Israel, Palestine, and American Policy Syllabus

A free curriculum on Israel, Palestine and the American stake in both — the long history, how each side actually governs itself, the aid and veto machinery linking Washington to Jerusalem, the war since October 2023 and what has been charged in which court, the region and the undeclared arsenal, and the argument as it is fought out in American institutions. Thirteen courses drawn from six Quarex libraries. Sources and competing accounts are named throughout; where the evidence divides, the courses say so.

13Courses
160Chapters
947Topics

Module 1 · The Long History

How the land, the peoples and the conflict got here — the regional background first, then the century from the Balfour era through the Nakba, the occupation, Oslo, the intifadas and October 7.

1 The History of the Middle East 8 ch.
  1. The Cradle of Civilization: Mesopotamia to Persia
  2. Islam and the Arab Empire
  3. The Ottoman Empire: Six Centuries of Power
  4. The Colonial Period: Mandates, Oil, and Artificial States
  5. Israel, Palestine, and the Conflict That Defines the Region
  6. Oil, Wealth, and the Transformation of the Gulf
  7. Revolution, War, and the Modern Middle East
  8. The Legacy: Why the Middle East Matters
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2 Gaza: How Did We Get Here? 17 ch.
  1. The Land Before the Conflict (Pre-1917)
  2. Seeds of Division (1917-1947)
  3. The Nakba and Gaza's Transformation (1948-1949)
  4. Egypt's Gaza (1949-1967)
  5. Occupation Begins (1967-1987)
  6. The First Intifada (1987-1993)
  7. The Oslo Hope (1993-2000)
  8. The Second Intifada and Its Aftermath (2000-2005)
  9. Hamas Takes Control (2006-2007)
  10. Life Under Blockade (2007-2023)
  11. The Repeating Wars (2008-2022)
  12. October 7, 2023
  13. Israel's Response (2023-2024)
  14. The Hostages and the Impossible Choices
  15. The World Responds
  16. Competing Narratives
  17. What Could Peace Look Like?
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Module 2 · The Two Polities Today

Who governs what, under which system, and how each side is actually organised — Israel's coalitions and courts, and the split Palestinian structure with its dissolved legislature and long-expired mandates.

3 How Israel Governs Itself: Coalitions, Courts, and the Judicial Overhaul 12 ch.
  1. Why Israel Has No Written Constitution and What Stands In Its Place
  2. How Proportional Representation Produces Permanent Coalitions
  3. Who the Religious Parties Are and What They Extract
  4. How the Military Draft Exemption Became the Most Divisive Domestic Issue
  5. What the Supreme Court Claimed for Itself in the 1990s
  6. Why the 2023 Judicial Overhaul Brought Hundreds of Thousands Into the Streets
  7. How Netanyahu's Criminal Trials Shape His Coalition Choices
  8. What the Settler Movement Wants and How It Gets It
  9. How Palestinian Citizens of Israel Vote, Serve, and Are Governed
  10. Why the Security Establishment Sometimes Opposes the Government It Serves
  11. What Happened to the Israeli Left
  12. How Israelis Themselves Argue About the Occupation
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4 How Palestinians Are Governed: The Authority, Hamas, and the Elections That Stopped 12 ch.
  1. Why There Are Two Palestinian Governments and How the Split Happened
  2. What the Oslo Accords Created and What They Deliberately Left Out
  3. How Areas A, B, and C Divide the West Bank
  4. Who Runs the Palestinian Authority and How Its Leaders Are Chosen
  5. Why the Elections Stopped in 2006 and What Happened to the Ones Promised Since
  6. How Hamas Governs Gaza
  7. What Security Coordination Means and Why It Is So Contested
  8. How the Palestinian Authority Is Funded and What Happens When Money Stops
  9. What the Refugee Agency Does That No Government Does
  10. How Palestinian Courts, Police, and Municipalities Actually Work
  11. Why the Succession Question Has No Answer
  12. What Palestinians Themselves Say About Their Own Leadership
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Module 3 · The American Relationship

The two halves of the American stake: the state-to-state machinery of aid, vetoes and arms law, and the domestic lobby that works alongside it.

