Memoirs / Biography / Testimony

This page presents books previously featured as New and Notable. Titles are listed by year of publication (newest-oldest) and then alphabetically by author surname. Older entries can be found here.

Breaking the Silence. Military Rule: Testimonies of Soldiers from the Civil Administration, Gaza DCL and COGAT, 2011-2021 (Breaking the Silence, 2022)

Publisher’s description: The Civil Administration is a military body tasked with managing the civilian aspects of ruling the occupied West Bank. Together with the Gaza District Coordination and Liaison office (DCL), it is subordinate to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) (…) At first glance, these units appear to serve a mainly bureaucratic function and, as such, lack direct involvement in the routine violence exercised to maintain Israeli control over the occupied territories. The reality, however, is entirely different. Soldiers’ testimonies included in this booklet provide a glimpse into a system of bureaucratic control and management that plays a key role in the complex, intricate system that is the Israeli occupation. As demonstrated in the testimonies given by soldiers and officers who served in COGAT, the Gaza DCL, and particularly the Civil Administration, the unit’s work operates on two axes that exemplify Israeli occupation policies as a whole: preserving and perfecting control and monitoring of the Palestinian people, on the one hand, and entrenching and expanding Israel’s hold on Palestinian territory, on the other.

Reviews:

‘The sprawling system of military government created by Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is a world many Israelis are learning about for the first time, after the publication of testimonies from veterans exposing the “permit regime” that rules over Palestinian people and land (…) While putting together the project, Breaking the Silence’s interviewers found that repeated themes began to emerge: the use of collective punishment, such as revoking an entire family’s travel permits; the extensive network of Palestinian agents cooperating with Cogat’s Civil Administration, which governs parts of the West Bank; the considerable influence of Israel’s illegal settler movement on the Civil Administration’s decision-making processes; and arbitrary or baseless blocks on goods allowed in and out of Gaza. “The level of power and control we have was astonishing”, said a 25-year-old man who served in 2020-2021 at Cogat’s headquarters near the Beit El settlement north of Ramallah’ – Guardian

 

Fida Jiryis. Stranger in My Own Land: Palestine, Israel and One Family’s Story of Home (Hurst, 2022)

Publisher’s description: After the 1993 Oslo Accords, a handful of Palestinians were allowed to return to their hometowns in Israel. Fida Jiryis and her family were among them. This beautifully written memoir tells the story of their journey, which is also the story of Palestine, from the Nakba to the present – a seventy-five-year tale of conflict, exodus, occupation, return and search for belonging, seen through the eyes of one writer and her family. Jiryis reveals how her father, Sabri, a PLO leader and advisor to Yasser Arafat, chose exile in 1970 because of his work. Her own childhood in Beirut was shaped by regional tensions, the Lebanese Civil War and the 1982 Israeli invasion, which led to her mother’s death. Thirteen years later, the family made an unexpected return to Fassouta, their village of origin in the Galilee. But Fida, twenty-two years old and full of love for her country, had no idea what she was getting into. Stranger in My Own Land chronicles a desperate, at times surreal, search for a homeland between the Galilee, the West Bank and the diaspora, asking difficult questions about what the right of return would mean for the millions of Palestinians waiting to come ‘home’.

Reviews:

‘Stranger in My Own Land: Palestine, Israel and One Family’s Story of Home by Fida Jiryis provides a rare, and rarely accessible, perspective. The author was born to Palestinian parents from Fassouta, a Christian village in Upper Galilee, on the Israeli side of the Lebanese border. As a child, Jiryis lived through the horrors of the 1982 Lebanon war and then moved with her family to Cyprus. She is one of a handful of Palestinians who tried to exercise their right to return, only to find that home was no longer home. She ended up studying in Scotland, living in Canada, and ultimately returning to Palestine: to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank (…) The author’s unique, multi-layered vantage point is a product of her having lived in different fragments of what makes up Palestinian existence — as an exile in the Palestinian diaspora, as a Palestinian citizen inside Israel, and also in Occupied Palestine. This equips her as a writer to take her readers into territory that is most likely new to them in some way. The book offers more than just a personal glimpse into each of these very distinct realities. It viscerally evokes the flavour of each part of that existence (…) More than a memoir or a history, this is a handbook on the human tragedy that overcame the Palestinian people when Israel was created. And a guide to the Palestinian response, and how and why it evolved as it did. It is required reading for many audiences’ – Le Monde Diplomatique

