If you think the Israel-Palestine conflict is too complex to understand, think again. Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire, written without academic jargon by author and activist Richard Becker, provides a solid introduction to key events in the history underlying today’s current events. Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire is unabashedly partisan toward the Palestinian cause, but the author’s claims are well reasoned and documented.
There is, in fact, an irreconcilable conflict in the Middle East, but it is not one between different peoples or faiths. It is instead the struggle between imperialism, Israel and the dependent Arab regimes on the one hand and the oppressed peoples of this oil-rich and strategic region fighting for liberation and progress on the other.
At the very heart of this conflict is Palestine. The Palestinian struggle is a struggle against Western colonialism. It has been this way from the beginning, more than a century ago. As is the case with all conflicts and world events, what is going on today in Palestine and the Middle East can only be understood in its historical context.
Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire was published by Liberation Media in 2009. It’s available for purchase here. In light of the recent resurgence in the Palestinian solidarity movement, the PSL has made the book freely available, and Liberation Audio created the audio versions for each chapter found below.