ipl-logo

The Iron Cage Book Review

1218 Words5 Pages

BOOK REVIEW

THE IRON CAGE: THE STORY OF THE PALESTINIAN STRUGGLE FOR STATEHOOD BY RASHID KHALIDI

The question of Palestinian statehood has increasingly become a principal concern for states and for the understanding of the international framework. Reactions to the Palestinian predicament are immensely different in the Western World and in the Arab World. Rashid Khalidi acknowledges this difference in approach and response by the two worlds and the inconveniences stemming therefrom in his book, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. The book is written as a historical essay, with the core endeavor to determine why Palestinians, unlike so many other people and states, have failed to actualize their dream to be a self-governing state. While ‘The Iron Cage’ is more of an evaluation of the conflict and the question of Palestinian statehood, than an exercise in original research, Khalidi provides Western readers with a new and insightful approach to the question, thus making this particular work his masterpiece. Being an American Professor of Israeli descent, teaching Arab Studies at Columbia University , Khalidi who is the editor of the Journal of Palestinian Studies, gives a comparatively unbiased and probably dispassionate depiction of Palestine in the periods of the Ottoman and British …show more content…

Khalidi begins the book by examining the circumstances under which the Palestinians were driven from their homes in 1947-48. He does not refrain from confronting "Orwellian euphemisms" that have dominated this historical debate. He, however, is quick to question the crux of the matter, which is ‘why Palestinian society crumbled so swiftly during the Palestine war’. In answering this, Khalidi compares Palestine to other Arab countries, specifically newer states and finds that there is no particular explanation for the

Show More
Related
984 Words | 4 Pages

Reading and analyzing primary sources are one of the methods that provide a window into the past in order to determine the significant, reliability, and make a viable interpretation in the historical events. The book “Syrian Yankee” is considered one of the primary sources that provide a perspective to the story of an Arab immigrant from Syria at the beginning of 20th century. In this essay, a chapter from this book, “My Home My Native Land,” will be analyzed and critically put in its historical contexts. The author of this book is Salom Rizk. He was an Arab American, who immigrated to the United States of America.

Read More
309 Words | 2 Pages

Arabs, Britain took Palestine from the Ottoman Turks in 1917-1918. Arabs rebelled against Turks, because Britain promised them the independence of their countries in 1915-1916 through correspondence with, the leader of Mecca, Sharīf Ḥusayn ibn cAlī. However, Britain made other conflicting commitments in secret through the Sykes-Picot Agreement with France and Russia in the 1916, pledging to divide and rule the Arab regions with its allies. In a third agreement, in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, Britain promised Jews to help establish a “national homeland” in Palestine.

Read More
260 Words | 2 Pages

Stephen Eric Bronner analyzes how the Jewish Zionist movement shape the Protocols and reflect the ideologies that are challenged between the two during the rise of the anti-Semite movement. He argues the ideas in this pamphlet are a complete forgery, yet they “helped shape the mass movements, revolutions, and wars of the twentieth century.” (4) Chapter three of his book, Rumor About the Jews, attempts to explain the effort the Protocols make against the modernity linked to political anti-Semitism supposedly taking place at the hands of Jews and their reactions to it. Antisemitic ideology, Bronner states, in contrast to the Judeophobia of earlier times, “presupposed a denial of the Jew both as a person and as a Jew.” (59)

Read More
404 Words | 2 Pages

Imagine watching your beloved hometown being captured by your worst enemy. All the things that you love, being stripped of you one by one. Forced to wear a gold star just because of your religion, and being beat up and mistreated by your fellow neighbors. Sadly, this was just the beginning. As time continued on ghettos where the Jews’ new home.

Read More
183 Words | 1 Pages

In Ishmael Beah’s memoir ‘a long way gone’, Beah describes his experience as a child soldier. A deep message that Beah conveys is that “children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings if given the chance”. During Beah’s journey as a child soldier, he commits multiple graphic acts under the influence of drugs, such as demanding that prisoners dig their own graves, then burying them alive (151). This event shows how far gone mentally Beah

Read More
1995 Words | 8 Pages

Katja von Garnier's "Iron Jawed Angels" tells the remarkable and little-known story of a group of passionate and dynamic young women, led by Alice Paul and her friend Lucy Burns, who put their lives on the line to fight for American women's right to vote in the early twentieth century in the United States of America. The story began when Alice Paul was permitted to take over the National American Woman Suffrage Association's (NAWSA) Washington, D.C. committee after a meeting with Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Howard Shaw, their superiors in NAWSA. Alice and Lucy then carried on to recruit volunteers to join their cause and to fight for women's suffrage, they planned parades to promote women's suffrage, called for women to boycott President Wilson

Read More
775 Words | 4 Pages

Under slave-labor conditions, severely malnourished and decimated by the frequent selections, the Jews take solace in caring for each other, in religion, and in Zionism, a movement favoring the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, considered the holy land. The prisoners are forced to watch the hanging of fellow prisoners in the camp courtyard. They even hang small child. Because of the horrific conditions in the camps, many of the prisoners begin to slide into cruelty, concerned only with personal survival. Sons begin to abandon and abuse their fathers.