 

Diana Allan (ed.). Voices of the Nakba: A Living History of Palestine (Pluto Press, 2021)

Publisher’s description: During the 1948 war more than 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were violently expelled from their homes by Zionist militias. The legacy of the Nakba – which translates to ‘disaster’ or ‘catastrophe’ – lays bare the violence of the ongoing Palestinian plight. Voices of the Nakba collects the stories of first-generation Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, documenting a watershed moment in the history of the modern Middle East through the voices of the people who lived through it. The interviews, with commentary from leading scholars of Palestine and the Middle East, offer a vivid journey into the history, politics and culture of Palestine, defining Palestinian popular memory on its own terms in all its plurality and complexity.

Reviews:

‘a unique undertaking which presents in print a selection of the archived video and recorded interviews conducted by the Nakba Archive team and currently housed in the Palestinian Oral History Archive of the American University of Beirut (POHA). The work of the archive, estimated to extend to around 1,000 hours of recordings, has been to gather the oral evidence of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and has been painstakingly undertaken over a period of more than twenty years (…) The book utilises excerpts from some 30 of these interviews organised in a general chronological schema divided into four parts: Life in pre-1948 Palestine; the British Mandate and Palestinian and Arab Resistance; War and Ethnic Cleansing and Flight and Exile. Each group of interviews, some three or four per part, has an introductory essay reflecting on the ensuing interview excerpts. What we encounter is a chance to glimpse an insight into the lives of people in more tranquil times before they were forced into becoming refugees through their violent expulsion from their homes. Their recollections are rich and varied reflecting a broad spectrum of Palestinian society’ – Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies

 

Breaking the Silence. On Duty: Settler Violence in the West Bank – Soldiers’ Testimonies, 2012-2020 (Breaking the Silence, 2021)

Publisher’s description: Violence perpetrated by settlers is an inseparable part of daily life in the West Bank since its occupation in 1967. The motives of this violence are ideological, and its goals are strategic – the expropriation of land from Palestinians and the effective takeover of as much as possible of what many settlers consider to be the ‘Land of Israel’, all of which is achieved through a sustained effort to intimidate the Palestinian residents of the West Bank. This widespread phenomenon has intensified significantly over recent years, a phenomenon made possible due to the absence of any significant attempt to enforce the law by the State of Israel’s various governmental bodies, ministries and agencies, most prominently the Israeli police and military. This booklet presents testimonies by soldiers about violent actions perpetrated by settlers, and follows on from The High Command, a testimony booklet that we published in 2017 about settler influence on IDF conduct in the West Bank. These testimonies, like many others, describe a reality marked by unending harm to and threat toward Palestinian people, property and land. The acts described here include different kinds of violent attacks, including beatings, stone-throwing and burning of agricultural fields and groves. (…) The phenomenon of settler violence is an inevitable consequence of Israel’s occupation and policy of settling the West Bank. Were it not for the IDF’s continuous control over and presence in the occupied territories, this violence would not be a possibility. Ending the occupation is the only way to bring this violence to a full stop.

Reviews:

‘On Duty collects some 36 edited testimonies of anonymous Israeli veterans, discussing the relationship between the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Settlers and soldiers alike, the booklet reveals, operate under the assumption that the Israeli military is there to protect the settlements at any cost. Thus, when soldiers contradict that assumption (for example, asking a settler to stop throwing stones at a Palestinian child), settlers in turn react violently toward the former, who in turn usually decline to respond in any meaningful way (…) On Duty is difficult to read, and this is the point. The blurry sameness of each interview is a nauseating symptom of the occupation’s grasp on both the Palestinians it subjugates and the Israeli teenagers carrying out its program on the ground. The forced anonymity of the interviewees themselves indicates Israeli society’s intolerance of dissent’ – Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs

 

Mohammad Sabaaneh. Power Born of Dreams: My Story Is Palestine (Street Noise Books, 2021) 

Publisher’s description: What does freedom look like from inside an Israeli prison? A bird perches on the cell window and offers a deal: “You bring the pencil, and I will bring the stories”, stories of family, of community, of Gaza, of the West Bank, of Jerusalem, of Palestine. The two collect threads of memory and intergenerational trauma from ongoing settler-colonialism. Helping us to see that the prison is much larger than a building, far wider than a cell; it stretches through towns and villages, past military check points and borders. But hope and solidarity can stretch farther, deeper, once strength is drawn of stories and power is born of dreams. Translating headlines into authentic lived experiences, these stories come to life in the striking linocut artwork of Mohammad Sabaaneh, helping us to see Palestinians not as political symbols, but as people.

