“Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics<\/a>” is a critical analysis of U.S. and Israeli policies on Palestinian sovereignty, arguing that U.S. liberals and progressives inconsistently apply universal human rights when considering the state of Palestine (the “progressive except Palestine” or “PEP” position<\/a>). Published in 2021, this book sets out clear topics such as growing anti-Ashkenazi and religious Jewish bigotry, opportunistic U.S. policy and inconsistent liberal interpretations of human rights as it pertains to Palestinians.<\/p>\n In five chapters, the authors address the formation of the state of Israel, the criminalization of critique of Israel, the evolution of U.S. policy toward both Palestine and Israel under Trump\u2019s first administration, and the manufactured consent that accompanies propaganda and rhetoric surrounding the land of Gaza.<\/p>\n The authors aim to illuminate how there is a moral shortfall in how Palestine is addressed in terms of rhetoric, policy, land and human rights.<\/p>\n Through historical and contemporary analysis, a picture is painted of how multiple military forces and international sentiment have facilitated an exceptional position for Palestine.<\/p>\n Chapter one begins with the unpacking one of the most operationalized and weaponized questions when it comes to discussing the topic of Palestine or Israel, which is \u201cDo you believe Israel has the right to exist?\u201d The question is politically rhetorical, as it usually functions as a \u201cgotcha\u201d or double-edged sword of silence: answer no, which public figures, scholars or policymakers rarely do, and that would likely incite a cascade of rhetorical violence that could be seen as negating anti-Ashkenazi\/religious Jewish violence and the histories of Ashkenazi\/Jewish people. Answer yes, and then that is used to shut down any further critique, attempting to enclose the speaker into the \u201cpro-Israel\u201d camp. Negate the question \u2014 and answer with a different statement altogether that does not seek to validate the existence of a nearly 80-year-old country, but instead interrogate if any country anywhere has the right to carry out the well-documented violence and occupation upon another group of people \u2014 and that too is often categorized too lenient of a stance in the face of Ashkenazi persecution and condemnation of \u2018terrorism.\u2019<\/p>\n The chapter traces this question back to Zionism, citing early Israeli Prime Ministers who sought to legitimize their right to land, specifically Palestine. It highlights that Palestine has historically been home to Christians, Jews and Muslims. However, Zionism specifically aimed at establishing an Ashkenazi state. The influential Ze\u2019ev Jabotinsky, founder of Israel\u2019s Revisionist movement<\/a>, is mentioned for his advocacy of an “iron wall” that symbolized a strong Jewish presence in the pre-existing state of Palestine, thus shaping sentiments and policies around the establishment of Israel.<\/p>\n The narrative continues through the timeline of the Nakba of 1948, which in diplomatic terms is understood as a \u2018key event\u2019 and shift in power, and from a Palestinian and even liberal point of view, a devastating war, resulting in over 700,00 people being physically forced out of their homes. The authors discuss how international law, through various conferences, led to the recognition of two states by 1993 through the Oslo Accords. They delve deeper into the concept of nationhood, acknowledging that the formation of nations is typically a project of majority power, government force and military violence, especially in the case of settler colonial states like the U.S.<\/p>\n The question of existence doesn\u2019t account for the issue the authors are trying to raise, which is: Should a nation exist at the immense expense of another people historically descended from that land? Should the rest of the world be indifferent or accepting of that consequence of violence? And should another nation dictate how another group of people get to self-define?<\/p>\n Concern arises with the nature of Israeli governance, particularly following the passage of the Nation-State Law in July 2018<\/a>, stirring significant controversy. The chapter shifts focus to the origins of the BDS movement after the Second Intifada, which devastated the West Bank and Gaza.<\/p>\n The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)<\/a> marks the first iteration, rooted in calls from Palestinian scholars for boycotts and divestments from Israeli institutions. This movement gained substantial support, ultimately resulting in over 170 Palestinian civil society groups endorsing the campaign and calling for Israel to recognize Palestinian self-determination and end its occupation, alongside respecting the rights of Palestinian refugees as stipulated in UN Resolution 194<\/a>.<\/p>\n The authors highlight Israel’s initial disregard for the BDS movement, which grew more prominent following violence against Gaza in 2008 and 2009. They emphasize the movement’s non-violent approach while also addressing the pervasive use of propaganda in think tanks, particularly the Reut Institute<\/a>. This institution contributed to the framing that equates support for Palestinian rights with being anti-Israeli, fostering a zero-sum mentality. The authors argue that this rhetoric constrains discussions around sovereignty, land restoration, and justice for Palestinians, ultimately complicating the discourse and masking the human rights violations at stake.