An UNMUTED Book Club: The 100 Years War on Palestine

​READING NOT REQUIRED - just be curious!

​Next up: Rashid Khalidi's The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, the 2020 book that argues the Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn't simply a tragic struggle between two peoples claiming the same land, but a century-long colonial campaign against Palestinians, backed first by Britain and later by the United States.

​Khalidi, a Palestinian-American historian at Columbia, tells the story through six turning points, beginning with the 1917 Balfour Declaration and moving through the creation of Israel, the wars that followed, and the failures of the peace process. Drawing on historical archives and his own family's experiences, he makes a provocative argument: that Palestinians have never been negotiating on equal terms, and that understanding the conflict as a dispute between two competing national movements obscures the enormous imbalance of power between them. It's a forceful challenge to conventional accounts of Israel's founding, Zionism, and America's role in the region, and one that raises uncomfortable questions about nationalism, colonialism, and self-determination.

​Show up even if you only got through a chunk. We'll talk about where Khalidi's account is most convincing, where it leaves out important context, whether Zionism is best understood as a colonial movement or a national liberation movement, and what his interpretation of the past means for the possibility of peace today.

​UNMUTED is a discussion forum for the politically curious. Accessible. Engaging. Social. Open-minded is the name of the game. Join your people.