of important things in history and of social change. I have read a lot on the human impact of the Second World War, in particular the Holocaust and the experiences of prisoners of war. I have been to two concentration camps in Germany and to the Changi museum in Singapore. I have also visited Israel, to attend a science education conference in Rehovot, south of Tel Aviv, in 2017. During that visit I went to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

I came to the three books I've reviewed in this post through ongoing conversations with a dear London friend who I had the pleasure and privilege of meeting at an academic conference in 2013 in Helsinki. My friend is clever and politically astute, caring and kind, and she is someone whose ideas and opinions I greatly value and admire. Her cultural and religious background gives her a perspective on Palestine that I have much to learn from. The books I review in this post were sent to me by my friend earlier this year, a much-appreciated and thoughtful gesture to help me on my journey of understanding.

I also note that I read the three books in 2025, some 18 months after the events of October 7. I have been deeply affected by the genocide in Gaza and by the lack of international action against the Israeli government. To me, nothing justifies the death and destruction of the past two years and the ongoing dehumanising of the Palestinian people. I marched in August 2025 in Brisbane in support of Palestine. This was an emotional experience but one that I am proud to have been part of as a supporter of social justice. The side that I sit on is the side of humanity, something that is sorely missing in the sorry state of the world that we currently inhabit. Furthermore, no matter what has happened in the past nor what happens in the future, I cannot for the life of me understand why people who suffered so much at the hands of the Nazi regime can perpetrate the same horrific acts against others: the oppressed have indeed become the oppressors. The weaponising of the world's guilt over collective Jewish trauma from the Holocaust is appalling, with no end in sight to the oppression and violence that has plagued Palestine since 1948.

Right, so here is my review of The hundred years' war on Palestine, The ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and The Palestine laboratory.

The hundred years' war on Palestine: A history of settler-colonial conquest and resistance, 1917-2017 | Rashid Khalidi | Published January 2020 | Read March 2025

The first thing to note about The hundred years' war on Palestine is that it is both an academic text and a deeply personal account. Author Rashid Khalidi is a Palestinian-American historian and someone who has firsthand experience of the ongoing assault on the Palestinian people. He is also an Emeritus Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. Professor Khalidi served as editor of The Journal of Palestine Studies from 2002 to 2020, is the author of several books on Palestine, and has taught at universities in Lebanon and the United States. He retired from his position at Columbia University in the wake of the university's crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests following the events of October 7.

The hundred years' war on Palestine was my first foray into the history of the Israel-Palestine situation. I found it both depressing and insightful, but it did help me along the path of better understanding of where we are today. I recognise that Professor Khalidi is a respected historian, but I also appreciate that all historians narrate history through their own lens. The lens that Khalidi applies to his book may be seen as subjective or biased, but there is no denying his personal story and the lasting impact the 100 years' war has had on his family. I would defy any reader to come away from the book without feeling despair and sadness for the experiences of the Palestinian people since 1948. For this alone, the book warrants merit and attention.

The hundred years' war on Palestine is not a comprehensive account of the history of the current situation and I don't think it claims to be. Khalidi has structured his book around six chapters which he explains represent six declarations of war against the Palestinian people. Here, Khalidi has made a decision about what he explores and how deep he goes in each chapter. That approach does create gaps in the narrative in some places. That said, I have a much better understanding of how Palestinians have been excluded from decisions that affect them, starting with the 1917 Balfour Declaration. I also learnt a lot about the role British imperialism has played in the formation and ongoing support of Israel which is just as much at the heart of the one hundred years' war as the Zionist movement.

Is the book objective? Possibly not, but does it need to be? Khalidi is clear about his intention to present an account of the Palestinian perspective, both from his own experiences and his scholarship. I've seen reviewers criticise the book for its lack of objectivity, but when an author is upfront about their lens, then I don't see it as an issue. I actually think Khalidi writes a fairly balanced story, given his positioning. He is open about the inaction of the Arab world in support of Palestine and of Palestinian leaders' negotiation failings over time.

