seeing ☆ stars

Also:

“I see you’re sick/sad! Let me do my best to distract you from that so you can stop thinking about it and feel better!”

The following is a collection of articles, essays, and books on Palestine. These are not introduction texts to the question of Palestine or the Palestinain-Israeli “conflict”. If you need one read The Palestine-Israel Conflict by Gregory Harms and Todd Fery. Further, this is not an “unbiased” or “neutral” readng list. Everything listed below is counter-hegemonic. I feel absolutely no need to provide anything from the Zionist or Israeli point-of-view when that is the dominant narrative. With that said, I believe this provides a diverse, but in no means comprehensive, overview of the discourse on Palestine. A continuously updated page of this list can be found here.

On Theory

Orientalism by Edward Said

Orientalism Reconsidered by Edward Said

The Question of Palestine by Edward Said

Reading Said in Hebrew by Ella Shohat

Notes on the “Post-Colonial” by Ella Shohat

On History

History of Palestine by Dr. Mohsen Mohammed Saleh

Sabra and Shatila: September 1982 by Bayan Nuwayhed al-Hout

Peace and its Discontents by Edward Said

On Being Palestinian

What It Means to be Palestinian by Dina Matar

A Narrative of Palestinian Dispossession by Samia Costandi

The Palestinian Exile as Writer by Jabra I. Jabra

My People Shall Live by Leila Khaled

Memoirs, 1948 Part I by Fauzi Al-Qawuqji

Memoirs, 1948 Part II

Palestinian Identity and the Performance of Catastrophe by Ihab Saloul

On Zionism

Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims by Edward Said

Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims by Ella Shohat

Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism by Judith Butler

The Invention of the Mizrahim by Ella Shohat

Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel by Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky

Jewish History, Jewish Religion by Israel Shahak

The Ends of Zionism by Joseph Massad

The Persistence of the Palestinian Question by Joseph Massad

On Imperialism and Settler Colonialism in West Asia by Jamil Hilal

The Hidden History of Zionism by Ralph Schoenman

How the Zionists Took Over Palestine by Adel Safty

Imperial Israel and the Palestinians by Nur Masalha

After Zionism by Antony Loewenstein and Ahmed Moor

On the Holocaust

Respecting the Holocaust by Howard Zinn

The Holocaust: Learning the Wrong Lessons by Boaz Evron

The Victimhood of the Powerful by Jennifer Peto

On Media

Propaganda, Perception, and Reality by William A. Cook

Israeli Cinema an interview with Ella Shohat

Israeli Cinema by Ella Shohat

Palestinian Cinema by Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi

On Al Nakba

The 1948 Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe

The Saga of Deir Yassin

The Fall of Lydda by Spiro Munayyer

Returning to Kafr Bir'im

How Palestine became Israel by Stephen Hallbrook

The Palestinian Exodus of 1948 by Simha Flapan

Why Did the Palestinians Leave by Walid Khalidi

Selected Documents on 1948

The Limits of the New Israeli History by Joel Beinin

On Genocide

Genocide or Erasure of Palestinians by Kathleen and Bill Christison

Israel’s Slow-Motion Genocide in Occupied Palestine by Steve Lendman

Ongoing Palestinian Genocide by Gideon Polya

The Lessons of Violence by Chris Hedges

The Brutal Siege of Gaza Can Only Breed Violence by Karen Koning AbuZayd

The Olive Trees of Palestine Weep by Sonja Karkar

Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust by Richard Falk

Gaza is Dying by Patrick Cockburn

Israeli Immunity for Genocide by Andrea Howard

Palestinian Misery in Perspective by Paul De Rooij

A Slow, Steady Genocide an interview with Tanya Reinhart

Gaza’s Holocaust by Dr. Elias Akleh

Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion by Adi Ophir

The British in Palestine, A Conveniently Forgotten Holocaust by Robert Fisk

European Collusion in Israel’s Slow Genocide by Omar Barghouti

Genocide in Gaza by Ilan Pappe

Genocide Among Us by Curtis F. J. Doebbler

Bleaching the Attrocities of Genocide by Kim Petersen

The Rape of Palestine by William A. Cook

Israel Plots Another Palestinian Exodus by Jonathan Cook

Slow Motion Ethnic Cleansing by Uri Avnery

Disappearing Palestine by Jonathan Cook

The Problem With Israel by Jeff Halper

Gaza in Crisis by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe

Drying Out the Palestinians

Israel’s Latest Assault on Gaza by Norman Finkelstein

To Gaza I Did Not Go by Gideon Levy

Gaza, the World’s Largest Open-Air Prison by Noam Chomsky

The Most Humane Little Checkpoint by Amira Hass

On BDS

BDS: Winning Justice for the Palestinian People

Why Boycott Israeli Universities?

The Necessity of Cultural Boycott by Ilan Pappe

Companies Supporting Israeli Occupation

On Solutions

Two-State Illusion by Ian S. Lustick

Relative Humanity: The Essential Obstacle to a One-State Solution by Omar Barghouti

Real Flower Snail Figurines

In a nutshell, “fawning” is the use of people-pleasing to diffuse conflict, feel more secure in relationships, and earn the approval of others.

It’s a maladaptive way of creating safety in our connections with others by essentially mirroring the imagined expectations and desires of other people.

Often times, it stems from traumatic experiences early on in life, as I described in last month’s article.

It resonated with so many you, and since then, I’ve gotten a lot of questions on how to recognize this type of response in ourselves, particularly in our day-to-day interactions.

I can only speak from personal experience, but there are a number of commonalities among “fawn” types that I think are worth noting.

I’m going to share seven struggles that a lot of us seem to experience as people-pleasers. If it sounds familiar, you, my friend, probably know a thing or two about fawning.

A lot of people with mental illness do not want to get better. Or at least go through a period where they don’t want to get better. There’s many reasons for this: fueling off of your pain, fear of change, fear of the unknown, avoiding the pain/difficulty of recovery, not believing you’re worth recovery, not believing you can get better, not “believing in therapy/treatment”…ect. I think this in part comes from how many of us have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic. You are capable of getting better. You are capable of recovery. And deep down you do want to get better, there are just many things that are keeping you from that desire. But you can only start recovery when you consent fully to getting better, you have to commit to it. Here are some quotes that really helped me with this, I hope you’ll find them helpful too:

“Do not call the inability to start laziness. Call it fear. Stop yelling at yourself. Be nice. Call fear by its right name.”

“Many experience a sudden disinterest in recovery at some point. To therapists, this surge of sudden disinterest (“It doesn’t matter”) is a routine coping device employed to deny pain and ward off vulnerability.”

“As with any rupture, there is both tension and relief. Long-seated depression breaks up like an ice floe. Long-frozon feelings thaw, melt, cascade, flood, and often overrun their container (you). You may find yourself feeling volatile and changeable. You are.”

“At the root of a successful recovery is the commitment to puncture our denial, to stop saying, ‘It’s okay’ when in fact it’s something else.”

“Most blocked creatives have an active addiction to anxiety. We prefer the low-grade pain and occasional heart-stopping panic attack to the drudgery of small and simple daily steps in the right direction.”

“It takes grace and courage to admit and surrender our bad coping devices. Who wants to? Not while they are still working! Of course, long after they have stopped working, we hope against hope that this time they will work again.”