Published: 3 December 2024
Last updated: 3 December 2024
Balcony over Jerusalem by John Lyons
When we were choosing books for the Summer Reading package for parliamentarians, how could we go past John Lyons? He is one of Australia’s most respected journalists, winner of four Walkley awards and many more accolades. Lyons is known for his attention to evidence and fact. At an event earlier this year where he was speaking, the audience was impressed by his refusal to state that Israel was targeting journalists because, as he said, although it might seem that was the case, he had not seen any actual evidence to support it.
Lyons first published Balcony over Jerusalem as a memoir of his six-year stint as The Australian’s foreign correspondent in Jerusalem, but it draws on his three decades of reporting on the Middle East, where he interviewed a huge number of important players as well as ordinary citizens caught up in conflict. This updated edition gives more context to the current situation in Israel and Palestine. Lyons is a journalist of principle and honesty, and for that reason as well as his writing skill, experience and reputation, his book deserved a place on our list.
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi
In discussing which histories we would include in our pack, we agreed that we needed academic historians with an accredited publishing track record and an eminent international reputation. Palestinian-American Rashid Khalidi is such a historian. Professor emeritus at Columbia University (retired 2024), he is widely praised for his meticulous archival research yet his prose is accessible and compelling, making his work suitable for the lay reader.
In The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine Khalidi balances scholarly analysis of historical and diplomatic documents with personal insight and family history tracing back to his third-great-grandfather’s interactions with Herzl. He presents a narrative that challenges mainstream views, which often portray the conflict as a tragic dispute between two peoples. Instead, he reframes it as a colonial war waged against Palestinians over a century, driven by the Zionist movement and supported by powerful allies like Britain and the United States. However he is also scathing about the failures of Palestinian leadership and decision-making, which diminished the chances of a successful resistance to occupation. Erudite and moving, fair-minded and rigorous, the book calls for mutual acceptance and equality of rights as the way toward a peaceful resolution.
A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict by Ilan Pappé
Our other eminent historian is Israeli Ilan Pappé, currently a history professor at the University of Exeter and author of over a dozen books on Israel and Palestine. He is one of the most recognised of the ‘new historians’ who retold Israel’s foundation story in the 1980s. A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, his most recent work, traces the Israeli-Palestinian issue from the early Zionist founding fathers through to the present day (published October 2024).
A Very Short History is an excellent primer for people with little or no knowledge of the history of the land. It grapples with difficult issues including the partition and the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948, the six-day war, the two intifadas and, more generally, occupation and resistance. It interrogates the decisions made by external actors that have affected the trajectory of the conflict.
Pappé’s work provokes strong reactions due to its highlighting of the systemic brutality of occupation and apartheid. His analyses are decried by those who promote the ideological narrative of Israeli history as ‘a land without a people for a people without a land’, and other conservative Jewish historians and commentators. For this reason, that is, to offer an alternative viewpoint to the usual narrative promoted in western media, this book by an eminent Israeli historian is on the list.
Palestine A-Z by Kate Thompson
While ideally the MPs and their advisors who received our pack would all read every book we gave them, the likelihood of that happening was unfortunately low. Yet our aim was to inform and enlighten for the purpose of encouraging nuance in political discussion of the conflict. For this reason, we included Palestine A-Z in the pack as a handy reference guide providing definitions of key factors in the Israel-Palestine history and relationship. Many of the terms in this short guide are essential to understanding how the conflict reached this point and what is currently happening, yet they are often missing from reporting on, and discussion of, the conflict. The definitions are factual and objective.
Kate Thompson is a multi-award-winning Irish writer with a longstanding interest is peace issues. She has won the Guardian and the Whitbread (Costa) Children’s Book prizes as well as five major Irish book awards. Her father, E. P. Thompson, was one of the great British historians of the twentieth century, as well as a prominent peace campaigner and co-founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
The Sunbird by Sara Haddad
The writers who donated to fund this initiative will tell you that fiction has an extraordinary power to inspire empathy and understanding. The novella we have chosen to include, The Sunbird, became an indie bestseller for just that – its compassion and beauty moves readers. It has now been picked up by a mainstream publisher.
The Sunbird tells the story of a Palestinian, Nabila, as an innocent and uncomprehending child during the Nakba and as an adult in Sydney in 2023. Nabila’s tale is one of loss and dispossession. She keeps more than a hundred plants in pots in case the worst happens and she is forced to move again. Yet she also represents the Palestinian traits of hope and resilience. Written with finesse and sensitivity, The Sunbird leads the reader to an understanding of Nabila’s love and longing for her native land.
As someone who grew up learning about Palestine, when Lebanese-Australian writer Haddad became an adult she ‘began to experience first-hand the ignorance and misinformation surrounding Palestine’. Haddad says, ‘One of things I’m hoping to achieve with this book is to encourage people to have important conversations, and to be open to engaging with information that up until now has likely been withheld from them.’
The Summer Reading for MPs campaign was organised by publisher Aviva Tuffield; architect Marcus O’Reilly; author Paddy O’Reilly; and IT specialist Jol Blazey. Books were selected by the four team members above and then endorsed by the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) and the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA). MPs also received this letter.
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Comments2
Ian Light3 December at 01:38 am
The Spanish nearly annihilated the indigenous population The British and Americans the Red Indians and the British and Australians the Aboriginal peoples .
In 1880 in Palestine there were 500,000 Arabs when the Jews started returning in greater numbers ,now in 2024 there are 12 million , five million in Israel and Palestine and many millions kilometres away in Islamic lands .
Since 1939 the World Jewish Population has not Increased .
Who are the annihilated.
ilmedico34@icloud.com3 December at 12:36 am
Few Jewish People could read these books without feeling anger and rage over the complete denial of the Islam Nationalist that despise the Jewish People , their immense spiritual and physical connection to the Land of Israel and even more the need for an safe sanctuary to escape from the Holocaust .
In an area of 1500 square kiliometres four million Jewish People would have been saved and no Palestine person
displaced .
A critical review of these books is the basic journalistic path .