5 The United States and Israel: Aid, Vetoes, and the Special Relationship 12 ch.
  1. How Truman Recognized Israel Against His Own State Department
  2. Why 1967 Turned a Sympathetic Ally into a Strategic Partner
  3. What the 1973 Airlift Established About American Commitment
  4. How Camp David Made Egypt the Second-Largest Recipient of American Aid
  5. What the Memorandum of Understanding Actually Obligates
  6. Why Military Aid Comes Back to American Manufacturers
  7. How the Security Council Veto Has Been Used
  8. What Qualitative Military Edge Means in American Law
  9. Why Missile Defense Is Funded Separately From the Rest
  10. How American Law Conditions Arms Transfers on Conduct
  11. What Presidents Have Done When They Disagreed With an Israeli Government
  12. Why Public Opinion Has Moved and What That Changes
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6 AIPAC: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee 10 ch.
  1. What AIPAC Is: A Domestic Lobby for a Foreign Policy Position
  2. Origins: From Zionist Council to Washington Power Center (1951–2022)
  3. Governance and Structure: 501(c)(4) Lobby Plus PAC Plus Super PAC
  4. Leadership: The CEOs and Lay Presidents Who Built and Run AIPAC
  5. Who Funds AIPAC: The Donors Behind a Single-Issue Powerhouse
  6. Who AIPAC Funds: The 2024 Primary Wave, the 2026 Pullback, and the Front Groups
  7. The Case For AIPAC: First Amendment, Transparency, and the Bipartisan Alliance
  8. The Case Against AIPAC: Foreign Influence, Chilling Effects, and Cross-Party Distortion
  9. Is It Legal? Lobbying Law, Campaign Finance, FARA, and the Cases That Tested AIPAC
  10. Current State (2026): The Pullback, the Reject-AIPAC Movement, and the Toxic-Brand Problem
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Module 4 · The War and the Legal Record

What the sources say happened since October 2023, and separately what has been charged, by whom, in which forum, and on what evidence.

7 Gaza Since October 7: What the Sources Say Happened 12 ch.
  1. October 7, 2023: What Hamas Did and Whom It Killed
  2. Israel's Operations Timeline from Northern Gaza to Rafah
  3. The Casualty Ledger: What the Gaza Health Ministry, the IDF, and The Lancet Each Report
  4. Hostages: Who Was Taken, Who Came Home, Who Died in Captivity
  5. Famine and Aid: What the IPC Declared and Why Aid Got Stuck
  6. South Africa at the ICJ and the ICC Arrest Warrants for Netanyahu and Sinwar
  7. The Wider War: Hezbollah, the Houthis, the West Bank, and Iran
  8. The Ceasefire Rounds: What Each Deal Offered and Why Most Collapsed
  9. Press Access and Journalist Deaths: Why So Many Reporters Were Killed and Who Couldn't Enter
  10. Reconstruction and 'The Day After': The Damage Estimates and Governance Proposals
  11. The West Bank Parallel Ledger: Settler Violence and Operations Since October 2023
  12. Where the Disputes Are: The Numbers Each Side Trusts and Where the Sources Diverge
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8 War Crimes Accusations Against Israel: The Courts, the Charges, and the Evidence 15 ch.
  1. How International Law Defines a War Crime: Distinction, Proportionality, and Precaution
  2. Why Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, and War Crimes Are Not Interchangeable
  3. What Earlier Inquiries Found: Goldstone, Cast Lead, and the Retraction That Followed
  4. How South Africa Brought a Genocide Case at the World Court
  5. What the World Court Ordered, and What Provisional Measures Do Not Decide
  6. Why the Criminal Court Sought Warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Deif
  7. How Jurisdiction Reaches States That Never Joined the Court
  8. When Starvation Becomes a Weapon: The Blockade, the Convoys, and the Famine Findings
  9. Why Protected Places Lost Their Protection: Hospitals, Schools, and Shelters
  10. Who Investigates When Journalists and Aid Workers Are Killed
  11. What Human Rights Organizations Concluded About Apartheid
  12. How Israel Answers the Charges: Military Investigations, Human Shields, and Complementarity
  13. What October 7 Established as a Crime: Hostage-Taking, Mass Killing, and the Case Against Hamas
  14. Why Warrants Rarely Become Trials: Enforcement, Immunity, and American Leverage
  15. Where the Evidence Genuinely Divides
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Module 5 · The Region and the Bomb

The wider confrontation the conflict sits inside, and the undeclared arsenal that has shaped regional strategy for sixty years.

