I spent last January covering the Israel-Hamas war — going into Gaza with the IDF, visiting Palestinians on the West Bank and seeing the devastation of Oct. 7 ground zero.

I wrote about that and more in a new book called “The Holy Land at War.”

It apparently was too controversial for Amazon: Its censors banned it.

Company representatives told me the book violated its “content guidelines,” even though it’s the kind of narrative journalism that years earlier made me a Pulitzer finalist for covering war in Lebanon.

I appealed the Amazon book ban four times and got four repeat rejections with zero explanation.

Then I learned the same thing happened to an Israeli author’s book about Oct. 7 called “Testimonies.” After weeks and many denied appeals, that ban was reversed when a news story ran about it.

I work as a columnist at the Providence Journal, which printed an article about my own book being blocked.

It caused some social-media outcry — and soon after, Amazon “coincidentally” unbanned my book.

Of course, I can’t be sure that the press spotlight was the reason, but the timing was interesting.

Now that I’m out of Amazon book jail, I’m wondering why I got locked up in the first place.

Perhaps, I thought, it was the chapter on a 16-year-old Jewish teen who survived Oct. 7 hiding under the slain body of his mother between a bed and wall as Hamas militants roamed his house shooting.

Was that too graphic?

Perhaps it was the day I spent with the IDF in Gaza’s dystopian landscape, with explosions so close that smoke swept over us seconds later.

“You wonder,” I wrote, “whether Israel needed to do this much damage. But you wonder more why Hamas doesn’t free the hostages and save what’s left of their homeland.”

Was that too controversial? 

Or maybe it was my chapters speaking to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza?

Amazon wouldn’t say.

But these weren’t Amazon’s first political book bans.

In a comparable incident in 2020, the online sales giant blocked Alex Berenson’s book “Unreported Truths About COVID-19.”

After Elon Musk tweeted about it, the book was quickly unbanned.

Alon Penzel, author of the blocked Oct. 7 “Testimonies” book, told me he sent Amazon five appeals, arguing that his work bore important witness to the slaughter — just as I argued I was simply reporting the war from both sides.

But there was no sign anyone at Amazon took in our points; we both got back generic repeat rejections.

Finally, after almost a week, Amazon told me in a clipped message: “We are unable to share further insight on this matter . . . This decision will take effect immediately.”

Penzel and I were both apparently saved by press coverage — just as the 2020 COVID book was saved by a tweet.

But Amazon has yet to specify why it reversed course after rejecting us.

All I got was an email saying, “We made an error that prevented your book from publishing and apologize for the inconvenience.”

My hunch is I was a victim of a biased gatekeeper, perhaps after Amazon higher-ups flagged the Gaza war as a controversial subject.

But there’s no way of being sure, since the company’s review team is a black box.

Other upcoming books on the war have made it onto Amazon for pre-order, including an account of Oct. 7 by Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst. 

But I counted a half-dozen that, unlike my balanced narrative, seem to reflect only one side: “Gaza Apocalypse,” “The Lost Lives of Gaza,” “Gaza Medic,” “Genocide in Gaza: An Islamic Perspective,” and “Acting to End Genocide in Gaza: Voices of Conscience and Concern,” to name a few.

Those books have every right to be published, but it’s suspect that by contrast, Alon Penzel and I faced such hurdles to gain Amazon’s accceptance.

Amazon now sells half of all print books in the United States and 80% of e-books. In essence, it controls the public square.

When Amazon blocks a book for political reasons, it’s far more a form of censorship than when some group gets a book removed from a local library.

You might think the embarrassing 2020 COVID book ban reversal would have left Amazon more transparent. It didn’t.

It makes no sense that books chronicling Oct. 7 and the Gaza war were blocked without explanation, and it’s doubtful that would have happened at all if Amazon’s gatekeepers were accountable for their decisions.

For the sake of authors and readers alike, if Amazon chooses to ban a book, it must specifically explain why.  

Mark Patinkin is a Providence Journal columnist and author of “The Holy Land at War.”