1932

This afternoon I found a very intriguing book at the Goodwill thrift store downtown. It is a green, clothbound hardcover. The title is ‘Palestine Land of the Light’, written by Frederick DeLand Leete, and published in 1932. On the front is a small golden image of the Dome of the Rock with the Mount of Olives in the background.

I am really excited to read this book. It was written in the early ‘30s, just a bit before so much went down, before Israel was created, but just a bit after the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It should be very interesting to read about Palestine in that historical context….not as a look back from current times, but to read descriptions and stories from that actual time. Of course, it was written by a western visitor and that will certainly influence the book’s narrative and perception.

Already, just opening the front cover, it’s exciting: old maps! I love old maps. And there are two in this book. The maps make me think of how I sometimes hear from people today that there never was a Palestine or Palestinians, that this is a made up group of people. It’s completely absurd and has been manufactured and used in attempts to justify expulsion, occupation, and other horrors inflicted on the Palestinian population. Thinking about those inventions and looking at these maps from 1932, clearly labeled as Palestine, just makes me so curious to learn about the Palestinian population that became the first generation of Palestinian refugees. And to simply learn a bit more about that time and environment.

Things were already changing, gears already in motion, by 1932. I’m curious as to how this foreign visitor saw the land, the people, the situations. There is, I think, a lot of historic and religious observation and narrative in the book but it seems that there is also some current (at that time) description of people and places.