Innovation and the

Entrepreneurship Ecosystem
Book of the Month I

The Hundred Years’

War On Palestine
A History of Settler Colonialism and
Resistance, 1917–2017

By Rashid Khalidi
Metropolitan Books, New York, 2020, 336 pages, US$30.00 Khalidi cites Palestinian scholar bear the shame of building a
Edward Said, who confirmed that nation on stolen land, on the tears
Zionists “have no use for us. The of another people. Rashid Khalidi

A
best Palestinian for them is either combines the personal with the
simple letter written in 1899 was perhaps the opening shot dead or gone.”vi But the criminal political, eloquently telling the
fired in the war on Palestine. It was written by Theodor Herzl, Zionist settler-colonial war of story of a deceitful letter written
Viennese journalist and leader of the world Zionist movement, in expulsion and occupation has in 1899 and how it led to tragic
response to Yusuf Diya al-Din Pasha al-Khalidi, the great-great- failed to silence the Palestinian consequences for his family and
great uncle of author Rashid Khalidi. people or their righteous resistance. relentless war on the Palestinian
Yusuf Diya was part of a family of Islamic religious scholars and Their fundamental strengths are people.
the mayor of Jerusalem for nearly a decade. He witnessed “the first years of their presence on their own land
proto-Zionist activity, starting with the arrival of the earliest European Jewish combined with their refusal to
settlers in the late 1870s and early 1880s.”i He was a prescient and prominent surrender. The result is “Israel’s
man in Palestinian society, and he clearly saw the aggressive Zionist ambitions inability to either swallow the
for his country. So Yusuf Diya wrote to Herzl, expressing respect for Judaism Palestinians whole or spit them out
and Jews and outrage at the persecution of European Jewry but reminding entirely.”vii
him that Palestine is inhabited by others. He closed his letter with a plea for his Palestinians are the moral victors in
home and people: “In the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.”ii this Hundred Years’ War because SCAN
Israel, like America, must forever TO SHARE
Professor Khalidi says that the letters between Yusuf Diya and Theodor Herzl
were probably “the first meaningful exchange between a leading Palestinian
figure and a founder of the Zionist movement.”iii At the time, Palestinians i
Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, p. 4.
constituted 95 percent of the population, but Herzl refused to see them as ii
Ibid., p. 5.
a people with an identity, a culture, nationalist aspirations, and ancient and iii
Ibid, p. 8.
sacred ties to the land. Herzl’s diary entries reveal his Zionist plan for ethnic iv
Ibid., p. 7.
cleansing in Palestine. But he lied in his 1899 letter of response to Yusuf v
John Quigley, “The International Diplomacy of Israel’s Founders: Deception at The United Nations,”
Diya: “Who would think of sending them away?”iv Herzl thus initiated the chapter in The Quest For Palestine, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
treacherous bad faith that has characterized Israeli diplomacy and negotiations vi
Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, p. 207.
to this day.v vii
Azmi Bishara, Palestine: Matters of Truth and Justice, London: Hurst & Company, 2022, p. 287.

66 THIS WEEK IN PALESTINE 67