<\/p>\n In the following chapters, the narrative shifts toward the impact of Trump\u2019s administration on the Israeli-Palestinian dynamic, including his controversial recognition of Golan Heights, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and cuts to UNRWA funding. The significance of moving the embassy to Jerusalem is particularly significant because it has historically been a site of religious importance for Jews, Muslims and Christians. It was designated in the 1967 UN resolution as a corpus separatum<\/a>, meaning it is not meant to \u2018belong\u2019 to any country\u2019s particular territory.<\/p>\n Following this focus on Jerusalem, the chapter covers the destabilization of Gaza, documenting various wars and aggressions impacting its economy and civil society. This historical account captures the continuous challenges faced by Palestinians, particularly focusing on their long-standing demands for resettlement and land restoration.<\/p>\n Ultimately the authors critique the contradictions among progressives who support Jewish solidarity while overlooking Palestinian rights, arguing that such solidarity is self-defeating if it comes at the expense of another people.<\/p>\n Editorial Note: Looking for similar books? Check out these other pieces from The Rauch Review:<\/em><\/p>\n At The Rauch Review<\/a>, we care deeply about being transparent and earning your trust. These articles explain why and how we created our unique methodology for reviewing books and other storytelling mediums.<\/p>\n<\/div> This could be for liberal and left or centrist readers who seek to unpack the deliberate opacity manufactured around Palestinian history and solidarity.<\/p>\n The audience for this book is also a reader who seeks to understand the clear relationships between the U.S. and Israel as it relates to land, military and foreign policy, and the cooperation the two have orchestrated across administrations to result in the destruction of Palestine and erosion of land rights.<\/p>\n Editorial Note: We believe these three factors are important for evaluating general writing quality across every aspect of the book. Before you get into further analysis, here\u2019s a quick breakdown to clarify how we\u2019re using these words:<\/em><\/p>\n This book covers various aspects of a century’s worth of history and political discourse, as well as centuries-old religious debates. Its main argument highlights the notable absence of solidarity and international justice in liberal politics.<\/p>\n Chapter 2 emphasizes the extensive criminalization of a non-violent boycott movement. However, a comparison with the boycott against apartheid South Africa<\/a> could have strengthened this argument significantly.<\/p>\n In Chapter 3, intriguingly titled “Trumped-Up Policies,” the focus shifts to dissecting Trump’s policy changes, illustrating a shift from the more covert biases of previous administrations toward Israel to a more overt stance. This chapter, positioned midway through the book, dedicates considerable attention to Trump’s administration, alongside his Republican predecessors, as well as Obama and Clinton.<\/p>\n While this historical context is relevant to U.S. foreign policy and critiques the Trump administration directly, it does not necessarily connect back to the liberal exceptionalist politics regarding Palestine. Instead it reads more as an analysis of the power dynamics involving AIPAC, the U.S. government and the Knesset, rather than honing in on potential liberal complicity in the situation.<\/p>\n “Except for Palestine” sets out a clear thesis to analyse how Palestine is inconsistently and exceptionally treated in Israeli and U.S. policy, to immense detriment, violence and trauma.<\/p>\n The structure of the book allows for a coherent argument to be built alongside historical context and political analysis. In each chapter, the nexus of the given issue \u2014 whether it be the BDS movement or the Oslo negotiations and the concept of a two-state solution \u2014 the authors dissect to reveal the underrepresented consequences and precedents.<\/p>\n Each chapter deals with multiple timelines and international powers and is able to contain those intersecting moments in each chapter.<\/p>\n There are, however, certain measurements of sentiment that are somewhat taken for granted. The large grouping of the American Left and perceived silence as evidence is one of the exceptional arguments in the book. This could be better bolstered by certain quantitative measures to paint a picture of voting patterns. In contrast, the authors cite well-known and visible democrats like Cory Booker and his position on BDS to demonstrate the American Left\u2019s complicity.<\/p>\n Again, this book attempts to contend with the B-side of nearly 100 years’ worth of history in five concise chapters. While the authors’ focus on clarity allows them to present a strong, coherent argument, it also results in limited engagement with certain topics that are essential for a more nuanced understanding. The brevity makes this work accessible to readers who are new to the subject, but it does toe the line of oversimplifying complex history and political dynamics, namely the many people and voices who are put into camps of \u2018pro\u2019, \u2018anti\u2019 , and of big enough political significance to be cited in speeches or publications.<\/p>\n The writing of this book is cogent. The authors create and follow a formulaic and clear structure for the reader. It is almost academic in nature in stating the research problem and then presenting the content and the main focus areas. The arguments themselves are not lofted above an average reader, making it again clear and accessible. Simultaneously, some of the diction choices reflect a more academic and political lexicon.