If you think the Israel-Palestine conflict is too complex to understand, think again. Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire, written without academic jargon by author and activist Richard Becker, provides a solid introduction to key events in the history underlying today’s current events. Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire is unabashedly partisan toward the Palestinian cause, but the author’s claims are well reasoned and documented.
There is, in fact, an irreconcilable conflict in the Middle East, but it is not one between different peoples or faiths. It is instead the struggle between imperialism, Israel and the dependent Arab regimes on the one hand and the oppressed peoples of this oil-rich and strategic region fighting for liberation and progress on the other.
At the very heart of this conflict is Palestine. The Palestinian struggle is a struggle against Western colonialism. It has been this way from the beginning, more than a century ago. As is the case with all conflicts and world events, what is going on today in Palestine and the Middle East can only be understood in its historical context.
Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire was published by Liberation Media in 2009. It’s available for purchase here. In light of the recent resurgence in the Palestinian solidarity movement, the PSL has made the book freely available, and Liberation Audio created the audio versions for each chapter found below.
Chapter 1: A struggle against Western colonialism
Chapter 2: Does the Israel lobby control U.S. policy?
Chapter 3: Dividing the Middle East
Chapter 4: Zionism: A colonial project
Chapter 5: Building a settler state American-style
Chapter 6: The Palestinian revolt of 1936-1939
Chapter 7: World War II: Anti-Semitism and genocide
Chapter 8: Illegal U.N. partition
Chapter 9: Born of massacres and ethnic cleansing
Chapter 10: Watchdog for the West
Chapter 11: Fortifying the US-Israeli alliance
Chapter 12: The Palestinian struggle takes center stage
Chapter 13: Lebanon: Civil war and occupation
Chapter 14: Intifada, ‘Peace Process,’ Intifada
Chapter 15: Imperialist failure: The ‘New Middle East’
Chapter 16: U.S.-Israeli relations after Bush
Chapter 17: Is Israel an apartheid state?
Chapter 18: The Palestinian right of return
Chapter 19: Subsidizing occupation: U.S. aid to Israel
Chapter 20: Palestine and the U.S. anti-war movement
Chapter 21: The ‘irreconcilable’ conflict and the future
