Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978

A new history of the American Jewish relationship with Israel focused on its most urgent and sensitive issue: the question of Palestinian rights   American Jews have debated Palestinian rights since Israel emerged in 1948. Geoffrey Levin recovers the voices of American Jews who, in the early decades of Israel’s existence, called for an honest reckoning with the moral and political plight of Palestinians. These now-forgotten voices, which include an aid-worker-turned-academic with Palestinian Sephardic roots, a former Yiddish journalist, anti-Zionist Reform rabbis, and young left-wing Zionist activists, felt drawn to support Palestinian rights by their understanding of Jewish history, identity, and ethics. They sometimes worked with mainstream American Jewish leaders who feared that ignoring Palestinian rights could foster antisemitism, leading them to press Israeli officials for reform. But Israeli diplomats viewed any American Jewish interest in Palestinian affairs with deep suspicion, provoking a series of quiet confrontations that ultimately kept Palestinian rights off the American Jewish agenda up to the present era.   In reconstructing this history of erasure, Levin lays the groundwork for more forthright debates over Palestinian rights issues, American Jewish identity, and the U.S.-Israel relationship more broadly.

About the Author :
Geoffrey Levin is assistant professor of Middle Eastern and Jewish studies at Emory University. He lives in Atlanta, GA.

Review :
“Provide[s] an essential backstory to one of the keenest debates today within Jewish communities.”—Kenan Malik, The Guardian “There is a largely forgotten history of what . . . happened in a dissenting corner of America’s Jewish community. As Geoffrey Levin writes in his relevant new book, since the founding of Israel ‘there have been American Jews deeply unsettled by Israeli policies toward both the Palestinian refugees and Arabs living under Israeli rule,’ who are fiercely dedicated to the issue.”—Peter Maass, Washington Post “By uncovering the longstanding and varied perspectives within the American Jewish community, Levin’s work offers a crucial context for understanding the current shifts and underscores that dissent has always been an integral part of U.S. Jewish discourse on Israel and Palestine.”—Etan Nechin, Haaretz “Illuminating.”—Adam Shatz, London Review of Books “Many of these voices of dissent have been overlooked over the years. . . . Levin found them.”—Andrew Silow-Carroll, Jewish Telegraphic Agency/Times of Israel “Levin deftly and with scholarly precision presses the ‘undelete’ button and suddenly, as if in a hologram, a world largely forgotten pops back into focus. . . . Our Palestine Question . . . is the work of an adept historian, based on archival research and sound historical method, and its tenor is not ideological or histrionic.”—Shaul Magid, +972 Magazine “Remarkable insight into the creation and evolution of the relationship between the world’s two largest Jewish communities. . . . Our Palestine Question achieves what historians do at their best: it challenges communal memory, complicates what was once considered solid, and disrupts the perceived inevitability of our current political moment.”—Zev Mishell, Tel Aviv Review of Books “An ode to Jews who uttered difficult words in dark times.”—Colin Schindler, Jewish Chronicle Winner of the 2025 SERMEISS Book Award, sponsored by the Southeast Regional Middle East and Islamic Studies Society  Winner of the Saul Viener Prize, sponsored by the American Jewish Historical Society  “Intelligent, compelling, and riveting. Levin gives us, for the first time, a truly transnational history of the relationship between American Jews and Israel.”—Melani McAlister, George Washington University “Fascinating. . . . Reveals how Palestinian rights issues and the same injustices that persist today have provoked debate since 1948.”—Dana El Kurd, author of Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine “You will never think in the same way about terms like ‘Jewish-Arab solidarity’ and ‘Zionism.’ Levin’s book does not merely chronicle the past. It shows us the futures that were once possible—and could be again.”—Arash Azizi, author of What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom “Overturning conventional understandings of American Jewry’s relations with Israel during the state’s formative decades, Geoffrey Levin depicts a long arc of American Jewish concern and protest over Israeli treatment of Palestinians. Meticulously researched and powerfully argued, Levin’s book provides essential background for the current state of Israel-diaspora relations.”—Derek Penslar, Harvard University “Geoffrey Levin’s engrossing study powerfully dismantles conventional wisdom about the attitudes and activities of American Jewish communal leadership vis-à-vis Palestinian rights in the decades after 1948. The result is a book that should be read by all interested in the past and future of justice in Israel/Palestine.”—James Loeffler, author of Rooted Cosmopolitans