Hardcover: 344 pages
Publisher: Verso (19 Oct 2009)
Language English
ISBN-10: 1844674223
ISBN-13: 978-1844674220

Review by By Jim Miles

The Invention of the Jewish People. Shlomo Sand. Verso, New York, 2009.

Historians living within their own nations develop within the mythology peculiar to their nation, in which "various spheres of memory coalesced into an imagined universe representing the past." The historian is a combination of his own personal experiences and the larger societal "instilled memories." Recognizing that, Shlomo Sand very capably steps away from the created mythology of Israel, of the national myth of the wandering people for two thousand years before finding home again, in a land that belonged only to that people even though others had lived there during the same two thousand years. The Invention of the Jewish People is his groundbreaking historical study of the nature of the Jewish "nation" and its created mythologies.

Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism
By M. Shahid Alam

Hardback: 288 pages
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (November 10, 2009)
ISBN-10: 0230614841
ISBN-13: 978-0230614840
RRP: £55.00

Review by Kathleen Christison

Zionism Laid Bare
The essential point of M. Shahid Alam’s book, Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism, comes clear upon opening the book to the inscription in the frontispiece. From the Persian poet and philosopher Rumi, the quote reads, “You have the light, but you have no humanity. Seek humanity, for that is the goal.” Alam, professor of economics at Northeastern University in Boston and a CounterPunch contributor, follows this with an explicit statement of his aims in the first paragraph of the preface. Asking and answering the obvious question, “Why is an economist writing a book on the geopolitics of Zionism?” he says that he “could have written a book about the economics of Zionism, the Israeli economy, or the economy of the West Bank and Gaza, but how would any of that have helped me to understand the cold logic and the deep passions that have driven Zionism?”

...A doctor in the hospitals of Gaza under fire

By Jihad Abdel-Alim Al-Farra

Paperback: 170 pages
Publisher: Danish Islamic Council, Copenhagen: 2009

Reviewed by Salah Issa (Quds Press)

This is an exceptional book, by any standards. Its words convey a profound human experience packed with emotional force, touching the conscience enough to make the reader cry again and again.

Published in Copenhagen, the author takes the reader initially to Scandinavia, where he lives and works as a surgeon in a hospital accident and emergency department. It was there during the long winter nights of January 2009 that the Israeli shelling of Gaza affected Dr. Al-Farra and moved him to the core. So much so that he realized that his sense of humanitarian and moral duty, professional commitment and religious beliefs, all made it imperative for him to go to the besieged Gaza Strip, even as it was being pummelled by the Israeli war machine.

Palestine in Pieces: Graphic perspectives on the Israeli Occupation
By Kathleen and Bill Christison

Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Pluto Press (20 Jul 2009)
ISBN-10: 0745329292
ISBN-13: 978-0745329291
RRP: 14.99
Visit Pluto Press for details

Review by Zulaikha Abdullah, Middle East Monitor, (MEMO), London

Palestine in pieces: Graphic perspectives on the Israeli Occupation is the most recent contribution by Kathleen and Bill Christison in their long standing effort to bring into the public domain the realities and horrors of the Palestinian people's plight as a colonised and oppressed nation living under the belligerent occupation of Israel.