Karl Sabbagh is a Palestinian

Palestinian people

The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...

-British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 writer, journalist and television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 producer. His work is mainly non-fiction: he has written books about historical events and produced documentaries

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 for both British and American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 broadcasters.

Karl Sabbagh was born in Worcestershire

Worcestershire

Worcestershire is a non-metropolitan county, established in antiquity, located in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes it is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three counties that comprise the "Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire" NUTS 2 region...

, England, during the early 1940s. His father was the Palestinian Christian

Palestinian Christian

Palestinian Christians are Arabic-speaking Christians descended from the people of the geographical area of Palestine. Within Palestine, there are churches and believers from many Christian denominations, including Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholic , Protestant, and others...

 broadcaster Isa Sabbagh, at the time working for the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 Arabic Service; his mother, born Pamela Graydon, was English though of American and Irish parentage. His parents divorced soon after he was born, and his father subsequently lived in the United States, but Karl (originally named Khalil after his grandfather) remained in England with his mother.

Sabbagh's 2006 book Palestine interweaves a history of Palestine from the 18th century, with an account of his own family, who were prominent Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

 members of Palestinian society in Galilee

Galilee

Galilee , is a large region in northern Israel which overlaps with much of the administrative North District of the country. Traditionally divided into Upper Galilee , Lower Galilee , and Western Galilee , extending from Dan to the north, at the base of Mount Hermon, along Mount Lebanon to the...

 throughout that period, settled in the town of Safad from at least the beginning of the 19th century. The book includes a critical account of the Zionist

Zionism

Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...

settlement and eventual takeover of Palestine in the first half of the 20th century.