Suarez provides an epic presentation of new and existing research, depicting a narrative of relentless Zionist aggression and arguing that the Nakba of 1948 was over before it started.

It is overwhelming to take in the spectacular violence, the extravagant lies and tricks, the exuberant intimidation, the gratuitous cruelty, and the absolute dedication of the Zionists over decades. But we should be overwhelmed if we are to get a sense of the bewilderment of the Palestinians, the British, the many non-Zionist Jews, and eventually much of the world, at the fevered advance and blood-drenched birth of Israel. The book pulls us along through wave after wave of deceptions, bombings, shootings, clever escapes, daring infiltrations, denials, accusations, obfuscations, demands, mad propaganda, and intimidation that break over the land. We see the Palestinians provoked into the doomed, desperate 1936-1939 revolt against the British and their Zionist clients. Next, the British are beaten down and terrorized until they give up. All this before the Nakba erupted.

Suad Amiry’s “Mother of Strangers” is an important book that tells the story of Jaffa and the Nakba. Through sharing the trauma, grief, and creative resilience of the Palestinian people the book also shows why so many embrace the Palestinian cause.

The Rev. Don Wagner’s memoir of five decades as an activist leader celebrates how liberation theology led him to a deep connection with the Palestinian spirit of resistance.

Activists beware — You may awake tomorrow to find that your local government has signed on to an expanded definition of antisemitism that makes it antisemitic to criticize Israel or Zionism. In late July, Montgomery County, Maryland, narrowly avoided exactly that fate, at least for now.

Shaul Magid’s biography of Meir Kahane is timely because Kahane is an icon for the messianic Jewish leaders who are pushing the country further right. The book is Magid’s “attempt to understand his worldview.” But Kahane’s worldview is easy to understand: Jews must forever rule the Promised Land. And that extremist religious Zionism now sets the agenda for the country.

The New England Conference of the United Methodist Church condemned Israel’s apartheid system June 11 by an 88 percent to 12 percent vote. The move comes at a key moment in the movement by Christian churches to attack by name the apartheid treatment of Palestinians. The Presbyterian Church will vote on their apartheid “overtures” in the first week in July, while the Episcopal Church is expected to vote on apartheid the following week.

In case you missed it, Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic lately issued a report that finds Israel’s treatment of Palestinians on the West Bank amounts to the crime of apartheid. The study came out on February 28 in the wake of five longer, wider-ranging, apartheid reports published since 2020 – and just before the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine published yet another apartheid report on March 21. Despite its quiet rollout, the study’s high quality and association with Harvard likely mean it will play a significant role in establishing Israel’s apartheid, and represents a victory for Palestinian human rights.

Brian J. Brown, a Methodist minister who was banned in his native South Africa in 1977 for anti-apartheid work, writes that apartheid in Israel/Palestine is in many ways more brutal than it was in his country, including checkpoints and barriers and expulsions. His new book says that recognition of that apartheid and total opposition to it is mandatory for any person or church that claims to follow Christian teachings.

The elites are finally not afraid to take on the Palestinian issue as shown by an overwhelming vote to condemn Israeli “apartheid,” passed by the convention of Washington, D.C., Episcopalians last week. “We will not make people happy with this resolution, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do,” said Rev. Michelle Morgan, rector of St. Mark’s Church, Capitol Hill.

One year after Chicago Episcopalians knocked down a resolution condemning Israeli apartheid by a sizeable margin, its convention approved a similar resolution by 72 to 28 percent. The turnaround is a measure of the dramatic rise in American awareness of the Israeli system, and reflects the judgments of two leading human rights organizations earlier this year.