{"id":219152,"date":"2022-09-05T12:00:46","date_gmt":"2022-09-05T11:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=219152"},"modified":"2022-09-04T07:29:02","modified_gmt":"2022-09-04T06:29:02","slug":"the-hundred-year-war-on-palestine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/09\/the-hundred-year-war-on-palestine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hundred Year War on Palestine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Hundred Year War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance 1917-2017,<\/em> by Rashid Khalidi,\u00a0 Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2020<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With the writing of The Hundred Year War on Palestine \u2013 A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017, <\/em>Rashid Khalidi has created an interesting well written overview of the Zionist colonial-settler enterprise in Palestine.\u00a0 One of the underlying features of the creation of Israel is how well it fits into the colonial-settler mindset that established the current Five Eyes scenario of the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia within the global influence of the British empire.\u00a0 The indigenous people of each of those regions were effectively done away with, labelled \u201csavages\u201d and \u201cuncivilized\u201d, beneath contempt, and essentially to be eliminated through various means of genocide and ethnic cleansing.<\/p>\n

In Palestine, those attempts at ethnic cleansing, a necessity for the Zionists in regard to their demographic fears of majority Arab\/Palestinian population, came up against the post WW II decolonization movements rising from the liberal rhetoric of the western powers and the Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union.\u00a0 It also came up against the will of the indigenous people, the Palestinians, who \u201chave shown unusual patience, perseverance, and steadfastness in defending their rights, which is the main reason that their cause I still alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

While looking at the \u201cHundred Years\u2019 War\u201d, Khalidi divides it into six \u201cdeclarations of war\u201d as a means of highlighting the different eras and approaches to the Palestinian struggle: the Balfour pre WW II era; the nakba; the 1967 war; Beirut; the first intifada; and the second intifada leading into the \u201cwar on terror\u201d.<\/p>\n

Several threads through Khalidi\u2019s writing make it highly informative, accessible, and powerful in its honest forth right approach.\u00a0 The latter stands out significantly.\u00a0 While recognizing that targeted assassinations, imprisonment, and exile have eliminated many Palestinian leaders, he does not avoid criticizing past and current leaders for the mistakes they have made both with their internal divisions and with their conduct in relation to the rest of the world.\u00a0 The PLO\/PA have lost all integrity and Khalidi highlights the path of that loss.<\/p>\n

Another aspect creating an accessible read is Khalidi\u2019s ties into personal information of his own life lived within and on the edges of the ongoing war on Palestine.\u00a0 This came through most particularly with his descriptions of the Beirut invasion and the political and social aftermath not just in Palestine\/Lebanon but in the greater region and globally.<\/p>\n

The latter element rounds out the history.\u00a0 For each declaration of war, the war is discussed briefly and then branches off into all the ramifications of that era both domestically and geopolitically abroad, highlighting of course U.S. involvement but also the timid fearful attitudes of the Arab states, none of them democracies and all of the governments intimidated not only by Israeli power, but also the ongoing threats and coercion from the US and its subordinate allies.<\/p>\n

As I have found with most history books, the timeline at the end is tricky.\u00a0 Khalidi essentially sees Palestine as down and out \u2013 other than the quote above on steadfastness \u2013 with the final touches of Trump\u2019 obsequious actions eliminating several of the long-argued narratives, settling them definitively and unilaterally in Israel\u2019s favour.<\/p>\n

Yet two years after publication, there is hope that at least on the international scene, many more people, if not their governments, are aware of Israeli atrocities and crimes against human rights.\u00a0 In spite of \u2013 and is some views because of \u2013 Israel\u2019s hasbara attempts, much more knowledge of how Israel is actually treating the indigenous Palestinian population has become known.\u00a0 The BDS movement, the arguments concerning the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, and the declarations by B\u2019Tselem, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch declaring Israel an apartheid state have all contributed to an increasing knowledge base about events in Palestine.<\/p>\n

Perhaps more importantly, events in Ukraine\/Russia and the broader implications of not just the actual war, but the tendency of many other countries in the world not siding with US\/NATO while looking into and adhering to alternate global financial and political arrangements may have large affects on the Middle Ear in general and maybe then into Israel. \u00a0\u00a0Khalidi recognizes that the US \u201cwill not necessarily maintain the near monopoly over the Palestine question, and indeed over the entire Middle East, that it has enjoyed for so long.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regardless of either the knowledge as gained from recent civilian actions or the influence of the larger geopolitical effects of the Ukraine\/US\/Russia war the path forward will require and undoubtedly will sustain the \u201cunusual patience, perseverance, and steadfastness in defending their rights\u201d of the Palestinian people themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Hundred Year War on Palestine \u2013 A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017\u201d <\/em>is a valuable and timely addition to the Palestinian narrative.\u00a0 It provides an over-arching view of this one particular instance of colonial-settlerism that has significantly influenced global geopolitics for the past century and will continue to do so moving forward.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – countercurrents.org<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Join the<\/em><\/strong> BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS <\/em><\/strong>campaign<\/em><\/strong><\/span> to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation\u2019s territory, the apartheid wall, its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people, and the more than 7,000 Palestinian men, women, elderly and children arbitrarily locked up in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n

DON’T BUY<\/strong> PRODUCTS WHOSE<\/strong> BARCODE<\/strong> STARTS WITH<\/strong> 729<\/strong>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rashid Khalidi\u2019s book is an interesting well written overview of the Zionist colonial-settler enterprise in Palestine. How the creation of Israel fits into the colonial-settler mindset that established the current Five Eyes scenario of the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia within the global influence of the British empire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":219155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[928,532,101,100,2898,87,865,2414,2415,2416,767,771,427,85,2897,880,99,92,1025,886],"class_list":["post-219152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-bds-boycott-divestment-sanctions","tag-colonialism","tag-cultural-violence","tag-direct-violence","tag-ecocide","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-israeli-apartheid","tag-israeli-army","tag-israeli-occupation","tag-middle-east","tag-nakba","tag-palestine","tag-palestine-israel","tag-sociocide","tag-state-terrorism","tag-structural-violence","tag-violent-conflict","tag-west-bank","tag-zionism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}