Erasing Palestine: Free Speech and Palestinian Freedom by Rebecca Ruth Gould
Erasing Palestine: Free Speech and Palestinian Freedom by Rebecca Ruth Gould wasn't quite what I expected. I saw Gould in an interview and decided to read her book. Erasing Palestine starts out with an engaging story then goes into an academic discussion of antisemitism and the history of antisemitism while showing how antisemitism has been used as a cudgel to quiet the Palestinian voice and erase the history of the Palestinian people. Gould supports her individual points fairly well but sometimes it's easy to forget the overall point she's trying to make. I was a bit disappointed she didn't really explore how the legal definition of antisemitism came to differ so much from the dictionary definition. I felt this might have been an important part of discussing the erasure of Palestine. Some of her later points in the book about free speech in general weren't particularly convincing but also demonstrated what a complex issue freedom of speech can be. I, personally,