Renowned writers on the Palestine–Israel conflict confront the deceitful manipulations of mass media and mainstream scholarship
Since the Nakba in 1948, Israel has consistently denied Palestinians the most basic democratic rights. Originally published in 1988, Blaming the Victims shows how the cruel fate of this beleaguered people has been justified by spurious scholarship and biased journalism.
Nearly forty years on, Blaming the Victims remains devastatingly relevant and instructive for anyone committed to Palestinian liberation. With the incredible rise of a global Palestine solidarity movement since 2023, the systems of censorship that have long obstructed honest writing about Israel's oppression of the Palestinians are finally beginning to collapse. As Edward W. Said writes in the introduction, 'A huge amount of work obviously remains to be done … The thing to be remembered, however, is that nothing – and certainly not a colonial "fact" – is irreversible.'
With contributions from leading pro-Palestine voices, including Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Noam Chomsky, Norman G. Finkelstein, and Rashid Khalidi, Blaming the Victims explores how Israel not only conquered the land but also the treacherous territory of 'ideas, representations, rhetoric, and images'. "The wide-ranging scope and demythologising structure of Blaming the Victims makes it especially relevant at the present time when the actions of the state of Israel seem to contradict received opinion as to its nature. The book provides a great quantity of information, analyses it convincingly and, through an impressive body of notes on primary and secondary literature, points the reader in the direction of further information."
-Middle East International
"These forcefully argued treatises will be as enlightening as they are disturbing for anyone with an interest in Middle East politics."
-ALA Booklist
"Deserves a wide readership"
-Charles Glass, Spectator
"In addition to its hard-hitting essays on terrorism and the 1948 refugees, Blaming the Victims takes on other sacred cows of the Middle East"
-David Wemple, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs Christopher Hitchens is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and the author of the best-selling God Is Not Great. His books published by Verso include The Trial of Henry Kissinger, No One Left to Lie To, The Missionary Position, Unacknowledged Legislation, The Parthenon Marbles, Hostage to History, and more.
Edward W. Said (1935-2003) was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of Literature and of Kings College Cambridge, his celebrated works include Orientalism, The End of the Peace Process, Power, Politics and Culture, and the memoir Out of Place. He is also the editor, with Christopher Hitchens, of Blaming the Victims, published by Verso. New Left Review published an obituary in Nov-Dec 2003.
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of American Power and the New Mandarins, Manufacturing Consent (with Ed Herman), Deterring Democracy, Year 501, World Orders Old and New, Powers and Prospects, Profit over People, The New Military Humanism and Rogue States.
Norman G. Finkelstein is the author of A Nation on Trial (with Ruth Bettina Birn), named a notable book for 1998 by the New York Times Book Review, and Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict."
