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Lalita Panicker picks her favourite read of 2025
A gripping and disturbing read that denounces Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, this book makes the reader want to learn more about the historic origins of the conflict and the vicious actions of the Israeli establishment
There has been a deluge of books on Gaza since Hamas launched its ill-thought-out attack on Israel, bringing in its wake massive violence and destruction from the Israeli defence forces, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians. If I had to choose one book, it would be Pankaj Mishra’s The World After Gaza, where the author pulls no punches about western complicity in creating a State like Israel and its often-catastrophic results for the Palestinians and, in the wider context, the Arabs. Israel, once admired by a generation of Indians, for its indomitable spirit in a hostile environment, its military prowess and its ability to handle the West, has now firmly slipped off the pedestal it was put on. Mishra, on a visit to the area, has a Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment, when he comes across the realities of the Israeli occupation of West Bank, a place of brutal repression and intrusive settlements.
As Indians, once a colonised people, we can understand the bond Mishra feels with the Palestinians whose occupation seems to have become a night without end. He excoriates the western nations, which he says, “…worked together to uphold a global racial order.”
It can be argued that this book is one-sided, but it does echo what many see today as the advancement of a Zionist, white supremacist State led by a man, Benjamin Netanyahu, who seems to disregard all humane solutions and international law, secure in the fact that many in the West, mainly the US, will continue to support his cruel actions against the Palestinians till he achieves whatever twisted goal he has in mind. Mishra seems to disregard the historical fact that the Jews too suffered the kind of horrors few people have and also that Netanyahu and his cronies are not representative of all Jews. There are many within Israel and elsewhere who are staunch opponents of Netanyahu’s violent campaign.
While the book is a gripping read, albeit disturbing, it is anything but even handed, and for Indians, the appeal will lie in this fact. No waffling about, but a straight up denunciation of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. It tells in stark detail the immense suffering of the Palestinians, literally a people without a homeland, whose plight continues to be a moral stain on all those who have been complicit in their persecution. The book will make you sit up and want to learn more about the historic origins of the conflict, the role of other nations in the region in nurturing Hamas and other militant organisations, the vicious actions of the Israeli establishment and the immeasurable horrors visited on the Palestinians, who have now been abandoned by most of the world. Not an easy read, but compelling in the extreme.
