"Chomsky is a global phenomenon . . . he may be the most widely read American voice on foreign policy on the planet."—The New York Times Book Review
"Ilan Pappé is Israel's bravest, most principled, most incisive historian."—John Pilger
Described by a UN fact-finding mission as "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population," Israel's Operation Cast Lead thrust the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip into the center of the debate about the Israel/Palestine conflict.
In Gaza in Crisis, Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé, two of the issue's most insightful and prominent critical voices, survey the fallout from Israel's conduct in Gaza and place it into the context of Israel's longstanding occupation of Palestine.
Although much of the material collected here precedes Israel's recent military attack on a Gaza-bound international flotilla of embargo-breaking humanitarian aid, this succinct and eye-opening collection of recent interviews and essays from the renowned linguist and activist Chomsky (Hopes and Prospects) and prominent Israeli historian Pappé (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine) gives essential context to the crisis. The reader will find Chomsky's consistent positions on everything from the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the issue of a one- versus two-state settlement. Pappé adds vital and unexpected historical background, including a chapter on the deep American evangelical roots in the support of Zionism and the birth of modern Arab nationalism in Palestine. Pappé and Chomsky are not perfectly in synch on every point: Chomsky remains skeptical of an academic boycott of Israel, for instance, called for in the past by Pappé and others. But the fundamentals of the crisis--and its scale in humanitarian, moral and political terms--are clear, as well as clearly expressed, between them. This sober and unflinching analysis should be read and reckoned with by anyone concerned with practicable change in the long-suffering region. (Nov.) (c)
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Noam Chomsky is one of the world's foremost social critics, and one of its most prolific. He is author of Failed States and Hegemony or Survival, both New York Times bestsellers. He lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, and is institute professor emeritus in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.
Ilan Pappé is professor of history at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, where he is also co-director of the Exeter Center for Ethno-Political Studies, director of the Palestine Studies Centre, and a longtime political activist. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
