Building A Crooked Wall: History of Zionist Colonialism and Palestinian Resistance

For decades, the history of Israel has been closely associated with the Second World War and the Holocaust. In 2009, Barack Obama told students at Cairo University: "The aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied. ... Anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust."That is true.But Palestine was not part of that Europe.Arabs, on the other hand, would argue that it was the Balfour Declaration of 1917 that paved the way for the Zionist colonisation of Palestine. The importance of the Balfour Declaration cannot be denied. Nor can it be denied that, by 1914, some Palestinian tribes had already been displaced. It was in 1914 that Issa al-Issa, a Palestinian intellectual, warned: "A nation threatened with disappearance by the Zionist tide in this Palestinian land... a nation which is threatened in its very being with expulsion from its homeland."This historical account offers a new perspective on a European colonial project in Palestine that was not necessarily initiated because of antisemitism. Rather, it emerged as a European colonial enterprise whose political justifications evolved over time in response to changing international circumstances. Drawing on established historical scholarship and official commission reports, Building a Crooked Wall reconstructs that history chronologically and invites readers to reconsider one of the most enduring narratives of the modern Middle East.