Given what I am learning about the history of Israel, and have been witnessing since October 7, there are enough Israeli voices in the world for there to be a need for Palestinian ones to balance accounts that seem already weighted against them. I highly recommend this book for anyone who takes a humanist stance, who sees Palestinian people as human beings who deserve life, and to anyone who recognises that settler-colonialism is never acceptable.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine | Illan Pappe | Published January 2006 | Read June 2025

Ilan Pappe is a political activist, professor of social sciences and international studies at the University of Exeter, and director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies. He has also lectured in political science at the University of Haifa before leaving Israel in 2008. Ilan Pappe is considered to be one of Israel's 'new historians', a group of academics who have been rewriting Israel's history since the release of historical documents by both the British and Israeli governments since the 1980s. Pappe's central position is that expulsions of Palestinians since 1948 constitute ethnic cleansing, as drawn up in the Plan Dalet in 1947 by Israel's first leaders. Pappe has received both support and criticism from other historians for his work. He has been condemned by Israeli parliament and he has received several death threats over the years.

I give the above information about Ilan Pappe to demonstrate the position from which he has written The ethnic cleansing of Palestine. It is this position that makes Pappe's book so powerful. I struggled to read it, but mostly because I found it so distressing. There is a lot of detail of the atrocities committed by Israeli settlers towards Palestinians from 1948 onwards. There's also a lot of detail about how the British stood by and let it all happen. This detail is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it made me fully appreciate what the Palestinian people have suffered since 1948. I felt both immensely sad and angry by the end of my reading journey. On the other, the level of detail of the atrocities made the book hard to digest, as did Pappe's dense academic prose.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is a brave and hugely important piece of scholarship. It is a tough read and the level of detail about the expulsion and killings of Palestinians is beyond disturbing. The book is both highly academic and emotive but a powerful example of the work of the 'new historians' who are challenging traditional (and largely accepted) accounts of the oppression of Palestinians since 1948. Despite its flaws, I think it is a must read for fully understanding what led to recent events.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Palestine laboratory: How Israel exports the technology of the occupation around the world | Antony Loewenstein | Published May 2023 | Read August 2025

Antony Loewenstein is an Australian independent journalist, writer, and filmmaker. Loewenstein was raised in Melbourne by liberal Zionist Jewish parents whose own parents fled Nazi Germany and Austria in 1939 and came to Australia as refugees. He spent four years living in Jerusalem from 2016 and has reported on the Israeli-Palestine situation for over 20 years.

Loewenstein published The Palestine laboratory in May 2023 but the copy I read has an introductory chapter that comments on the events of October 7. I was drawn to Loewenstein from the outset as I admired his honesty to his opening chapter, where he expresses his horror at the deaths on that fateful day, condemning the actions of Hamas as counterproductive, leading to unimaginable suffering for Gazans. He clearly states, though, that nothing that happened on October 7 justifies Israel's actions since then. I completely agree. Interestingly, Loewenstein later claims that the attacks were likely anticipated by Israel and were not stopped as they paved the way for what we can now see as Israel's end game.

The Palestine laboratory is a damning exploration of how Israel has become a world leader in the development of spy technology and defence hardware that has been sold to some of the world's harshest regimes. The book adds another layer to the Zionist project by showing just how far Israel will go not only to subjugate Palestine's population but to perpetrate oppression globally. If Israel's inhumanity is not already clear to you, Loewenstein's book certainly confronts it head on.

Like the other two books in this review, The Palestine laboratory is a tough read. It's tough for different reasons, though. It doesn't lay out the violence of the occupation, but dives deep into the way Israel has used its oppression of Palestine to line its pockets. The monetising of occupied Palestine as a testing ground for its weapons and surveillance industry is sickening.

Loewenstein describes the architecture of Israel's control over Palestine through weapons and surveillance technology that it has tested on the population before exporting to the world. The book is horrifying in its exposure of how oppression can take different forms, including silencing voices on social media.

The world's complicity in their use of Israel's technology and weaponry is just as sickening as Israel's actions. If I wasn't angry after reading Khalidi and Pappe's books, I certainly was after finishing The Palestine laboratory. The book is deeply, deeply disturbing, exposing the widespread nature of evil and how it takes root and spreads, with global complicity at every turn, all in the name of power and greed.

What I find just as sad as the oppression of Palestine and the disturbing claims the author makes in his book is the lack of hope for the future. I understand the oppressed need to fight back, but where do we go from here? Given the currency of Loewenstein's book, it is hard to feel optimistic.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