Understanding Palestine and Israel

Want to save on this book and support IPS? Purchase “Understanding Palestine and Israel” at this link and use coupon code IPS to save 10 percent. An additional 20 percent will be donated to IPS at no cost to you. (This offer will expire on September 1, 2025. )

“All the questions you’ve been wondering about—up to and including Israel’s war on Gaza and the election of Donald Trump.

People across the US watched in horror as Israel responded to the terrible acts of October 7, 2023 with a brutal war against the people of Gaza. They poured into the streets demanding Ceasefire Now—and protested the US government financing, arming, and protecting Israel’s war. A key question was when to start the clock—because none of those events actually began on October 7; all had their origins in events 17, or 58, or 77 years earlier.

In straightforward, accessible language Phyllis Bennis takes on that question—and many more—providing answers to the queries so many never before had the chance to ask. What is the Balfour Declaration? What are the Occupied Territories? What is Zionism—and do all Jews support it? Does Israel have the right of self-defense? What were conditions like in Gaza before October 7?”

Citation (MLA): Bennis, Phyllis. Understanding Palestine & Israel. Olive Branch Press, 2024.

• WATCH Phyllis talk about why she wrote the book here.
• WATCH Phyllis go over some key arguments from the book here.
• READ excerpts from the book here.
• BUY the book here. (Use the coupon code “IPS” to support IPS and get 10 percent off. Valid till September 1, 2025.)

Praise for Understanding Palestine and Israel:

“This invaluable tour de force by Phyllis Bennis offers readers the most comprehensive, lucid, readable, and reliably informed and evidence-based guide available … While objective in its use of data and interpretative commentary, the book is impressively clear about the distinction between oppressor and oppressed.”

— Richard Falk, Professor of International Law, Emeritus, Princeton University

“No topic in the Western world has been more deliberately distorted and obscured than the subject of Palestine and Israel … With stunning clarity and an unwavering commitment to speaking truth in an age of official lies, Phyllis Bennis tears back the curtain of government and corporate disinformation to reveal the truth of a one-hundred-year history of colonization, apartheid and genocide, and a growing global movement for justice in Palestine. This point-by-point examination brings together the historical, factual, legal, and moral basis for an informed understanding of one of the great historical (and ongoing) injustices of the past hundred years.”

— Craig Mokhiber, international human rights lawyer and activist and former senior United Nations official

“To interrogate the role of the Israeli government and its military, over many years, in creating a fertile soil for Palestinian anger…. Understanding Palestine and Israel, a new book by writer Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at DC’s Institute for Policy Studies, might be a useful primer.”

— The Washington Post