A Palestinian history of Zionism and its wars

THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR ON PALESTINE: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi (2020)

Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi, a member of the faculty of Columbia University, has written a history of Zionism from the point of view of the Palestinians, a view that we in the USA rarely if ever hear.  

He is a member of an old Palestinian family, with roots going back into the Ottoman Empire, and his history is, in part, a history of his own family.  I emphasize the personal history in this post, although he himself mentions it only in passing. 

We in the USA are told that Israel’s history is a story of a heroic struggle by Zionists against Arab terrorists to establish a safe haven for Jews from Nazis and other antisemites. Alternatively, we are told it is a history of a tragic unavoidable conflict between two peoples, Jews and Palestinians, with equal claims to the same territory.

Rashid Khalidi said neither story is true.  He said the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is an ongoing colonial war waged by an indigenous people against conquerors from afar.  In his story, the Jewish settlers of Israel are equivalent to the Dutch and English settlers in South Africa and the French settlers in Algeria.

Zionists were never underdogs, he wrote.  They had the backing of the British Empire and then of the United States, as well as a powerful global network of supporters and donors.  

Palestinian Arabs never had anything equivalent, he wrote.  Even Arab governments that gave them lip service always had their own agendas.

His book is organized around six specific historical episodes, which he called “declarations of war” against the Palestinian people.