Well, racism is something the other guy practices, right? I mean, what's the point of winning a war if you can't control the narrative after? That's why WWII was caused by excessive reparations leveed against Germany by vengeful powers, why the Holocaust was an out-of-nowhere anomaly practiced only by those guys we tried and hanged at Nuremberg, why the Marshall Plan saved the world for Truth, Justice and apple pie and why the Euro is the world's best bet for transcendent capitalist enlightenment.

Never mind that France permits Liberte, Fraternite, Egalite unless you want to wear a veil. Never mind that Greece's ascendant political party are literally Neo-Nazis. Never mind that the Notting HIll Race Riots of 1958 were in response to a - wait for it - 2% black population. Racism is that dead'n'buried thing that only happens in the US, right? Europe, ever cosmopolitan, ever free-thinking, doesn't have any. That "Black Pete" thing is about culture, not racism.

See, the US wears its racism on its sleeve. We talk about it. We fight over it. It's a struggle that we make progress on. Europe? Not so much. And that's why the Jews are now Israelis and the Gypsies are found beaten half to death in shopping carts.

Here's the last chapter of Postwar. It's a PDF. It's also an essay called "From the House of the Dead: An Essay on Modern European Memory." It's worth a read.

____________________________________

As far as a timeline/history of the Palestinians, that's just it - there isn't any. The Middle East was tribal, is tribal, remains tribal. Under the Ottoman Empire, those tribes were kept under thumb lest they get unruly. The Palestinian "people" were basically the nomads that happened to be there at the time - as Dore Gold and others have pointed out, if anything it was the "palestinians" that turned the verdant, green land of the Bible into the over-grazed wasteland that is the modern Middle East. This much the Zionists can claim: the Holy Land was their country until they stone cold lost it to raiders in 600BC. They can also claim this: Islam isn't so much about building holy sites as it is about reclaiming existing ones (and destroying the ones that offend it). That's why three different religions can claim the Dome of the Rock but only one of them owns it.

_____________________________________

RE: Oslo Accords: Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by Israeli right-wingers. Ariel Sharon, meanwhile, was directly responsible for Sabra and Shatila:

Both sides have to want it. And neither really does.