Required

Highly Recommended:

  • Edward Said, "Bombs and Bulldozers" (The Nation 8 & 15 September 1997). Though the occasion for which this piece was written is long past, its complaint about what Said calls the "bulldozers of forgetfulness" is still timely (and relevant to Habiby's novel), as is its reminder that "there was always another people in Palestine, [and] every village, kibbutz, settlement, city and town [in Israel] has an Arab history also."
  • In a similar vein, see Adina Hoffman’s “What Lies Beneath,” a profile of Jawad Siyam and the politics of archaeology in Israel.

Recommended

General / History
  • Israel & West Bank (Encyclopedia Britannica Online--HSU users only)
  • The New York Times series, "Israel at 50" (April/May 1998)
  • Selected online articles originally from The Nation's "Israel at Fifty" issue (May 4, 1998):  Danny Rubinstein, "Israel at Fifty" and Edward Said, "An Orphaned People"
  • Alex R. Shalom and Stephen R. Shalom's indispensible "Turmoil in Palestine: The Basic Context"
  • NPR's Linda Gradstein on the controversy over a revisionist history curriculum in Israeli schools (RealAudio file from "All Things Considered," November 15, 1999).
  • The website for "Give It To Them," an episode of Public Radio International's This American Life which first aired in early August 2002.
  • In the midst of the 2011 "Arab Spring," Wendell Steavenson wrote a short piece about those exciting but uncertain events for the New Yorker's "Notes and Comments" section. It was entitled (can you guess?) "Pessoptimism." Find out why by clicking that link.
Israeli Arabs
  • "Palestinian Right of Return" (Wikipedia)
  • NPR's Mike Shuster reports on Israeli/Arab apartheid in Israel (Weekend Edition Saturday 18 April 1998 [audio in RealMedia format only])
  • "The Lemon Tree," a radio documentary featuring an Israeli and a Palestianian who both share claim to the same house.  (This feature originally aired on NPR's Fresh Air, April 24, 1998. It's now available from PRX.)
  • NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports on the impact of the "second" Palestinian intifadeh (uprising) in the occupied territories on Israel's Arab citizens:  Part 1 | Part 2 (RealAudio files from "All Things Considered," November 21 & 22, 2000)
  • In “Bodies and Borders: An Interview with Ella Shohat” (Jadaliyya 18 November 2013), Manuela Boatca & Sergio Costa speak with the prominent "Arab Jew" about complications of ethnic identity
  • Seth Ackerman's "Losing Ground" (pbs.org; originally in Harper's magazine, December 2001) is a map illustrating Arab and Jewish populations in Israel/Palestine under a number of historical and projected scenarios. See also letters critical of Ackerman's map (from the March 2002 issue), along with his response to his critics. In the decade and a half since this map was drawn, of course, Palestinians have lost considerably more ground--to Israeli settlements, "security," and outright expropriation.
  • "Identity Crisis: The Israeli ID System" (Visualizing Palestine explores Palestinian segregation in Israel and the Occupied Territories)
Habiby / Saeed