Read More
602 Words | 3 Pages

I was honestly surprised how much I truly enjoyed The Misfits by James Howe. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the way that this story was written and the multiple topics that were discussed made this book one of my top favorites. This book could fit with so many different text sets due to the many topics that were discussed. This would be a great story for middle school students to read, because James Howe made Bobby so relatable. I personally really appreciated this book because of the positive view of being yourself and the impact of having friends who support you, regardless how “cool” or “uncool” they may be.

Read More
1415 Words | 6 Pages

The Balfour Declaration and its overall impact on Jewish and Arab relations in the Middle East was very disastrous. The motives that influenced the creation of the Balfour Declaration by the British government in 1917 hurt the Palestinians. Due to the interest of the British government in Zionism and its goals, the British sought out the opportunity to take control and manipulate the Jewish population in order to secure a strategic advantage. The introduction of a Jewish homeland served various British domestic and foreign policy goals. In this paper I will argue that the immediate consequences of the Balfour Declaration resulted in the mass emigration of Jews who occupied and exiled the Palestinian people from their own land, laid the foundation for Jewish and Arab unrest, and further helped Zionism gain mass acceptance from Jews all around the world.

Read More
526 Words | 3 Pages

Research Report: After the events of the Munich Massacre, Israel responded to the Palestinian brutality under the name Operation Wrath of God. (Klein 2005, Reeve 2000). Following the days after the Olympic tragedy, the Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency grew four times in size and used PM Meir’s guidance to seek out those involved in the acts of terrorism and to strike back at this group wherever we can find them.

Read More
626 Words | 3 Pages

Palestine view is “no” to partition, “no” to a Jewish state, and “no” to a Jewish presence in what they consider an Arab land. The Palestinians time and time again missed opportunities to achieve their national aspirations by greed, and hatred. In 1993 we saw a glimpse of peace between Israel and Palestine when they have the Declaration of Principles. In these terms, Palestinians promised to recognize Israel and stop terrorism and Israel in turn would establish a Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and Gaza. Israel also agreed to more concessions and transferred substantial powers and responsibilities to the Palestinians in various geographical

Read More
1828 Words | 8 Pages

Despite their young age at the time, the image of the homeland they left behind is a recurring motif in much of their writing. Palestine and the past are to an extent idealised. The homeland is a place of harmony, the land of oranges, olives and prosperity. The past is heroic and dignified and is in sharp contrast with the present, which brings poverty and humiliation. These themes can be seen clearly in Kanafani’s

Read More
780 Words | 4 Pages

A limitation of the article is that it fails to adequately address the aftermath of the Suez Canal Crisis because the focus of the article is on the time before the crisis, not the time after the crisis. The content of the article centers around the conflict at the Israeli-Egyptian border and how each side crosses the border and even commits acts of violence that provoke the Suez Canal Crisis. This is a value because it gives an extremely detailed account of one specific aspect of the crisis rather than addressing many points and not going into detail. But this is also a limitation because by failing to even mention other actions that contributed to the tensions between Egypt and Israel, Oren ignores many important actions taken by both the Israelis and the

Read More
1316 Words | 6 Pages

Ben Gurion states the essential problem in Israel/Palestine: “we and they want the same thing: We both want Palestine. And that is the fundamental conflict.” (Shlaim, 2001, p. 18) For both Israelis and Palestinians it is nationalist conflict, there is a clear reason in the action of both parties, a territorially secure state. Yet, both Israel and Hamas seem to accept that negotiation is the eventual end through which to meet their nationalist ends (Hroub, 2006; Shlaim, 2001).

Read More
1410 Words | 6 Pages

Abstract Sectarianism holds hegemonic power over Lebanon that is resistant to challenges of change. Institutional and foreign actors serve to instill and reinforce sectarianism from above while political and economic elites play on sectarian sentiments to maintain and enhance their power, contributing to sectarianism from below. These efforts ensure that the Lebanese subjects remain affiliated with their respective sects, compartmentalized in self-managed communities. Introduction Sectarian democracy, the political system adopted by Lebanon, fuses formal and informal sectarian and democratic components. Democracy is manifested in the way power is organized: upholding democratic principles such as the rights of individuals through elections,

Read More

More about The Iron Cage Book Review

Related Topics

Open Document