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Witnessing Palestine

These titles, selected by TPL staff, present personal stories, historical analyses, and diverse perspectives to better understand and contextualize the decades of colonization and the current humanitarian crisis in Palestine.

Tacoma Public Library

29 items

  • 1948

    Creation & Catastrophe

    "Tells the story of the establishment of Israel as seen through the eyes of the people who lived it." -- Distributor.
    Streaming Video[United States] : Factory Film Studio, 2019. — eVideo hoopla
  • "Mustafa will do anything to reach his son, and after being denied access through the checkpoint on a technicality, Mustafa embarks upon a journey to cross the border illegally." -- Distributor.
    Streaming Video[United States] : Film Movement, 2022. — eVideo hoopla
  • Abed meets obstacle after obstacle as he crisscrosses Jerusalem to find his son. Interwoven with his quest are the stories of other characters whose lives converge due to a single horrific accident.
    BookNew York, New York : Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2023. — 956.053 SALAMA 2023
  • Determined to Stay

    Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village

    Sokolower, Jody,
    Interviews with youth living in Silwan, a village south of Jerusalem's Old City. Interviewees and interviewer alike discuss similarities among racialized youth in Palestine and in the U.S.
    BookNorthampton, MA : Olive Branch Press, an imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc., 2021. — Y 305.235095 SO398D 2021
  • Translated from the French, the first comprehensive history of the struggle to control Gaza.
    BookNew York, New York : Oxford University Press, 2014. — 953.1 F479G 2014
  • Kingdom of Olives and Ash

    Writers Confront the Occupation

    Edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, a collection of essays about each writer's time in the occupied territories and their conversations with its residents. Also available in Spanish (e-book).
    BookNew York : Harper Perennial, [2017] — 808.84 K59K 2017
  • Palestine Speaks

    Narratives of Life Under Occupation

    "In Palestine Speaks men and women from the West Bank and Gaza describe in their own words how their lives have been shaped by the conflict. This includes eyewitness accounts of the most recent attacks on Gaza in 2014." -- Publisher
    BookSan Francisco : Voice of Witness : McSweeney's, [2014] — 956.94054 P175P 2014
  • A sweeping family saga following four generations of the Yacoub clan, from the Six-Day War to the present day.
    BookBoston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017. — F ALYAN-H
  • They Called Me a Lioness

    a Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

    Tamimi, Ahed, 2001-
    "Tamimi came to global renown reached an apex in December 2017, when, at 16 years old, she was filmed slapping an Israeli soldier who refused to leave her front yard. But this is not just a story of activism or imprisonment. It is the…
    BookNew York : One World, [2022] — 956.942 TAMIMI 2022
  • Side by Side

    Parallel Histories of Israel-Palestine

    "Struck by how different the standard Israeli and Palestinian textbook histories of the same events were from one another...a group of Israeli and Palestinian teachers began to explore how a new understanding of history itself might open…
    BookNew York : New Press, 2012. — 956.9405 SI135S 2012
  • The Way to the Spring

    Life and Death in Palestine

    Ehrenreich, Ben,
    "I do believe this is a work of optimisim, and of hope. Not because I see any imminent 'solution' to the Palestinian 'problem,' or the easy advent of something called 'peace.' On the contrary, I am optimistic because even in their despair,…
    BookNew York, New York : Penguin Press, 2016. — 956.953044 EH84W 2016
  • Documentary about the 1967 Six-Day War (June 5-10, 1967), a major turning point in Palestinian-Israeli relations. Combines archival newsreels with previously censored recordings of Israeli soldiers discussing their fears and doubts.
    DVDChicago, IL : Music Box Films, [2016] — DVDN 956.046 C3325C 2016
  • Decolonizing Palestine

    the Land, the People, the Bible

    Raheb, Mitri,
    "[B]uilds on the latest research in settler-colonialism and human rights to place traditional theological themes within the wider socio-political context of settler colonialism as it is practiced by the modern nation-state of Israel." --…
    BookMaryknoll, New York : Orbis Books, [2023] — 261.7 RAHEB 2023
  • Except for Palestine

    The Limits of Progressive Politics

    Hill, Marc LamontPlitnick, Mitchell
    Hill and Plitnick "take seriously the political concerns and well-being of both Israelis and Palestinians, demonstrating the extent to which U.S. policy has made peace harder to attain. They also unravel the conflation of advocacy for…
    eBookThe New Press, 2021
  • A classic piece of comics journalism and war reportage. Discuss events Gaza during the Suez Crisis (1956), including the Rafah massacre of November 12.
    BookNew York, New York : Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, [2010] — GN 956.04 SACCO 2009
  • The Hundred Years' War on Palestine

    a History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017

    Khalidi, Rashid,
    "Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members...The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash…
    BookNew York : Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, [2020] — 956.9405 K5266H 2020
  • The Lemon Tree

    An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

    Tolan, Sandy
    Originally presented in 1998 on NPR's "Fresh Air," and published as nonfiction narrative in 2007. Tolan shares the story of Bashir and Dalia, whose decades-long friendship would be repeatedly tested in ways that neither could imagine.
    BookNew York : Bloomsbury Pub., 2006. — 956.9405 T574L
  • In Spanish. "In the early 2000s, the possibility of returning to Palestine began to take shape for Chilean writer Lina Meruane, with the paradoxes contained in the idea of a return to a place that was never inhabited but which,…
    BookBarcelona : Random House, 2023. — SP 868 MERUANE 2021
  • Palestine 1936

    the Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict

    Kessler, Oren,
    Tel Aviv-based journalist Kessler offers a history of pre-state Israel, the 1936-1939 Revolt, and the longest sustained resistance to Mandatory Palestine.
    BookLanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2023] — 956.9404 KESSLER 2023
  • Spies of No Country

    Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel

    Friedman, Matti, 1977-
    A "meticulously researched tale" about the beginnings of the Mossad, as well as the "complicated identity of Israel."
    BookChapel Hill, North Carolina : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, [2019] — 327.120956 F9144S 2019