‘Power Born of Dreams is a dark work, both visually and metaphorically, yet there are splashes of gallows humour and insights into many of the vagaries of the human condition. Set for the most part in an Israeli prison, a Palestinian prisoner converses with a bird, each telling stories about the lives and deaths of the Palestinian people. The stark black-and-white linocut images are as harsh and as powerful as the narrative, and the unadorned, straightforward language drives the emotions home (…) This is a book about occupation and the loss of home, a place where the need for hope and the lack of hope are equally terrifying’ – World Literature Today

 

Anan Ameri. The Wandering Palestinian: A Memoir (BHC Press, 2020)

Publisher’s description: Anan Ameri played a pivotal role in the creation of the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The Wandering Palestinian chronicles her life from 1974 in Beirut, Lebanon to Detroit, Michigan as she learns how to adjust to culture shock, finds her independence, and becomes a driving force in Detroit’s large and politically active Arab American community – an involvement that helped her break away from her isolation, resume her activism, and paved the way for her to become a recognized and respected leader in her community.

Review:

‘Having shifted between Beirut, Detroit, Washington DC, Cambridge and Jerusalem – breaking rules and expectations wherever she goes – author Anan Ameri’s love for her family, country, job and people is tested repeatedly as she attempts to settle in a country that is not her original home. Hard-hitting and elegant, her life reads like a storybook (…) There are many fascinating stops on Ameri’s life journey. My favourite is the fund-raising tour to help those who survived the horrific massacre in Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in 1982. On the road she met diverse groups of Palestinian communities and families, as well as the dark side of the American Dream (…) Her writing is raw and frank, like herself. It has a seamless ability to adapt and move. So we hear about the wonderful Mediterranean weather and the vibrancy of the cities. And also about the refugee camps, war, longing, loss and death’ – Middle East Monitor

 

Nahla Abdo and Nur Masalha (eds.). An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba (Zed Books, 2019)

Reviews:

‘This (…) volume signals two landmarks: acceptance by the scholarly world of the importance of the Palestinian Nakba as an on-going case of colonialism in a period claimed to be post-colonial; and, second, recognition of oral history as valid tool for recording experiences of subalternity. An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba is a compendium of empirical studies covering different geopolitical regions – Haifa, the Naqab, Gaza, Shu’fat camp – as well as specific aspects of the Nakba, such as embodied memory, resistances to flight during the 1948 expulsions, gender-based differences in Nakba narratives, past and present massacres, and the transfer of Nakba memories between generations’ – Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies

 

Anna Baltzer. Witness in Palestine: Journal of a Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories (Routledge, 2018)

Publisher’s description: Anna Baltzer, a young Jewish American, went to the West Bank to discover the realities of daily life for Palestinians under the occupation. What she found would change her outlook on the conflict forever. She wrote this book to give voice to the stories of the people who welcomed her with open arms as their lives crumbled around them. For five months, Baltzer lived and worked with farmers, Palestinian and Israeli activists, and the families of political prisoners, traveling with them across endless checkpoints and roadblocks to reach hospitals, universities, and olive groves. Baltzer witnessed firsthand the environmental devastation brought on by expanding settlements and outposts and the destruction wrought by Israel’s ‘Security Fence’, which separates many families from each other, their communities, their land, and basic human services. What emerges from Baltzer’s journal is not a sensationalist tale of suicide bombers and conspiracies, but a compelling and inspiring description of the trials of daily life under the occupation.

