The Books of My Life: Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict

There is a proverb which says it is money that makes the world go around. While money does indeed make the world go around it is not the only thing that makes the world go around. Ideology with its polemics and apologetics also makes the world go around as Norman Finkelstein's Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (London: Verso, second edition, 2003) shows. Finkelstein's Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict explores, through a series of related critical historiographic essays, Zionist ideology, the settlement of Palestine by Jewish migrants and refugees, the birth of the state of Israel and the 1948 war, Israeli perceptions of Israeli-Arab relations, the 1967 war with the Arabs, the 1973 war with the Arabs, and the attempts at brokering a peace treaty between the Israelis and Palestinians, the Oslo Accords.

Despite the fact that the interpretation (hermeneutics) of social facts is never as straightforward as some think, Finkelstein offers theoretical critiques grounded in empirical evidence of several Israeli self-perception myths rather than realities and the polemics and apologetics surrounding them. Finkelstein, for instance, critiques the myth that Zionist ideology was not an ethnic form of nationalism, that Palestine was largely empty when Jews settled in Palestine, that the 1948 and Six Day wars weren't about the planned displacement of Palestinians from "Judea and Samaria", that with Oslo Israel did not put into place an apartheid solution to the Arab problem, and that Israel rather than the Arabs has not been the primary impediment to a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Finkelstein also nicely puts Israeli history and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into comparative contexts. Finkelstein notes that Zionist ideology was born in the context of nineteenth century European ethnic nationalism, that the notion that the part of Palestine that was empty was part of parcel of the European and particularly English and British notion, evident in US, Canadian, Australian, South African, and New Zealand as well, that since the indigenous populations were not using the land--an ideology grounded in modern presentism--it was morally acceptable to take it, that indigenous peoples were not "civilised", an ideology grounded in European ethnocentrism.

I highly recommend Finkelstein's Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict for those interested in the 20th and 21st century Middle East, Israel and Palestine, ideologically driven polemics and apologetics, the social and cultural construction of reality, European and particularly English and British settler societies, and historiography. Whether or not you agree with Finkelstein's conclusions and his occasional apologetics and polemics this is an important book that everyone interested in the Israeli and Palestinian conflict should read.