A secular book club for people who want to learn about Palestine.

This is not Christian affiliated or associated with Christian Minus Christianity.

For more information, contact Marti Schmidt at martha@marthalschmidt.net or Diane Paul at dianepaul475@gmail.com.

Join us as we discuss books on and about  Palestine rarely reviewed in the corporate media and hard to find in bookstores!

First meeting: Sunday, August 17, 7-9pm, PDT.     

Location: Third Place Books at Third Place Commons,* Lake Forest Park (in the Greater Seattle Area)

*PALESTINE BOOK CLUB BOOKS are 20% off! ASK AT COUNTER

What books are we reading?

1. August 17^th, 7-9pm

Understanding Hamas: and Why That Matters by Helena Cobban and Rami C. Khouri

“Vital and timely … No one can deal with the Palestinian Question, or with Gaza, without understanding, and coming to terms with Hamas.”
—Jonathan Kuttab

Book details from the publisher (O/R Books):

“Across Western mainstream discourse, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has been subjected to intense vilification. Branding it as “terrorist” or worse, this demonization intensified after the events in Southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

“This book does not advocate for or against Hamas. Rather, in a series of rich and probing conversations with leading experts, it aims to deepen understanding of a movement that is a key player in the current crisis. It looks at, among other things, Hamas’s critical shift from social and religious activism to national political engagement; the delicate balance between Hamas’s political and military wings; and its transformation from early anti-Jewish tendencies to a stance that differentiates between Judaism and Zionism.

“Both accessible and authoritative, Understanding Hamas provides much-needed insight into a widely misunderstood movement whose involvement in a just resolution of the Israel/Palestine conflict will be critical.”

2. September 21^st, 7-9pm

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi

“The Hundred Years’ War is one of the best-researched general surveys of 20th and early 21st century Palestinian life, but it’s also a deeply personal work. . . . For a people whose history is all but criminalized, this act of retelling is itself a form of resistance.”
—The Nation

Book details from the publisher (macmillian):

“A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history.

“In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.” Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective.

“Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process.

“Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.”

3. October 19^th, 7-9pm

Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance by Amy Kaplan

“Our American Israel is masterful and deserves a larger audience.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates

Book details from the publisher (Harvard University Press):

“An essential account of America’s most controversial alliance, and how that strong and divisive partnership plays out in our own time.

“In 1945, it was not inevitable that a global superpower emerging victorious from World War II would come to identify with a small state for Jewish refugees, refugees who at that time were still being turned away from the United States. How, then, did so many in America come to feel that the bond between it and Israel was historically inevitable, morally right, and a matter of common sense. Our American Israel reveals how Israel’s identity has long been entangled with America’s belief in its own exceptional nature. Beginning at the end of World War II with debates about the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine and continuing through both the rise of evangelical Christian Zionism and the war on terror, Amy Kaplan challenges the associations underlying this special alliance.”