Readings On Palestine

by Jahanzaib Choudhry.

The ongoing genocide by the Israeli state in Gaza, Palestine is a watershed moment for humanity. We are witnessing brutality, most significantly towards children, and yet we must not be paralyzed by despair. The Israeli state represents the most violent white supremacist state, and we understand its actions in Gaza as the desperate lashing out of a dying white supremacist world order. All eyes are on the American people, to see if a movement for peace in America can disrupt the crucial symbiotic relationship between the Israeli and American states. West Asia must reorganize itself on terms more humane, and we must do our part in educating Asians on the conditions of the Palestinian people. We present here a list of readings, both recent and historical to help understand the crisis in Palestine.

Current Genocide and Resistance

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5364286,00.html 

Interview of Yahya Sinwar with Italian journalist in 2018 covering siege of Gaza, goals of Hamas, and future.

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/osama-hamdan-hamas-interview-podcast-gaza-israel
American journalist Jeremy Scahilll’s interview with Osama Hamdan, senior Hamas official in early May 2025.

An interview with Osama Hamdan, senior Hamas official who says the Palestinians want to work towards a 5 year hudna, or long term ceasefire and is willing to hand over power to an interim authority to conduct elections and let the Palestinian people choose their leader.

https://jacobin.com/2025/02/hague-group-apartheid-israel-genocide 

ANC veteran and ex-minister of South African government Ronnie Kasrils writes on the launch of the Hague Group of countries to coordinate actions against Israel, the South African case in ICJ and the possibilities of the renewal of anti-colonial solidarity against imperialism. The article is dated February, 2025.

https://www.mohammedmhawish.com/p/snapshots-i-spoke-with-20-people


“Snapshots: I spoke with 20 people in Gaza after the ceasefire. My heart broke 20 times”,  dated February, 2025.
https://thecradle.co/articles/trumps-second-term-becomes-a-warzone-between-maga-and-the-deep-state

“In Trump’s second term, the MAGA vs neocons battle heats up”, dated May, 2025.

Historical 

https://www.countercurrents.org/pa-gandhi170903.htm

“The Jews in Palestine” by Mahatma Gandhi in Harijan, 1938.

“Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct.”

https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/nehrus-word-zionist-aggression-against-palestinians-is-wrong

Jawaharlal Nehru on Palestine, 1936

“Palestine was not an empty land fit for colonisation by outsiders. It was a well-populated and full land with little room for large numbers of colonists from abroad. Is it any wonder that the Arabs objected to this intrusion? And their objection grew as they realised that the aim of British imperialism was to make the Arab-Jew problem a permanent obstacle to their independence. We in India have sufficient experience of similar obstacles being placed in the way of our freedom by British imperialism.”

https://www.peacedialogue.in/nai-taleem-reading-circle/readings/reading-9

Romesh Chandra on Palestine, 1970s

“We think today of the heroic people of Palestine fighting for their just rights. Some very powerful countries threaten us with dire consequences if we dare say, as the United Nations has said, that Zionism is a form of racism. I know that there are many who do not see Zionism in this light. But the fact is that Zionism, the way it is being practiced in the Arab occupied areas and in Israel itself, is, as the United Nations resolutions states, racist in every sense of the word. The struggle against the racist practices of the Israeli authorities is not a struggle separate from the struggle in southern Africa or from the struggle in the United States of America. The struggle against racism is one struggle.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/open-letter-born-again/ 

“Open Letter to the Born Again” by James Baldwin, 1979

“But the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of the Western interests. This is what is becoming clear (I must say that it was always clear to me). The Palestinians have been paying for the British colonial policy of “divide and rule” and for Europe’s guilty Christian conscience for more than thirty years.”

https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/38375

Yasser Arafat’s 1974 UNGA Speech. Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, became the first nongovernmental leader to address the UNGA through the support of the NAM.

“The world is in need of tremendous efforts if its aspirations to peace, freedom, justice, equality and development are to be realized, if its struggle is to be victorious over colonialism, imperialism, neo-colonialism and racism in all its forms, including Zionism”

---

Jahanzaib Choudhry is a historian of the world peace movement and a member of the Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation. He lives in Chicago.