Books &
Batikh
We get together, read together, and learn together. Whenever we find an opportunity to use what we learned, we take it.
We have put together a topic map to showcase where our direction could take you
Books & Batikh was born out of the University Camp for Palestine in Munich in August 2024 with Khalidi's Hundred Years' War and never stopped.
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine
Rashid Khalidi
Khalidi reads a century of Palestinian history, from the Balfour Declaration to 2017, as a settler-colonial war fought in six declared stages. His own family’s archive runs through the account. Khalidi is a Palestinian-American historian and held the Edward Said chair in Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University.
Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom
Norman G. Finkelstein
A forensic examination of Israel’s assaults on Gaza from Operation Cast Lead through 2014. Finkelstein tests official claims against the findings of human rights reports, and shows how international bodies retreated from their own conclusions. He is an American political scientist and the son of Holocaust survivors, known for his uncompromising scholarship on Israel–Palestine.
Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative
Isabella Hammad
This essay began as the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture, delivered days before October 7, 2023. It asks how stories, and the moment a character finally recognizes the truth, can help us see Palestine clearly. Hammad is a British-Palestinian novelist and the author of The Parisian and Enter Ghost.
Orientalism
Edward W. Said
Said’s founding text of postcolonial studies shows how Western scholarship, literature and art invented “the Orient” as an exotic, inferior Other, and how that knowledge served empire. Said was a Palestinian-American literary critic at Columbia and one of the most influential public intellectuals of the twentieth century.
The Wretched of the Earth
Frantz Fanon
Fanon wrote this anatomy of colonialism in 1961 while dying, and it became a manifesto for decolonization. It covers the violence that colonialism produces, the psychic wounds it leaves, and the pitfalls awaiting the new national elites. Fanon was a Martinican psychiatrist who joined the Algerian liberation struggle.
Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal
Mohammed El-Kurd
El-Kurd takes apart the demand that Palestinians prove themselves blameless, palatable and “perfect” before they are granted sympathy or rights. He argues for refusing that test altogether. El-Kurd is a Palestinian writer and poet from Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem, where his family’s fight against eviction drew global attention.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Ilan Pappé
Drawing on Israeli military archives, Pappé argues that the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 was a planned campaign rather than a by-product of war. The key on this cover stands for the homes people were forced to leave. Pappé is an Israeli historian, one of the “New Historians,” and teaches at the University of Exeter.
BDS: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions
Omar Barghouti
Barghouti makes the case for the Palestinian-led, nonviolent BDS movement, modelled on the campaign against South African apartheid. He sets out its three demands: ending the occupation, equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the right of return. He is a co-founder of the BDS movement and a recipient of the Gandhi Peace Prize.
The things we made and did to share what we learned with others
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