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Bitter Harvest: A Modern History of Palestine

Published in Hardcover by Interlink Pub Group (01 December, 1990)

Author: Sami Hadawi

Amazon base price: $23.00

Average review score:

More of a screed than a history

The subtitle of _Bitter Harvest_ is "A Modern History of Palestine", but it really should be "A Long Anti-Zionist Screed". The book really focuses very little on the people or leaders of Palestine. Instead it closely documents the misdeeds of the Israelis. While no sane person would argue that the Palestinians don't have plenty of grievances with Israel, Hadawi lets his pro-Palestinian mindset hijack the work, turning a history into an indictment.

I don't think it is particularly factual about those Israeli misdeeds, either.

On page 9, Hawadi states, "The first signs of unrest between Arab and Jew occurred in 1920 when Zionist designs on the Holy Land became apparent." What he really means is that the Arabs were still at rest. This ignores, for example, that Beha-a-Din, the Turkish governor of Jaffa, ordered the expulsion of all Russian Jews living in his city in 1914. Seven hundred were forced out in just the first day. In 1915, working as the "secretary for Jewish affairs" for Djemal Pasha, the same Beha-a-Din closed the Anglo-Palestine Bank, as well as the Zionist newspapers and schools. No unrest indeed.

On page 280, talking about the cease-fire between Israel and the PLO in 1981 just before the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, he states that "...all PLO guerilla attacks against Israel had completely ceased..." and that "The PLO had scrupulously respected the cease-fire...". Yet the immediate catalyst for the invasion of Lebanon was the murder in London of the Israeli ambassador Shlomo Argov by a member of the Palestine National Liberation Movement. Of course, the PNLM is not the PLO, so his facts are correct in a certain way, but the meaning he conveys, of unprovoked Israeli aggression, is obviously false.

In fact, as far as I can tell, he omits every single fact that would possibly show the Palestinians in a less than perfect light. There is only oblique reference to the 1973 war. The hijacking that led to the raid at Entebbe is never mentioned. He describes the attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics as "the Munich incident of September 5, 1972, in which eleven Israeli and four Palestinian commandoes lost their lives" - making it sound as if they were all in a bus accident or something. There is no mention at all in his book of the 400,000 or so Jewish refugees that were tossed out of the Muslim countries after the 1967 war.

Even worse, Hadawi tells us almost nothing about the Palestinian people, their character, their leaders (Arafat is only mentioned on three pages of the book and two of these are single sentences) or their aspirations (with of course the exception of their aspiration to throw the Jews out and take back Palestine). He spends a grand total of a page and a half discussing the nature of Palestine, its area, the qualities of its land, the distribution of the population, their pursuits, they way they lived before the Jews arrived and so on. Even in this limited description, he manages to add in a couple of digs at the Zionists.

Hadawi also uses some sources that I consider questionable or at least obscure. He quotes private conversations, obscure university professors, and even an anonymous letter to an American newspaper. In one place (page 85) he puts a quote in the text that in the footnotes he proves is impossible to verify and on shaky ground to start with.

If you want to read a book that fills you in on every grievance that the Palestinians have ever had with Israel, then this is the book for you. If you're looking for a simple history as told from the Palestinian point of view, you'll find this book lacking.

Let the Palestinians be heard!

Sami Hadawi's book is written from a Palestinian refugee's perspective and is a much-needed view for those of us who live in the US and have to hear the Israeli view of the conflict over and over again. Hadawi examines his own ties to the country now called Israel and relates the tragic tale of a people displaced by a stronger military force initially backed by powerful European states, the UN, and then later the world's only superpower, the United States. He covers everything from the history of the region and Palestinian life before the coming of the Zionist colonists/conquerors to the present conflict and what the Palestinians have gone through. Hadawi refrains from too much criticism of Israel though and instead focuses upon the results of the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel as well as the imperialist occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by Israeli forces and fanatical Israeli settlers/squatters. Some of what he writes about is personal and about families displaced and homes destroyed and the indifference of the world towards the plight of the Palestinians. Personally, I have mostly read Jewish-American and Israeli historians from both sides of the conflict and Hadawi's voice is something that is needed to counter-balance what is known about this sad situation that continues to be a major focus of American foreign policy concerns. Hadawi's words are filled with sadness that we can almost visualize such as his memories of his home in what is today Israel. What we learn from this book is that there are two people with ties and attachments to the land called Israel and the Occupied Territories. Only one people have all the rights and all the guns. If you are open-minded and want to see this conflict from a new POV that isn't given extensive coverage by the American media then you should make an effort to read this book.