“Zionism, we are often told, is a specific form of Jewish colonialism. Hanine Shehadeh demonstrates that it is much more: Through her genealogical work, Palestine emerges as the discursive and material terrain the Christian West used and uses to define itself and to displace its contradictions. A theological narrative originally developed to promote the Crusades was eventually secularized, but the underlying constitution of the West’s sovereign claims over all others remained and remains. This conclusion carries implications for settler colonial studies: Rather than one late example of settler colonial invasion, Christian Zionism emerges as its original archetype.”—Lorenzo Veracini, author of Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview
“Why has Palestine occupied such a powerful place in the Western imagination for centuries? In The Thousand-Year Crusade for Palestine, Shehadeh offers a brilliant and provocative historical reading of this question, tracing a thousand-year genealogy of Christian conquest, redemption, and civilizational identity. From the Crusades and the Reformation to Zionist Christianity and the modern settler state, Shehadeh reveals how Palestine became a stage on which Europe repeatedly imagined its righteousness—and how restoration of the Jew became part of that enduring Christian drama. With remarkable historical vision and conceptual ambition, Shehadeh brings into view connections that have too often remained fragmented, offering a striking new way of understanding Zionism within the longer history of Western modernity and its relationship to Palestine. Timely, original, and compelling, this is a book that demands attention.”—Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, author of Militarization and Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: A Palestinian Case Study
“This is a provocative and fascinating reading of Zionism through the longue durée of European Christian political theology. It fundamentally challenges our understanding of what is today thought of as a generically evangelical ‘Christian Zionism’ by linking the Crusades to the Reformation and the Enlightenment, showing how they were all, in turn, predicated on a fundamental religious and racial disavowal of the rich history and humanity of the Palestinians in what had always been a profoundly multireligious Palestine.”—Ussama Makdisi, author of Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World
