Top products from r/IsraelPalestine

We found 26 product mentions on r/IsraelPalestine. We ranked the 29 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

Next page

Top comments that mention products on r/IsraelPalestine:

u/JeffB1517 · 1 pointr/IsraelPalestine

I did read Fateful Triangle many years ago I don't remember it well. I liked it didn't love it. I think he has some good lines about the Liberal delusions about what Oslo agreed to. And he certainly said this stuff far earlier than most in this book. Credit where credit is due.

I often enjoy Chomsky but I tend to disagree too much to consider him a great writer. The big problem I have with Chomsky is he tends to have rather unrealistic views of what countries do and then "shocks" his readers by talking about how the USA doesn't meet those standards. If you start with the basic premise that the USA is rationally pursuing its self interest along with other entities pursuing their self interest I think a good deal of the shock wears off. The hypocrisy he insinuates just isn't there. The USA does support humanitarian norms, it is just about the 15th priority on the list, not the 1st or 2nd. Similarly the purpose of Israel is to act in the collective self interest of the Jewish nation. Democratic norms are obeyed and enhanced in Israel in so far as they are in accord or at least don't conflict with that goal

You asked for book recommendations.

u/HoliHandGrenades · 3 pointsr/IsraelPalestine

> The British in no way armed or trained...

The British armed and trained tens of thousands of Jewish fighters in the Levant between 1936 and 1947. First the British used them to suppress and attack the indigenous population, and then a portion of them were used by the British during WWII.

It's not my fault you are ignorant of historical facts, but your ignorance doesn't effect whether they are true or not.

Further, your claim that the British had

> the plan was for the idea of a Jewish National Home to be wiped out forever

is likewise disproven by the facts. The opposite is actually true, as, from 1917 to 1947 the British harshly repressed all Palestinian attempts to build pre-state institutions, while encouraging the immigrant Jewish population they had imported to build exactly those types of institutions.

The evidence demonstrates, irrefutably, that the British greatly favored the imported Jewish population they had brought into the Levant over the indigenous population.

This book provides an excellent case for that position, with plenty of primary source references:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1566560241/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

> It's ours because historically, Judea is the homeland of the Jews.

At least those that try to claim it belongs to Israel under Right of Conquest are citing an actual, if archaic and disavowed, principle of international law. Racial privilege has never had force of law, and still doesn't, and racists should stop pretending racial privilege is a legitimate argument.

> Zehava Galon

Really? Meretz? Under 4% of the vote. I said popular, not fringe. Of course there are fringe politicians for any position.

u/gahgeer-is-back · 11 pointsr/IsraelPalestine

> What sorts of things are unique to Gazan culture?

  • the Arabic accent

    Gaza has so many accents which differ between one town and another, and sometimes even between one neighbourhood and another.

    Gazans tend to use an Egyptian annotation at the end of the words e.g. instead of saying Madraseh (school), they say Madrasah, or Hina (here) instead of Hon.

    Gazans (like the Hebronites I think) also snort as an angry reaction to an unbearable situation/story. To say "stop it or else I'll snort for you" usually means my patience has hit the ceiling and there's not much left of it.

  • the food

    Ideally, the good thing about food in Gaza is the influence from the Mediterranean both in flavours as well as seafood/fish: Similar to southern Italy and the coastal north Africa, Gazans love chili/green pepper or food that is cooked with chili.
    Various varieties of seafood/fish dishes dominate the menu as well. The most famous is probably the shrimps in clay pot.

    There are some dishes which are cooked only in Gaza. Two of these are the Romanniyah and Summaggiyah. I really don’t like them but I think their presence on only the Gaza menu is quite interesting.

    More on Gaza food can be found in the Gaza Kitchen book book.

  • Kiting

    Probably needless to say but kites and kiting are the Gaza great pass time, especially in the summer. Wherever you’ll go, if it’s sunny and not raining, you’ll find at least one hand-made kite flying in the air, in the desolate village or even as part of a Guinness record-breaking attempt. I think the nice thing about this is that nobody bothers buying ready-to-fly kites and they are always hand-made. There essentially two types of kites: the gobu3, which is a small kite made from a single sheet of paper and a thread, as shown by the kid in this short film, and the 6abag, which is much bigger and has a dish shape, hence the name.


    >How difficult is it to move in and out of Gaza? Can you just use the Rafa border crossing or can/do you use a tunnel?

