newsThe Palestinians: Re-issue of a book that tells of a struggle by people to return to a land they lost in 1948
Don McCullin, his camera and his dedication showed the world how ghastly life can be for so many.
In 1980, the broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby and the photo-journalist Don McCullin wrote a seminal work about the plight of the Palestinian people from the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 onwards. It has been re-issued and is a contribution to our understanding of the terrible recent events in Gaza. TREVOR GRUNDY reports –
On the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme (October 24) Don McCullin said- “The world’s leaders, who are supposed to be the people who guide us, have stood back and watched nearly 70,000 of these people (the Palestinians) being killed, many of who are just ordinary people like you and I.”
He was speaking the day his seminal book The Palestinians was re-launched in London. It was and it will be again a book that lifts eyebrows and raises temperatures.
The original was published almost 45 years ago.
Through extensive interviews, it gave in 1980 a voice to the old men who were children when the Balfour Declaration of 1917 prepared the way for the exodus of something like 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948.
The book told the story of a people without a land and a land now full of mainly immigrants.
Jonathan Dimbleby argues in an up-dated foreword that without justice for the Palestinians there can be no lasting piece in the Middle East.
Jonathan Dimbleby is a renowned journalist, author and film-maker. Don McCullin CBE is an internationally acclaimed photo-journalist.
McCullin told a BBC interviewer that the s dreadful situation keeps him awake at night.
“I’ve devoted my whole life to showing how awful the world is in other conflicts and wars. I’ve been doing this for over 60 years but it hasn’t made much difference for the way people behave.”
This from the man who many journalists believe is one of the greatest photo-journalists who has ever held a camera.
Sadly, he now believes that the kin d of phot-journalism that made his name is dead and gone.
Arabs in Israel ask why they are treated as second -class people in a land they used to own (Picture by Trevor Grundy in Jerusalem)
He said: “Newspapers are no longer interested in seeing the miserable lives and sufferings of other people. They are much more interested in the world of those people at the top of the ladder, people who play football, who are good looking . . . film stars.”
He said – with great sadness in his voice – that anyone who goes to war or who covers war as a journalist is “out of their minds.”
“It’s silly when anyone says, Your pictures make such a difference.” They’ve made no difference whatsoever. I’m preaching to the converted.” Don McCullin (above) in an interview with The Times magazine of 25 October, 2025
He said: “You die silently from above. It isn’t like All Quiet on the Western Front. You don’t know who your killer is because it’s all over by the time you stop thinking. I wouldn’t want to be an infantry soldier. I wouldn’t want o to be a man in a tank. I wouldn’t any longer want to be any part of war. I think it has been futile for me over the last 60 years. I suppose I’m talking like this because I’m an old man because my time is up at the age of 90.”
He said that now and again he looks at some of the 10,000 negatives he has at home in Suffolk. He picks up and looks at the many trophies he won over the years. Then, he says to himself quietly-
“What I’ve been doing for the last 60 odd years hasn’t made much difference for the way people behave.”
- A Goodreads review said of the book no available to a new generation of readers – “It is a book everyone should read, including Donald Trump. It gives a clear, accurate history of the origins of the Israeli/ Palestine conflict that persists in Israel and what’s left of Palestine today.”