Vulnerable Israel

Ilan Pappé, Israel on the Brink and the Eight Revolutions that Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence (Boston: Beacon Press, 2025), 216 pages, hardcover.

Tom Mayer

IIan Pappé’s scholarship has provided convincing documentation about the ethnic cleansing committed by the Zionist movement from its very outset (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, 2006), challenged the ideologies used to support the existence of Israel as an exclusively Jewish state (Ten Myths About Israel, 2017), and provided historical grounding for the rights of Palestinians to full coexistence in the “land between the river and the sea” (A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Tw o Peoples, 2003). Pappé is universally acknowledged to be an invaluable teacher and ally of progressive Palestinians and Jews everywhere.

Pappé’s most recent book, Israel on the Brink, argues that Israel now has serious entrenched vulnerabilities that imperil its continued existence as a Zionist state. These vulnerabilities make possible the emergence of a single, truly democratic state encompassing both Palestinians and Jews in all of historic Palestine. But if such a transformation happens, it will certainly not be painless—and it could be exceedingly violent. Nevertheless, such a revolution could lead to a political future that is substantially better for both Palestinians and Jews.

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