    At the moment it's nearly impossible. The Egyptian side is completely close and opened for few days two weeks ago for the first time in four months. The Israeli side is close to all travel except for those with permits. Usually it's much easier for foreigners who are journalists or work in the NGO sector to get in and out. Otherwise it's a complete prison camp experience.



    >What do you think is going to ultimately be the future of Gaza?

    Will reconciliation with the PA occur? Do you foresee Hamas losing power there? What did people in Gaza generally think about Hamas's chances of accomplishing anything good for them with respect to Israel?

    The future of Gaza is really bleak. In its current conditions it is like Hong Kong in population density but nothing else. There are shortages of everything and Gaza is technically a huge-ass refugee camp that without aid would become a major famine.

    I think for any attempt to make Gaza a habitable place, you need to move people out of it. I don’t know where to; the empty parts of the West Bank or wherever but it needs to be done.

    >Will reconciliation with the PA occur?

    I don’t think the two sides have taken a genuine interest in power-sharing. The PA is playing the waiting game while thinking that Hamas will eventually come back and repent.

    Hamas for its part doesn’t really care much. You may ask why? Because for Hamas leaders (like other Muslim Brotherhood members pretty much), to rule Gaza is something that never happened to them. Heck, few years earlier all hamas leaders were in PA prisons being treated like shit. Now they are in charge of the whole Gaza Strip (small as it obviously is). Haniyah travels in a motorcade, and he is the prime minister. This guy was Ahmad Yasin’s secretary, like literally secretary.


    Ruling Gaza also proved useful for the military wing of Hamas. It is now free like never before in terms of doing what it wants to do. The area is small, true, but they can set up training camps, summer schools for kids, run a TV/radio station, run border crossings, run tunnels or even just block the road and do nothing. This is a sea change from where they were before 2007.

    The above two paragraphs are meant to show that Hamas leadership (i.e. its military wing) in Gaza is not in rush to shed its control of the Strip.

    Between these two currents, the Palestinian population is the biggest loser, especially in Gaza. What I hated the most about Gaza was not the war, the shelling, the infighting or people’s general stupidity, but it was the lack of hope.

    In Gaza you can’t do shit. I used to work two jobs and a very decent salary but it was worthless. There was nothing to do with it apart from going to cafe to smoke shisha and watch a football match with friends. In the rare occurrence, a foreign music band would come once in blue moon but that will be it. At some point I decided to start cycling, and it was enjoyable for a while, but then there were the Israeli air strikes on moving cars and I didn’t want to be collateral damage so I stopped even cycling.

    Even when you decide, fuck it, I’m gonna leave this place. The borders are closed and it is a miracle to go out. People lose their jobs abroad, their seats in college because they couldn’t travel or get out. At the end of it you feel that the only outlet of this place is to actually go and become a freedom fighter, a member of some Kataeb, and fight Israel (or as in many cases pretend to) until you either go to an Israel prison or get killed.



    >What did people in Gaza generally think about Hamas's chances of accomplishing anything good for them with respect to Israel?

    Let’s face it. In 2007 and after that, people probably hated Hamas. They came after a bloody fight and were very scary. But the way things stand now is kind of strange. Because the PA and the international donors are simply paying for everything in Gaza: goods, salaries, costs of utilities..etc, while Hamas does the governance and bullying.

    Eventually after few years of this, more than a few will begin to feel that save the month-per-year war with Israel, things are not that horrible actually and it is thanks to Hamas that they are still alive.

    What Hams can bring to the future of the Palestinian people is quite difficult to guess. But I’m not seeing a Hamas that is maturing in terms of their thinking. They are still interested in maintaining their grip on power and have not learned to share-power or concede temporarily. What happened in Egypt after the ouster of President Morsi made this belief even stronger.

    Eventually I hope that Hamas will somehow see how the Muslim Brotherhood is faring in Tunisia and change accordingly. I think they might be susceptible to doing something like that if they obtain recognition from the international community. I sense that their leaders abroad (Mesha’l et al) have already realized that this is the only way forward but their military wing is still not feeling this way.

    (Sorry man that's a lot of writing)
u/ub3rm3nsch · 5 pointsr/IsraelPalestine

The Member States of the United Nations - an international organization - recognize borders by recognizing States. Hence, why I said:

> the international community does in fact determine borders.

Here is how that happens.

The UN as an organization enforces and protects those borders. This takes place in a variety of ways.

If you want to understand more about how States became the primary political actor that make rules vis-a-vis each other, this book will help you learn more about that.

