Not A Land Without People": An Early History Of Palestine

Rashid Khalidi, professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, discusses his 2020 book The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017, and his views on the Israel-Gaza conflict as it stands now.

Professor Rashid Khalidi then joins, first stepping back to explain why he began his work on Palestinian resistance in 1917, well before the establishment of the state of Israel, looking at the central role of the West – namely Britain and the US – in support and facilitating the violent establishment and maintenance of a Zionist apartheid state. Beginning in 1917, Professor Khalidi then works his way through the history of Palestinian’s last century of struggle, first exploring occupation under the British mandate, the role of European nationalism and anti-semitism in facilitating the Balfour declaration and the establishment of a Zionist state, and the combination of violent British and Zionist repression against Palestinians, alongside mass ethnic cleansing, in the decades leading up to World War II.