Shay Hazkani is Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.
"Shay Hazkani opens an entirely new vista on the Nakba. With
methodological bravery and archival rigor, he carefully unfolds the
stories and words of everyday soldiers and civilians, to reveal the
divisions and fractures, the uncomfortable truths, and the surreal
alliances that began to consolidate the 'Arab' and the 'Jew' as
mutually exclusive categories."—Sherene Seikaly, University of
California, Santa Barbara
"Reading a rich collection of letters, this seminal work examines
ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations.
Shay Hazkani's microhistories explore how war dehumanizes some
people and humanizes others; how individuals succumb to, but also
resist, propaganda efforts; and how perpetrators and victims
interpret, and mediate to others, the traumatic and violent events
they lived through."—Orit Bashkin, University of Chicago
"Shay Hazkani makes a brilliant contribution to the literature on
the 1948 Palestine War, documenting the views of the Arab and
Jewish soldiers who fought in the war through letters seized by the
Israeli censors. Impeccably balanced and engagingly written, Dear
Palestine is a remarkable book that deserves the very widest
readership."—Eugene Rogan, University of Oxford
"Hazkani's book does not completely overturn our view of the past,
but it does add nuance, proving that it was possible, even in the
early years of the state, for Israelis to view their Arab and
Palestinian neighbors less hatefully than the Israeli leadership at
the time had wanted. This enmity and nationalism were produced with
much effort, as a result of systematic indoctrination. And if such
animus was not always present in the past, it may not have to
remain a part of our future."—Tom Pessah, +972 Magazine
"Dear Palestine is not just another book about the 1948 war. Even
though it continues the growing tendency of historians to shift the
gaze toward microhistory, it does more than that. It takes us on a
fascinating journey to the space between efforts of official
indoctrination and the unpredictable ways in which they are
processed."—Tamir Sorek, Critical Inquiry
"Hazkani's claims for a new narrative do not rely on
reconstructions of individual experiences deviating from the binary
logic of nationalist sentiments alone. By juxtaposing the opposing
narratives side by side, he argues for a more comprehensive
assessment of how Zionist identity was constituted and
challenged."—Yaël Mizrahi-Arnaud, The Tel Aviv Review of Books
"Hazkani has followed an intuitive but all too infrequently
traveled path in attempting a shared history of Jews and Arabs in
Palestine in 1948. He attempts a fusion of historical horizons by
joining a careful analysis of wartime propaganda by both sides with
the honest accounts of soldiers on the ground. This interplay of
top-down and bottom-up sources yields striking dissonance, which a
skilled historian such as Hazkani uses to great advantage."—David
N. Myers, Los Angeles Review of Books
"Dear Palestine marks a paradigm shift in the study of the
relations between Jews and Arabs... It is a story that quietly
defies monolithic and binary perceptions passed down by nationalist
histories. In their stead, Hazkani offers a relational account that
listens to a more nuanced human network which steers this
commendable and unpretentiously radical book."—the Korenblat Book
Award selection committee
"I strongly recommend Shay Hazkani's book. It is masterfully
written and tells stories not told before, highlighting that while
war is all-too-often portrayed in a way in which the warring
parties come across as monolithic entities united in a common
struggle, the truth is that societies undergoing conflict are just
as complex and composed of individuals as societies in peace
time."—Jørgen Jensehaugen, Journal of Military History
"Dear Palestine is entirely generative and contributes greatly to
non-mythologized, rigorous, and empirical scholarship on Palestine
in 1948. At the center of this work is not so much an empirical
recitation of what happened and when—this is largely known—but
rather a historicization of the sociopolitical process of meaning
making... It tells the story of how imperialism, colonialism, and
the struggle over nationalism foreclosed the futures of certain
groups of people, those who faced exile, dispossession, and
marginalization. Most of all, it reminds us that the possibility of
liberation for Jews and Palestinians is constitutively
intertwined."—Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, Journal of Palestine
Studies
"This book is a groundbreaking contribution to Palestine–Israel
studies for several reasons; above all, it is the first
comprehensive social history of the 1948 war. Hazkani's analysis of
recruits' letters highlights their candid observations, opinions,
and feelings about the tumultuous war, filling a significant gap in
scholarship."—Elizabeth Brownson, Journal of History
"Shay Hazkani's Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War is
an important contribution to the rich historical literature on the
1948 War, combining the use of new archival sources with a fresh
observation on events in Palestine during the year of Israel's
establishment and the Nakba."—Adel Manna', International Journal of
Middle East Studies
"Shay Hazkani's Dear Palestine is an innovative, compellingly
written, and deeply researched contribution to the history of the
1948 Palestine war, the establishment of Israel, and the effacement
of Palestine.... Scholars and researchers should pay attention to
the book not only for what it reveals about Palestine and the
emergence of Israel but also for what we learn from it about the
politics of Arab states at a critical period in the process of
decolonization."—Weldon C. Matthews, American Historical Review
"Dear Palestine is the product of painstaking and innovative
detective work. Hazkani makes excellent use of ALA soldiers'
writings and IDF censors' reports squirreled away in the IDF
archive. The book is engagingly written. ... [Dear Palestine]
deserves praise for its originality, comparative scope, and
significance. It is essential reading for any student of the 1948
War and the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."—Derek
Penslar, Journal of Israeli History
"Many books have been written about the war, but few have examined
the process by which regular people were convinced to fight or the
interplay between official ideology and the perspectives of
soldiers on the ground.... Dear Palestine will be useful to anyone
interested in the interplay of war and identity formation."—Robert
DiPrizio, H-War
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