If you'd like to learn more about how States use and delegate power to International Organizations in order to solve international problems, this book will help you do that.

If you'd like to learn more about how the UN System works to enforce borders, this book will help you do that.

Someone posted a website where you can find free books on the non-politics thread. You can probably find pdf copies of each of these books (though personally I just keep them on my shelf to read in a more tangible form and for quick reference).

u/ExeterQuickly · 5 pointsr/IsraelPalestine

> When you are ready to have a conversation based on the facts, please let me know.

Something that's really far better addressed to you. Here's something that will help you settle into the true homeland of the Ashkenazim, molto bene!

u/theonlywayoutis2 · 1 pointr/IsraelPalestine

Not really, as the actual people who were here were wiped out or cleansed. Whole cultures werw wiped away in a destructice orgy, rather than adapting and changing and learning to live with one another gradually. This is a generalization, of course, but even then one odt he bog things that drove this was mythology of the superiority of European cultural practices and the rights of Europeans to appropriate land of the natives. The Native tribes were not allowed to adapt, they were put into camps, killed and their children stolen from them.


The situation in America is much the same as the situation in Israel Palestine witht he Nakba, although Israel certainly didn't have the time bor the inclination to achieve a genocide in the same manner as my fellow Americans did. There were even attempts to simply become indigenous to the land as well, but it is a complex picture.


In Israel Palestine, the Arabs did not do that. There is not a lot of evidence of massacres and the like, and the Arabs remained a minority for many years afterwards. Given that this hsitory is also 1400 years, there are some generalizations here as well, but the Palestinians are for the most part a continuation of previous peoples, just Arabs now via their speaking of Arabic. There is also an influz of other people from around the Muslim world due to the mobility Muslims, Jews and Christians had during the Islamic golden age.


This is a fascinating book that details this phenomenon through the life of a Jewish merchant in 12th century Egypt and India. I cannot highly recommend it enough.

u/EliTheRussianSpy · 1 pointr/IsraelPalestine

Here's a good one -https://www.amazon.com/Side-Parallel-Histories-Israel-Palestine/dp/1595586830

A Israeli and Palestinian historian go, chapter by chapter, through the history of the conflict, with each historian writing his side's perspective.


u/ekdakimasta · 5 pointsr/IsraelPalestine

Thanks for posting.


For further reading, consider Yoram Hazony's The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul which discusses Herzl's policies as applied to the current state of Israel.

u/Garet-Jax · 0 pointsr/IsraelPalestine

Given your low level of knowledge and your insistence on acting like you do know things, I suggest this introductory book on Physics: We Have No Idea.

u/OpenOb · 1 pointr/IsraelPalestine

Anonymous Soldiers written by Bruce Hoffman shows the situation in Palestine from 1917-1947 and focuses on the situation after the Second World War.

u/thelasian · 1 pointr/IsraelPalestine

What "Jewish people"?
https://www.amazon.com/Invention-Jewish-People-Shlomo-Sand/dp/1844676234

Ironic considering that Israel denies the people-hood of Palestinians and denies them their right to exist.

u/nidarus · 11 pointsr/IsraelPalestine

You know, there's a lot of dumb shit in this conflict, but the "Israelis stealing food" is my pet peeve. It's as ludicrous as the Mossad Sharks conspiracy, and as much of a multilayered cake of bullshit as the Four Maps Lie. I'm sorry if I'm going to repeat a few of your points (as well as the points I made in the thread you've linked to), and I hope you don't see this as leeching off your post, but I need to get this off my chest:

Arab Israelis

As you mentioned, ~20% of Israelis are Arabs. But more importantly, Israeli Jews don't have a single cuisine. So it's not 80% Jewish cuisine, and 20% Arab. It's 20% Arab Israeli, 11% Moroccan-Jewish, 10% Russian-Jewish and so on. Even if we ignore the fact that most Israeli Jews are also Middle Eastern, Arab Israelis alone are probably the largest food culture in Israel, by sheer force of numbers.

Now, some pro-Palestinians like to claim that Arab Israelis don't really count as Israelis at all. That's the kind of racist bullshit they seem to share with Israeli far-right-wingers. But it's not really reflected in what the Arab Israelis are, and how they actually feel. According to a recent Haaretz poll, while 65% of them define themselves as Israelis (46% as Arab Israelis and 19% as Palestinian Israelis), and 22% just as "Arabs", only 14% define themselves as purely Palestinian.