Reviews:

‘Scores of beautiful and heartbreaking colour photographs accompany Baltzer’s lively and detailed journal entries, which take the reader through the hardship and horror of the occupation. She describes the mechanisms of that occupation, such as roadblocks and checkpoints, that belie their stated purpose of protecting Israeli citizens by simply making life hard on the Palestinians. She documents instances of intimidation, kidnappings, destruction of property, and confiscation of land (…) Baltzer also writes with respect and admirations for the Palestinians who practice non-violent direct action every day of their lives (…) Baltzer herself exhibits commendable courage in choosing to walk with Palestinians in difficult and even life-threatening situations, including nonviolent demonstrations against the separation wall’ – Journal of Palestine Studies

 

Ehud Barak. My Country, My Life: Fighting for Israel, Searching for Peace (St. Martin’s Press, 2018)

Publisher’s description: The definitive memoir of one of Israel’s most influential soldier-statesmen and one-time Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, with insights into forging peace in the Middle East. In the summer of 2000, the most decorated soldier in Israel’s history – Ehud Barak – set himself a challenge as daunting as any he had faced on the battlefield: to secure a final peace with the Palestinians. He would propose two states for two peoples, with a shared capital in Jerusalem. He knew the risks of failure. But he also knew the risks of not trying: letting slip perhaps the last chance for a generation to secure genuine peace. It was a moment of truth. It was one of many in a life intertwined, from the start, with that of Israel. Born on a kibbutz, Barak became commander of Israel’s elite special forces, then army Chief of Staff, and ultimately, Prime Minister. My Country, My Life tells the unvarnished story of his – and his country’s – first seven decades; of its major successes, but also its setbacks and misjudgments (…) Drawing on his experiences as a military and political leader, he sounds a powerful warning: Israel is at a crossroads, threatened by events beyond its borders and by divisions within. The two-state solution is more urgent than ever, not just for the Palestinians, but for the existential interests of Israel itself. Only by rediscovering the twin pillars on which it was built – military strength and moral purpose – can Israel thrive.

Reviews:

‘An insider’s view of a volatile and violent history’ – Kirkus Reviews

 

Ramzy Baroud. The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, 2018)

Publisher’s description: Stretching over decades, encompassing bombing campaigns, ceasefires and mass exoduses, The Last Earth tells the story of modern Palestine through the memories of those who have survived it. Palestinian history has long faced obstacles, first from Orientalist readings of the Middle East, and then by attempts from Zionists to replace Palestinian historical narratives. The Last Earth challenges previous takes on Palestinian history, unearthing the commonalities within the Palestinian narrative, separated through political divisions, geographical barriers and walls, factionalism, military occupation, and exile. Through testimonies and accounts, we come to understand the complexities and contradictions of memory and the telling of history in the midst of conflict. As well as offering a history of the conflict and the region, The Last Earth also acts as a reclamation of history for the Palestinian people, allowing them to be active participants in shaping the present and the future.

Reviews:

‘an intimate encounter, chapter by chapter, wherein we are entertaining new friends; having the privilege of listening to, savouring and indeed cherishing the rarely heard Palestinian stories saturated with the fears, joys, suffering, triumphs of the human spirit’ – Palestine Chronicle 

‘paints a moving description of exile and displacement’ – Middle East Monitor

 

Avraham Burg. In Days to Come: A New Hope for Israel (Nation Books, 2018)

Publisher’s description: “The first childhood memory I have of my father is linked to the destruction of empires – the collapse of a world order that had once seemed eternal.” So begins Burg’s authoritative and deeply personal inquiry into the ambitions and failures of Israel and Judaism worldwide. Born in 1955, Burg witnessed firsthand many of the most dramatic and critical moments in Israeli history. Here, he chronicles the highs and lows of his country over the last five decades, threading his own journey into the story of his people. He explores the misplaced hopes of religious Zionism through the lens of his conservative upbringing, explains Israel’s obsession with military might while relating his own experiences as a paratrooper officer, and probes the country’s democratic aspirations, informed by his tenure in the Knesset. With bravery and candour, Burg lays bare the seismic intellectual shifts that drove the country’s political and religious journeys, offering a prophecy of fury and consolation and a vision for a new comprehensive paradigm for Judaism, Israel, and the Middle East.

