The moral authority of the Zionist movement to have a claim to be synonymous with Jewish identity and asserting its mandate for leadership, rests on the notion that support for the State of Israel is based on a global consensus for reparations after the Holocaust. The difficulty in exposing Zionism and the State of Israel as synonymous with white supremacy and empire is often predicated on its supporters claim to be proponents of democracy and anti-racism.  In turn, this claim is based on the Zionist appropriation of the histories of Jews in Europe and the holocaust. Lenni Brenner's new book, 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration With the Nazis, is important in looking for answers to this predicament.

In his newest work Democracy Matters, Cornel West addresses contemporary issues of power and empire such as the struggle for Palestine, urban youth culture, and even “Nihilism in America.” Subtitled Winning the Fight Against Imperialism, the work invokes everyone from Socrates to KRS-One in attempt to form an uncompromising yet intellectual challenge to the status quo of imperialism and apathy.

The idea that academia is the highest form of civilization, where students and professors are free to openly debate and advocate any philosophy of their choosing without consequence, is a hoax. Individuals deciding to act upon their philosophies, believing their free speech is protected and held sacred on college campuses, find otherwise in the documentary film Discordia: When Netanyahu Came to Town.

For those of you not familiar with the intellect and personality of Andrea Dworkin, you will be introduced to her by reading this book. This radical western feminist, whose works include Women Hating, Pornography: Men Possessing Women, and Intercourse, are all filled with descriptions of what she considers the inherently violent nature of male sexual relations towards women. This trend continues in Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women’s Liberation where she compares the oppression of Jews historically (with particular attention to the Jewish holocaust) with violence against women internationally, with specific emphasis on Jewish and Palestinian women in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Chapters include: Jew-Hate/Women Hate, Pogrom/Rape, and Palestinians/Prostituted Women. As her book title suggests, Jews were racially scapegoated for societal ills in the pogroms of Russia and Nazi Germany just as women are subordinated through their gender in patriarchal societies, particularly in the Middle East.

 Are you frustrated with the simplicity of the “No Blood For Oil” slogan on Middle East matters? Baffled by the peculiar American coalition in defense of Israel between Zionist Jews and the Christian Right, who believe Jews are Christ killers and are going to hell? Confused by an African American community politics that maintains both a vocal minority in the forefront of Palestine solidarity for decades and a silent majority which is at best ambivalent and by no means active in Palestine’s defense? Outraged by the U.S. empire and the Israeli colonial settler state’s persistent ability to maintain a democratic ethos while culturally, economically, and militarily waging war on Arab and Muslim peoples for generations? Wondering how anti-colonial revolt in the Middle East could possibly be historically reduced to terrorism alone, and how terrorism could be said to be the antithesis of Western civilization founded on empire? The following book is a must read.

David Horowitz is better known among a younger generation for his various campaigns on college campuses around the country. In the last few years he has galvanized racist students by funding ads in college newspapers against African-American reparations and the Palestinian movement. More recently he has pushed forward a campaign for an “Academic Bill of Rights” with the help of his student front group “Students for Academic Freedom,” which would empower the state to police teachers and students in what they can and cannot discuss. For those with longer memories Horowitz is another example of a former authoritarian leftist turned conservative.

With the recent emergence of the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process,” there has been much talk in U.S. and Israeli government and media circles of what is called “the demographic problem.” While the meaning of this term is often mystified by its development and humanitarian connotations, it essentially functions as Zionist code for the following question: “What are we going to do about the increasing number of brown people who are not pleased to live in our ‘democratic’ white, white Israel?”

Does anyone still care about the plight of Palestinian refugees? Have not these people and their struggle to return to their homes and lands, forcibly seized in 1948, 1967 and beyond, become irrelevant in the eyes of Israel and the United States? Have they not been abandoned by the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, ignored or seen as a nuisance by Arab governments, and forgotten by some folks, worldwide, advocating solidarity with Palestine? Is the United Nations and international law the best (or only) hope for these refugees? Or should the struggle of Palestinian refugees to return home be abandoned because it is not physically possible? Alternatively, should calls for reparations and compensation be abandoned because they are not economically possible? Should not refugees abandon their claims because they are pipedreams, presenting major roadblocks to a true and lasting peace in Palestine/Israel? Discussion and answers to these questions appear in the sixteen essays included in the edited work Palestinian Refugees: The Right of Return.

A new marriage between social, legal and rabbinical forces is taking place in Israel that has fundamental implications not only on the future of the Israeli state, but on everyday Arabs and Muslims in Palestine/Israel. This new marriage is about the ability for Israeli women to have children without husbands. Reproducing Jews: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception in Israel by Susan M. Kahn is one such book that explores the dynamics between religion, the state and reproductive liberation.

For those out there who think most Palestinians are terrorists, then this book is a must read. For those who believe Palestinian women are oppressed because they wear hijabs, then I encourage you to read these insightful pages. As the name suggest, this text chronicles the lives of three mothers and three daughters, one pair from East Jerusalem, one pair from a refugee camp in the West Bank near Bethlehem, and another from an Arab village within the state of Israel. Their actual names are not used for their protection. All of these women have different personalities that allow for an interesting read, from free spirits to religious conservatives.