Israel was from the start a settler colonial project and like all settler colonial projects it was predicated on racist hierarchies, acting like a "a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism" (Herzl)... 1/
at the same time that many of the early settlers of the Yishuv had escaped pogroms in Eastern Europe. 2/
Below is a list of readings about the emergence of the state of Israel and why writing about its settler colonial history is necessary. Many of the scholarly work here have been debated, but all are considered to be excellent works of research. 3/
Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948
Rosemary Sayigh, The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries
Nur Masalha, The Palestinian Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory
Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Benny Morris, The Birth of Palestinian Refugee Problem (2nd edition) - after which Morris said Israel should have just ethnically cleansed ALL Palestinians in 1948 and not just some.
Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World
Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition ---- on Israeli nationalist myth-making.
Shira Robinson, Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel’s Liberal Settler State ---- on how Palestinians who later became citizens of Israel were under military occupation inside the Green Line until 1966.
There are literally dozens of other books focusing on the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, and that is even before we talk about the colonisation of West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem in 1967. Or about the regimes of colonial domination inside and outside.
I would also like to mention a couple of books about the ways in which the Shoah was used by the statesmen in Israel - cynically and otherwise. Idith Zertal's Israel's Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood .
And a contemporary account which took nearly a half century before it was translated and released in Israel itself. Like all reportage it can be criticised, bit is necessary reading: Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem.
Finally, the early history of Israel's Mizrahi Jews is also crucial. And for that Orit Bashkin's Impossible Exodus: Iraqi Jews in Israel is crucial.
And finally finally finally for those who deny the Palestinian right of return I strongly recommend Ghassan Kanafani's Returning to Haifa. Kanafani was assassinated by Israel along with his teenage niece on the streets of Beirut.
Somehow Walid Khalidi's two books, All That Remains (about destroyed Palestinian villages), and Before Their Diaspora (about the social life of Palestinians before 1948) got delinked.
If you don't want to read this library of books, then there is this 12-page primer by @meriponline: web.stanford.edu/group/sper/ima… and then there is Joe Sacco's graphic books: (1) Palestine and (2) Footnotes in Gaza about Israeli massacres there in 1956.