Reviews:

‘Burg’s vision of real racial and gender equality for all Arabs and Jews, the separation of religion from the state and the fair distribution of resources offers real hope for peace’ – Irish Times

John Dugard. Confronting Apartheid: A Personal History of South Africa, Namibia and Palestine (Jacana Media, 2018)

Publisher’s description: South Africa achieved notoriety for its apartheid policies and practices both in the country and in Namibia. Today Israel stands accused of applying apartheid in the Palestinian territories it has occupied since 1967. Confronting Apartheid examines the regimes of these three societies from the perspective of the author’s experiences as a human rights lawyer in South Africa and Namibia and as a UN human rights envoy in occupied Palestine. Looking back over a long and distinguished career, John Dugard describes the work he undertook in defence of human rights by opposing the system of apartheid in South West Africa/Namibia and South Africa and more recently in occupied Palestine, which enforces a system that closely mirrors apartheid in South Africa. He shows how law was used by progressive lawyers in Namibia and South Africa to strike at the heart of apartheid. The entrenchment of a system of discrimination and oppression in occupied Palestine is carefully examined in the context of apartheid, but he ends on a note of hope that the international community, acting through civil society and the institutions of international law, will ensure that a just solution is found to this seemingly intractable problem.

Reviews:

‘John Dugard is a legal hero to many, myself included. Back in the day when most academics and anyone else in the legal community was cowered into submission and silence by the repressive apartheid regime, it was Dugard as well as Barend Van Niekerk, before his untimely death, and Tony Matthews, who stood up to be counted. But for sheer consistency and doggedness, Dugard was exceptional (…) The section of the book dealing with the Israel-Palestine conflict is arguably the most compelling section. In less than 100 pages, Dugard provides a sustained analysis of a most complex political problem (…) [It] should be read by all concerned about this area of the world and hopefully debated with the care and rationality exhibited by the author’ – Journal of the Helen Suzman Foundation

 

Amos Oz. Dear Zealots: Letters from a Divided Land (Chatto & Windus, 2018)

Publisher’s description: This collection of three new essays – all based on talks delivered by Oz – was written out of a sense of urgency, concern, and a belief that a better future is still possible. It touches on the universal nature of fanaticism and its possible cures; the Jewish roots of humanism and the need for a secular pride in Israel; and the geopolitical standing of Israel in the wider Middle East and internationally. These three pleas illuminate the argument over Israeli, Jewish and human existence, and Amos Oz sheds a clear and surprising light on vital political and historical issues, daring to offer new ways out of a reality that appears to be closed down. Dear Zealots is a significant document that outlines Amos’s current thinking about the Middle East – urgent reading for anyone interested in the conflict.

Reviews:

‘In this rumination about the country he loves and whose policies make him ashamed, novelist and peace activist Oz (…) sounds humorous, mournful, enraged, and uplifting (…) In one of the book’s sharpest insights, he suggests that Jewish-Israeli fanaticism is increasing in part because while the Holocaust and Stalinism seemed to have infused people, for a few decades, with a fear of extremism, that “gift” is fading as the years pass’ – Kirkus Reviews

‘The trilogy of trenchant, well-argued essays that comprise Dear Zealots represent decades of accrued wisdom about the situation into which the author was born (Jerusalem, 1939) and spent his career thinking and writing about. With deft brushstrokes, Oz charts his evolution from what he describes as “a little Zionist-nationalist fanatic” to the more measured, circumspect crusader for peace that he became’ – Los Angeles Review of Books

 

Colin Anderson. Balfour in the Dock: J.M.N. Jefferies and the Case for the Prosecution (Skyscraper, 2017)

Publisher’s description: During the 1920s and 30s, a British journalist, J.M.N. Jeffries, followed the events in Palestine with growing anger, as he saw the effects of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 on the indigenous Arab inhabitants as they faced the loss of their rights and their land to a movement, political Zionism, which wanted to take over Palestine and turn it into a Jewish state. Andersen has written the first ever biography of Jeffries and of how he came to write his monumental book, Palestine: The Reality, which revealed the truth about the injustice being inflicted on the Palestinians. He also tells the story of how the book disappeared from circulation after publication, and has only now been republished in the centenary year of the Balfour Declaration. Balfour in the Dock is a devastating indictment of British policy in the Middle East and strengthens the growing campaign for an apology for the Balfour Declaration which has caused such havoc in world politics over the last hundred years.