9 Iran vs. the United States and Israel: Conflict, Strategy, and the Major Players 12 ch.
  1. The 1953 Coup: The Original Sin of US-Iran Relations
  2. The Shah's Iran: An American Client State and Its Contradictions
  3. The Revolution and the Hostage Crisis: 1979 as the Breaking Point
  4. Washington Arms Tehran's Enemy: The US-Iraq Tilt During the Iran-Iraq War
  5. Israel and Iran: From Secret Alliance to Existential Enmity
  6. The Nuclear Program: What Iran Built, Why, and What the World Did About It
  7. The Proxy Network: Iran's Forward Defense Strategy
  8. Qasem Soleimani: The Architect of Iranian Power Projection
  9. October 7 and Its Aftermath: How Hamas Pulled Iran Into a New War
  10. The 2026 War: Causes, Conduct, and Consequences
  11. The Major Players: Decision-Makers Who Shaped the Conflict
  12. What Comes Next: Scenarios for Iran, Israel, and the United States
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10 Israel's Nuclear Program: Dimona, Ambiguity, and the Treaty It Never Signed 12 ch.
  1. How France Helped Build the Reactor at Dimona
  2. Why Kennedy Pressed for Inspections and What He Got
  3. What Deliberate Ambiguity Means as a Declared Policy
  4. How the Nixon Understanding Set the Terms Still in Force
  5. Why Israel Never Signed the Nonproliferation Treaty
  6. What Mordechai Vanunu Revealed and What It Cost Him
  7. How the Vela Incident of 1979 Remains Unresolved
  8. What the Begin Doctrine Established at Osirak and Deir ez-Zor
  9. Why Arab States Push for a Nuclear-Free Middle East
  10. How Israel's Arsenal Shapes the Argument About Iran
  11. What American Law Says About Aid to Undeclared Nuclear States
  12. Why Ambiguity Has Held for Sixty Years and What Would End It
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Module 6 · The Argument at Home

How the conflict is fought over inside American institutions — where criticism ends and prejudice begins, and how campuses became the battleground.

11 Antisemitism and Criticism of Israel: Where the Line Is Drawn and Who Draws It 14 ch.
  1. How Antisemitism Worked Before Israel Existed: Blood Libel, Expulsion, and the Ghetto
  2. Why the Same Three Tropes Recur: Money, Media, and Dual Loyalty
  3. What the Nazi Case Established, and Why It Still Governs the Vocabulary
  4. How Antisemitism Survived on Both the Political Right and the Political Left
  5. What the IHRA Definition Says, and How It Came to Be Written
  6. Why the IHRA Drafter Objected to How His Own Definition Was Used
  7. What the Jerusalem Declaration and the Nexus Document Proposed Instead
  8. How Governments and Universities Adopted a Definition, and What Adoption Actually Does
  9. When the Charge Did Not Fit: Criticism Labeled Antisemitic
  10. When the Charge Did Fit: Anti-Zionist Rhetoric That Reproduced the Old Tropes
  11. Why Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism Are Neither Identical Nor Unrelated
  12. How Jewish Communities Disagree With Each Other About All of This
  13. Who Counts Antisemitic Incidents, and Why the Totals Diverge
  14. What Both Kinds of Error Cost: Silenced Criticism and Unnamed Bigotry
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12 Campus Speech: From Speaker Disinvitations to the Israel-Palestine Test 12 ch.
  1. The Berkeley Free Speech Movement and What It Actually Demanded
  2. The Yale Halloween Email and the Silliman Confrontation
  3. Charles Murray at Middlebury and the Disinvitation Pattern
  4. The Heckler's Veto and Where Protest Becomes Suppression
  5. FIRE, the Chicago Principles, and the Institutional Commitment Question
  6. Public Versus Private Universities and the First Amendment Line
  7. DEI Statements in Hiring and the Compelled Speech Fight
  8. The 2023-24 Israel-Palestine Campus Crisis
  9. The Antisemitism Awareness Act and the IHRA Definition Fight
  10. Bias Response Teams, Self-Censorship, and the Chilling Effect
  11. Faculty Speech, Academic Freedom, and the Hard Cases
  12. The Federal Funding Lever and the BDS First Amendment Question
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Module 7 · How You Know What You Know

The reporting layer everything above reaches you through: who is allowed in, whose words are used, and how to read a story about any of it.

13 Covering Israel and Palestine: Access, Language, and Pressure 12 ch.
  1. Why Foreign Reporters Cannot Enter Gaza Independently
  2. How Local Journalists Became the Only Witnesses, and What Happened to Them
  3. What the Passive Voice Does to a Casualty Report
  4. Why Newsrooms Fight Over the Words Terrorist, Militant, and Fighter
  5. How Organized Pressure Campaigns Work on Both Sides
  6. What the Al-Ahli Hospital Explosion Revealed About Speed Versus Verification
  7. How Casualty Figures Are Sourced and Why Attribution Language Matters
  8. Why Wire Services Became the Whole Story
  9. How Social Platforms Moderate This Conflict Differently
  10. What Happens to Journalists Who Are Perceived to Take a Side
  11. Why Audiences on Both Sides Believe Coverage Favors the Other
  12. How to Read a Story About This Conflict
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