Review – Books

In these times of a growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement regarding the apartheid state of Israel, public opinion is finally changing, even if those in the large...

In The Book of Disappearance, Palestinian novelist Ibtisam Azem has crafted a masterpiece which immediately leads the reader to ponder the historical foundations of the 1948 Nakba, as well...

No matter how prevalent refugee stories have become in the media, the dissociation between the terminology and the people keeps growing. Jehan Bseiso and Becky Thompson address this absence...

It is not usual to begin a book review with a quote from elsewhere, but, "Bad men need nothing more to compress their ends, than that good men should...

Those familiar with the ever-twisting gyrations of the Zionist project know that it was not just one of bully-boy bigotry but of employment leverage and advantage. Early on, the...

The international community, through the Oslo Accords, has created an intricate web of terminology that points towards a permanently stalled state-building process. In their book, The Palestinian Authority in...

An unfulfilled desire has no sanctuary other than remembrance. Radwa Ashour's novel, The Woman from Tantoura (Hoopoe Fiction, 2019), explores the ramifications of memory and how its story is...

Mats Svensson, a former Swedish diplomat whose personal experience of Palestine opened up the possibility of rethinking through Palestinian narratives, clarifies the role of diplomacy in the preface to...

Some years ago, I met a landlord briefly who was an Iraqi. After volunteering to tell me his land of origin, he began to explain his theory that ISIS...

As voices continue to emerge within the tradition of Anglo-Arab fictions, one constant within these narratives is the conversation surrounding the negotiation of identities between one's traditional culture vis-à-vis...

In today's twisted, double-speak in political accusation, some principles stay upheld.  Ronit Lentin, the Trinity College Dublin sociologist, has long specialised in race relations and this book excavates Israel's...

This collection of well-researched essays provides an insight into the dynamics of how neoliberalism is woven within the Zionist colonial process and how it has created two opposing camps,...

"When ISIS soldiers arrest me and kill me, it will be okay, because while they will cut off my head, I'll still have dignity, which is better than living...

Review rating: 4/5 Fredrik Meiton approaches the Zionist colonisation of Palestine from an industrialisation angle in his book "Electrical Palestine. Capital and technology from Empire to Nation" (University of...

Review Rating 4/5 Seraj Assi's study on nomadism sheds light on previously obscured understandings which have contributed to the Bedouin being discussed from a colonial context. The History and...

Tim Marshall served a long stint as diplomatic editor of Britain's Sky News. In his book "Prisoners of Geography", he argues that topography imprisons leaders. "This was true of...

At first glance, "Towards a Westphalia for the Middle East" seems to the reader to mirror countless other books on the region's history. By comparing current conflicts to wars...

Review Rating: 4/5 The elimination of the Palestinian narrative from mainstream media is not a new phenomenon. Peter Manning's study, Representing Palestine. Media and Journalism in Australia since World...

The speech given by Winston Churchill in March 1946 at the Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, is remembered mostly by his coining of the term "Iron Curtain". However, he...

Refugee narratives beyond those which reach the mainstream media are fraught with complexities, while humanitarian aid remains insufficient. Ilana Feldman's treatise "Life Lived in Relief — Humanitarian Predicaments and...

We live in turbulent times, with international pendulums made up of states, organisations and major NGOs swinging in close proximity; near misses, blocks and crashes are inevitable. Turkey's relations...

Review Rating: 5/5 There is always a time between the concepts of the present and forever which is inscribed in our remembrance. It is the beauty of memory which...

With accusations of antisemitism hitting the headlines on a regular basis involving high-profile figures such as Ken Livingstone or Britain's former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who can be unaware...

Miko Peled's book Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five is about a grave and cruel injustice carried out by both the US and Israel. Paradoxically, the...

Israel's prolonged colonisation and military occupation of Palestine has given rise to a consistent form of resistance that is implemented in everyday life, yet rarely recognised. This form of...

Imagine that you were a state in which the unruly masses of an ethnic minority rebelled in one of your provinces. Would you crush it with your own security...

Reja-e Busailah has lost two dear parts of himself over the course of his lifetime: his sight and his homeland. In his autobiography, "In the land of my birth:...

Offering an insightful account of a period often neglected by historians, Salim Tamari's book The Great War and the Remaking of Palestine provides a window into the lost world...

Balfour in the Dock is a contemporary work looking at a 750-page magnum opus on Palestine by outstanding British journalist J M N Jeffries (1880-1960). His book Palestine: The...

Nur Masalha's latest book, "Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History" (Zed Books, 2018) presents an accurate distinction between the Palestinian return to history and the purported Zionist reclamation –...

Gary Fields' Enclosure: Palestinian Landscapes in a Historical Mirror is a unique exploration of the development of the Israeli culture of land grabs and the historical legal framework and...

Unlike the alphabet books which currently saturate the children's book market in the UK, where A is for apple and B is for ball, "P is for Palestine" offers...