Thank you for sharing this. Apart from some people mentioning that this has happened it wasn’t something I was aware of (like basically everything on this topic) so it really helped me put the preface in perspective.

It is a very curious thing and found this sentence very interesting:

For Sartre, the question of Palestine could no longer be avoided after the independence of Algeria in 1962. Torn between his political convictions and his “emotional determination”, Sartre chose the middle ground - an ambivalent stance he maintained in a convoluted and often contradictory manner.

This sounds exactly like the people he mocks in his preface. I still found it very useful, but I see why people wanted it removed.

I don’t think I realized the kind of celebrity that the philosopher or others of that era had, because to me they are dead authors who only exist in their books. People need to be careful about putting anyone on a pedestal, because all humans are flawed and disappointing. It’s very interesting to see that play out almost 60 years ago. (I know that’s not so long ago but think of how far we’ve come technologically, and yet we still struggle with the same things.)

He condemned Israel’s use of napalm, which he described as a “criminal act”; he recalled why French public opinion had been favourable to Israel in the 1967 war, claiming that the French stance had been fuelled by fears of witnessing a second “attempt to exterminate the Jews” and by ignorance about what was really going on.

Also extremely interesting in light of the content of the preface!