<\/p>\n The writing, however, does feel very trepidatious, attempting to not overstep or invalidate the two camps the authors have reaffirmed, which is a \u201cJewish\u201d state, and therefore \u201cJewish\u201d people, and Palestinians. Where one atrocity is addressed against Jewish people, another is acknowledged about Palestinians.<\/p>\n Lastly the book\u2019s final paragraph cites an attack on a Jewish Orthodox community in 2019 in the U.S. The authors cite this to condemn anti-Jewish violence and then cite Linda Sarsour<\/a>, who noted that moment offered an opportunity to build solidarity among all religious minorities. This conclusion is revealing in the position around religion, but there is a lack of condemnation of imperialism, colonialism, Islamophobia or racism, all of which interlock to affect how Palestine and Palestinians are treated in the international community.<\/p>\n Overarching, the book reads like a balancing act that is attempting to temper down an emotional response the authors are seemingly accounting for.<\/p>\n This work offers an examination of the conflict in Palestine and Israel from a perspective that challenges mainstream narratives. For example, the time spent on the BDS movement’s roots highlights its inception as a response to the violence of the Second Intifada and the rallying of over 170 Palestinian civil society groups in support of its aims. This section brings needed depth to something that has been located in the taboo and as pointed out by the authors, increasingly scrutinised and criminalized.<\/p>\n There is a great deal of useful context that spotlights how extensively Palestine as a nation and a people have been relegated into a political gray zone, if not intentionally maligned and framed as aggressors or unworthy stewards of the Levant area. This book intentionally steps left of mainstream liberal politics<\/a> that can offer platitudinous ideals of solidarity that are mismatched with policies that actively support occupation. This book also firmly locates the U.S. as a powerful partner in the nation-building of Israel, noting that across political parties there has been a consistent pattern of support for Israel with differing levels of aid and restraint. This illustration is significant because it indicts the U.S. as a necessary entity in negotiations or withdrawal from the context.<\/p>\n As a popular academic book, the reviews of this book have both celebrated the authors, as well as condemned the work for polemic and incisive reasons.<\/p>\n In the praise, critics and reviewers have praised this book as taking an underrepresented political position, which is in support of Palestinian politics via calling liberal complicity into question. And further, \u201cExcept for Palestine\u201d was named the winner of the Counter Current Award at the Palestine Book Awards 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the critique of the book from more \u201cpro-Israel\u201d critics, there is conflation of critique of Israeli policy with “antisemitism,” and condemnation for the lack of framing of Palestine as an aggressor and regional threat. In less biased or polemic reviews, critiques of the book include that is as mentioned, quite concise, and therefore sacrifices some nuance, and presents an argument that can be read as possessing a heavier amount of persuasion than more \u2018traditional\u2019 political analysis texts.<\/p>\n For a book about Palestine, I did wonder where Palestinian voices were.<\/p>\n I write this critique not to dismiss the numerous citations of Palestinian politicians and activists like Helga Tawil-Souri<\/a> or Linda Sarsour, but a great deal of this book focused on the arc of actions in Israel and the U.S. Moreover, the placement of Palestinian voices is what led me to this critique. Every single chapter of this book opens with a voice from the U.S. or Israel. For example, chapter 4, The Crisis in Gaza, which opens with:<\/p>\n \u201cYitzhak Rabin was in an especially candid mood. While speaking to a delegation from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a center-right, pro-Israel think tank, the Israeli prime minister showed none of the diplomatic finesse for which Western nations often applauded him.\u201d<\/p>\n Chapter 2 opens with a quote from Cory Booker, a Zionist.<\/p>\n Therefore, this point of critique is not about quantity, but the orientation of narrative. I think the authors were writing from a firmly U.S. perspective, but in some cases unintentionally relegated Palestinians at times to a somewhat homogeneous group. So while the fairly clear critique of U.S. right and centrist politics was there, there was a lack of consideration of the more human side of the implications of the failure of liberal politics. What is at stake was wrapped up and obscured in the critique of the US and Israel.<\/p>\n This problem is compounded by the previously mentioned trepidation that seemed evident in the writing in the fervent condemnation of anti-Ashkenazi\/Jewish bigotry as a prelude to critique of Israel. The closing paragraph of the book condemned anti-Ashkenazi\/Jewish violence, and then used that point to make a case for uniting against all forms of discrimination, which feels like a very shallow engagement with the many powers and systems surrounding who is privileged and dispossessed in this conflict.<\/p>\n Further, I found that there is not a deep enough engagement with the historical legacy of Zionism that was initially detached from religion. The authors carefully note that they are historically analyzing various forms of Zionism and, paramountly, the actions of the most powerful factions of zionism. They note, \u201cFrom the earliest days of Zionism, there have been those who sought a Jewish connection to the land and even Jewish immigration to Palestine without the need for a Jewish state.