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A review by keegan_leech
Palestine: A Socialist Introduction by Sumaya Awad, Brian Bean
challenging
informative
reflective
2.5
I would highly recommend this book, but not to everyone. I think there's very much an ideal reader in mind, one perfectly summed up in Remi Kanazi's afterword:
If you are reading this book, I imagine you care. You’ve watched documentaries, you’ve been to protests, you’ve picked up pamphlets, read articles or books, and you want to know more. You want to sharpen your knowledge, advance your skills, or analyze information through a revolutionary and socialist framework.
If that does sound like you, then this is a great read. Pick up the book now, and you'll probably get a lot out of it. The essays in the book are thorough and interesting. They discuss in detail not just the history of Palestine, but of the left wing in the struggle for Palestine and how this has shaped modern the political landscape. The essays are worthwhile, and while each one tackles its particular topics in depth, they flow together well and cover a great deal in their aggregate.
On the other hand, I kept thinking that there were many people who I wouldn't recommend the book to. The promise in the title is met, but with a laser focus that is perhaps quite limiting. It isn't an introduction to socialism for those already firmly in touch with the struggle for Palestine, nor an introduction to Palestine for socialists, and it's certainly not something I'd recommend to someone with little knowledge of either topic. I felt that to get the most out of the book would be to have at least some familiarity with both.
I may be wrong. It may be a fantastic introduction for someone who doesn't look anything like Remi Kanazi's imagined reader. But I don't think I could say that with any confidence.
Content Warnings
Minor: Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Colonisation, and War
The content is never discussed in graphic detail, but to some extent it is a main focus of the book and therefore unavoidable. Nothing is more graphic than you could expect from a newspaper article.
There are sections which may feel quite bleak, not because they are detailed, but because the abuses discussed are so large in the scale at which they're carried out.