Our Palestine Question

“Provide[s] an essential backstory to one of the keenest debates today within Jewish communities.”—Kenan Malik, The Guardian “There is a largely forgotten history of what . . . happened in a dissenting corner of America’s Jewish community. As Geoffrey Levin writes in his relevant new book, since the founding of Israel ‘there have been American Jews deeply unsettled by Israeli policies toward both the Palestinian refugees and Arabs living under Israeli rule,’ who are fiercely dedicated to the issue.”—Peter Maass, Washington Post “Levin deftly and with scholarly precision presses the ‘undelete’ button and suddenly, as if in a hologram, a world largely forgotten pops back into focus. . . . Our Palestine Question . . . is the work of an adept historian, based on archival research and sound historical method, and its tenor is not ideological or histrionic.”—Shaul Magid, +972 Magazine “Remarkable insight into the creation and evolution of the relationship between the world’s two largest Jewish communities. . . . Our Palestine Question achieves what historians do at their best: it challenges communal memory, complicates what was once considered solid, and disrupts the perceived inevitability of our current political moment.”—Zev Mishell, Tel Aviv Review of Books “Many of these voices of dissent have been overlooked over the years. . . . Levin found them.”—Andrew Silow-Carroll, Jewish Telegraphic Agency/Times of Israel “An ode to Jews who uttered difficult words in dark times.”—Colin Schindler, Jewish Chronicle “Overturning conventional understandings of American Jewry’s relations with Israel during the state’s formative decades, Geoffrey Levin depicts a long arc of American Jewish concern and protest over Israeli treatment of Palestinians. Meticulously researched and powerfully argued, Levin’s book provides essential background for the current state of Israel-diaspora relations.”—Derek Penslar, Harvard University “Intelligent, compelling, and riveting. Levin gives us, for the first time, a truly transnational history of the relationship between American Jews and Israel.”— Melani McAlister, George Washington University “Geoffrey Levin’s engrossing study powerfully dismantles conventional wisdom about the attitudes and activities of American Jewish communal leadership vis-à-vis Palestinian rights in the decades after 1948. The result is a book that should be read by all interested in the past and future of justice in Israel/Palestine.”—James Loeffler, author of Rooted Cosmopolitans