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Zionism as an ideology was formed in the late late 1800s, about 10 years before Germany carried out its first holocaust in Namibia<\/a>. It is, by definition, a secular political ideology (that holds colonial tenets) that became a ripe ground for legitimacy in the project of Israel. As mentioned in previous reviews, there is a noted distance between the top leaders in Israel and the projected \u2018care\u2019 for the religion of Judaism.<\/p>\n There is a fair amount of consideration given to one of the leading voices and authors of Zionism, Ze\u2019ev Jabotinsky. The authors note that he was the founder of Israel\u2019s Revisionist movement, died in 1940 and, importantly, promoted an ideology that borrowed elements of the \u201cmost chauvinistic forms of nationalism and classical liberalism and melded them into his unique version of Zionism,\u201d this being an iron wall. Jabotinsky wrote that if the Jewish state could succeed, they should establish a \u2018metaphorical\u2019 iron wall that would signal an immovable presence of the Jewish state. The authors go on to state how the current prime minister adopted this ideology.<\/p>\n \u201c[Benjamin] Netanyahu, on the other hand, remained fixated on the first part of his ideological mentor\u2019s strategy of the iron wall and consequently undid much of the good work of his predecessors.\u201d<\/p>\n The establishment of Israel, even in its most benevolent terms, still used colonial and racist terms, which the authors also note is present in Jabotinsky\u2019s writing. The authors wrote: \u201cParadoxically, despite the blatantly ethnocentric and racist language and approach Jabotinsky was using, he contended, with merit, that he was granting the Palestinians far more respect than were his Labor Zionist interlocutors. Given this state of affairs, conquest was the only option for the colonizer, Jabotinsky posited.\u201d<\/p>\n The classification of the work prior to Netanyahu as \u2018good precedents\u2019 calls into question the consistency of the author’s assessment of violence. Is colonialism and dispossession a matter of fact of the settler-colonial state? If so, can good precedents and progressive ideals be made within the fortification of that project?<\/p>\n Within popular liberal politics, there is perhaps an apt comparison here. In 1866, Susan B. Anthony is quoted as saying<\/a>, \u201cI will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work for or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.”<\/p>\n The suffragette movement in the U.S. was largely impacted by the desire to share the same positions of power as men, and not dismantle power structures. There is perhaps an overlap here, where the classification of progression inside of a settler colonial state, as defined and noted by the authors, may lack the impact the recognition it intends to give.<\/p>\n I found this book to be contextually important in a world that has maligned the state of Palestine, and I appreciated the context and historical mapping the authors do to try to elucidate their argument. However, overall I found that the argument wasn\u2019t fully realized. While there were numerous accounts of how Palestine has been treated exceptionally, I don\u2019t think there was enough tying these things into the failure of liberal politics distinguishing which liberal politics have worked and which ones are hollow.<\/p>\n The BDS movement could be seen as rooted in liberal and grassroots politics. Nonetheless, there wasn\u2019t necessarily a specific critique of how liberals in the U.S. have contributed to the villainization of the movement, even as the villainization is made clear via U.S. laws attempting to criminalize participation.<\/p>\n It is overall opaque as to how to operationalize the critique, as the US, governed by intermittent changes of \u2018left\u2019 and \u2018right\u2019 politics, has consistently across party lines bolstered the unfolding genocide acceleration the world has witnessed since 2023. Sharper or comparative instances where the American left<\/a> has acted more liberally or inline with justice could have strengthened or make the argument more vivid.<\/p>\n “Except for Palestine” is a great resource in terms of history and politics surrounding the last 80 years concerning Palestine and Israel. There is careful consideration to distance and distinguish the difference between critique and anti-Ashkenazi\/Jewish bigotry, and there are useful discrepancies highlighted in how Palestinian human and land rights are eroded. Due to the nature of the U.S. publishing industry and the difficulty in critiquing Israel, the book gives great cushion to certain analyses, which in turn can result in a lack of condemnation of islamophobia, racism, classism, imperialism and colonialism.<\/p>\n\u2018Except for Palestine\u2019 Summary: \u2018Does Israel Have the Right to Exist?\u2019<\/h2>\n
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Audience and Genre: For New and Familiar Audiences Alike<\/h2>\n
Three Cs: Compelling, Clear, Concise<\/h2>\n
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Compelling: Historically Interesting, But Doesn\u2019t Quite Make the Argument<\/h3>\n
Clear: Well-Structured, Well-Paced<\/h3>\n
Concise: Yes, But It Loses Its Bite<\/h3>\n
Prose Style: Academic in Content and Structure<\/h2>\n
Cultural and Political Significance: A Useful Step Left of the Center<\/h2>\n
Critiquing the Critics: Predictably Dismissed by Certain Political Factions<\/h2>\n
Reviewer\u2019s Personal Opinion: For a Book About Palestine, Where are Palestinian Voices?<\/h2>\n
\u2018Except for Palestine\u2019: A Crash Course That is Left-Leaning<\/h2>\n
Buying and Rental Options<\/h2>\n
E-Commerce Text and Audio Purchases<\/h3>\n