Jewish Israelis

I get what you're saying about the pro-Palestinians assuming all Jews are Ashkenazi, but honestly, I feel there's a huge element of ignorance in it - even more than malice. I'm not talking about the likes of Abunimah, but certainly his readership. At least that was my experience with the pro-Palestinians and Arabs I've encountered on reddit.

And not only are they ignorant about the fact most Jewish Israelis are from Arab countries, and have been eating that food for centuries, they're also kind of ignorant about the kind of food they eat. There's the assumption that Israeli cuisine is 100% Levantine Arab, and therefore, must be Palestinian. If they knew that the main dishes Israelis would call "Israeli food" include the likes of schnitzel and mashed potatoes, chicken soup with shkedei marak, rugelach, sufganiyot and hamantaschen, along with non-Levantine MENA dishes like (real) couscous, shakshuka, jachnun, amba and so on, their opinion would probably be pretty different. Not necessarily positive, but at least expressed differently.

This is not to say there's no racist element in this whole thing. More on this later.

How food culture works

Even if Arab Israelis were a small minority, and they were the only people in Israel who traditionally ate Arab food, there's absolutely nothing unusual about a minority providing the nation's national dishes. Fish and Chips were famously brought to the UK by Portuguese Jews. Both Hamburgers and Hot Dogs are German-American (13% of Americans). The Hot Dog is literally an old timey racist stereotype of Germans putting dogs in sausage (source: Hot Dog: A Global History), renamed from "Frankfurter" (another German city) due to yet more anti-German sentiments during WW1. Pelmeni, probably the most iconic Russian dish, comes from the deeply marginalized northern indigenous tribes, who brought it from China.

And speaking of China, most of the world's cuisines were heavily influenced by one of the Three Great Cuisines: China, France and Turkey. The Arab cuisines, and the Levantine Arab cuisine that the Palestinian cuisine is a variant of, is absolutely one of them. A huge percentage of the traditional Levantine Arab dishes, along with basic cooking concepts, are actually Turkish in origin, including very recent ones. It's fascinating to see people get upset about Jews "stealing" the indigenous Arab dish of shawarma, literally a Turkish word, describing a Turkish dish, invented in the very Turkish city of Bursa in the 19th century. Incidentally, that also means that a lot of dishes Israelis supposedly stole from the Arabs weren't even brought by Jews from Arab countries, but by Jews from Bulgaria, Romania, and yes, Turkey.

The interesting thing about the "stealing food" claim is how deeply unusual it is, even in the context of nationalist discourses. The Chinese are a very proud people, and they hate the Japanese quite a bit, but I don't see them throwing a hissy fit anytime Ramen is mentioned as a Japanese dish. Or for that matter, any of the other countless dishes, cooking techniques and implements that are replicated across East Asia. It might mean that China is a cultural beacon, while other nations are less so. It might even mean the Chinese can point out the Chinese origins of those dishes. But it's not a sign of anyone "stealing" Chinese culture, in the same manner they might "steal" territory China claims as its own. The very notion is hilarious. The same goes for Turks, French, Italians, you name it. They might get into fiery arguments into who invented what, but once it's clear, it's just a sign of the might of their culture... and maybe even a friendly "we like the same food". Not the crazy-ass argument we see here.

The main point

And that brings me to the subtext (and often text) of this whole argument, which I feel is deeply problematic: that Jews, and certainly Israeli Jews, are a parasitic, fake non-people without culture. As Hitler put it, they're not "culture-creators" like the Arabs, but "culture-destroyers".

Other nations, like Arabs, might be influenced by other cuisines, even if the influence is immense. Young nations like Palestine and Lebanon can participate in regional cuisines, even if a precious few dishes were actually invented there. And minorities that "know their place", including within the Arab world, can sort-of-kind-of claim those dishes as well. But when the Israeli Jews do it, it's something completely different. Like a worm in an apple, they can only steal culture in a violent, destructive act from their betters, and even more importantly, defile it. Note how many of the comments in the thread you linked to seem to obsess over those points, even when they don't flat out say them.

Don't get me wrong: I don't think it's all just random, unrelated antisemitism. I realize it's all part of the general political claim of how Jews aren't a people and therefore don't deserve a country in Palestine, and just generally being upset about Israel existing. I just think it's another expression of how this political argument leads to hateful and honestly racist (cue "Israeli Jews aren't a race, but Palestinian Arabs are") kind of thinking. One that obscures basic rational thought, keeps people ignorant of basic facts, and turns something that could've unified us into yet another reason to hate.