Remembering Palestine in 1948:Witnesses to War, Victory and Defeat

The war of 1948 in Palestine is a conflict whose history has been written primarily from the national point of view. This book asks what happens when narratives of war arise out of personal stories of those who were involved, stories that are still unfolding. Efrat Ben-Ze'ev examines the memories of those who participated and were affected by the events of 1948, and how these events have been mythologized over time. This is a three-way conversation between Palestinian villagers, Jewish-Israeli veterans, and British policemen who were stationed in Palestine on the eve of the war. Each has his or her story to tell. These small-scale truths shed new light on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as it was then and as it has become.

Efrat Ben-Ze'ev is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at the Ruppin Academic Center in Israel, and Research Fellow at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her publications include, as co-editor, of Shadows of War: A Social History of Silence in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2010).