Reviews:

‘Andersen retaliates against all the jibes and criticisms levelled at Jeffries that sought to discredit him either for his approach, perceived bias, or the reliability of his content. Focused on the Palestine experience in Jeffries’ life, the book also provides mini-biographies of personalities from that period. It is an engaging work’ – Electronic Intifada

 

Gershon Baskin. In Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine (Vanderbilt University Press, 2017)

Publisher’s description: Baskin’s memoir of 38 years of intensive pursuit of peace begins with a childhood on Long Island and a bar mitzvah trip to Israel with his family. Baskin joined Young Judaea back in the States, then later lived on a kibbutz in Israel, where he announced to his parents that he had decided to make aliya, emigrate to Israel. They persuaded him to return to study at NYU, after which he finally emigrated under the auspices of Interns for Peace. In Israel he spent a pivotal two years living with Arabs in the village of Kufr Qara. Despite the atmosphere of fear, Baskin found he could talk with both Jews and Palestinians, and that very few others were engaged in efforts at mutual understanding. At his initiative, the Ministry of Education (…) created the Institute for Education for Jewish-Arab Coexistence with Baskin himself as director. Eight years later he founded and co-directed the only joint Israeli-Palestinian public policy think-and-do tank in the world, the Israel/Palestine Centre for Research and Information. For decades he continued to cross borders, often with a kaffiyeh (Arab headdress) on his dashboard to protect his car in Palestinian neighbourhoods. Airport passport control became Kafkaesque as Israeli agents routinely identified him as a security threat. During the many cycles of peace negotiations, Baskin has served both as an outside agitator for peace and as an advisor on the inside of secret talks (…). Baskin ends the book with his own proposal, which includes establishing a peace education program and cabinet-level Ministries of Peace in both countries, in order to foster a culture of peace.

Reviews:

‘In an untidy and unwieldy memoir, this intrepid man informs us that he will never abandon his self-chosen role as peace-maker. Grabbing us by the hand, Baskin takes us inside the shocking and almost unimaginable world of the struggles of Palestinians to have their own state and identity and Israel’s endless creativity at forbidding this. Baskin invites us along for the bumpy ride as he works the back-channels and forges pathways to peace through the bramble bushes, filled as they are with suspicious, wary, and dangerous eyes’ – New York Journal of Books

 

Nicholas Blincoe. Bethlehem: Biography of a Town (Little Brown, 2017)

Publisher’s description: Bethlehem is so suffused with history and myth that it feels like an unreal city even to those who call it home. For many, Bethlehem remains the little town at the edge of the desert described in Biblical accounts. Today, the city is hemmed in by a wall and surrounded by forty-one Israeli settlements and hostile settlers and soldiers. Blincoe tells the town’s history through the visceral experience of living there, taking readers through its stone streets and desert wadis, its monasteries, aqueducts, and orchards to show the city from every angle and era. His portrait of Bethlehem sheds light on one of the world’s most intractable political problems, and he maintains that if the long thread winding back to the city’s ancient past is severed, the chances of an end to the Palestine-Israel conflict will be lost with it.

Reviews:

‘Part history, part travelogue and memoir, it reads like an extended love letter to a place on the brink. While the chronology holds his narrative more or less together as we move from stone age settlement to contemporary Israeli settlements via Christian Rome, Byzantium, the era of Islamic conquest and the Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans and the British, he gives himself free rein to share memories, travels, interviews and assorted experiences along the way in a highly discursive, frequently amusing, often tragic but always accessible history’ – Guardian 

‘Telling the story of a city is a bold undertaking – an act, depending on the city, that entails parsing myth and historical accounts, archaeological digs and theological teachings, to distill the very essence of a place. Nicholas Blincoe takes on this mission with verve’ – New York Times

 

Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman (eds.). Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation (HarperCollins, 2017)

Publisher’s description: A groundbreaking collection of essays by celebrated international writers bears witness to the human cost of fifty years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In Kingdom of Olives and Ash, Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, two of today’s most renowned novelists and essayists, have teamed up with the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence – an organisation comprised of former Israeli soldiers who served in the occupied territories and saw firsthand the injustice there – and a host of illustrious writers to tell the stories of the people on the ground in the contested territories.

Reviews:

‘a hefty volume of essays about life in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. The results vary, but the message is unwavering: life under occupation is frightening and oppressive’ – Publishers Weekly 

‘readers are given a humanizing prism through which to view Palestinians who for too long have been portrayed by the mainstream media as a caricature built in part by Israel’s highly effective hasbara (propaganda) machine’ – Times Literary Supplement

 

John Lyons. Balcony Over Jerusalem: A Middle East Memoir (HarperCollins, 2017)

Publisher’s description: Leading Australian journalist John Lyons will take readers on a fascinating personal journey through the wonders and dangers of the Middle East. From the sheer excitement of arriving in Jerusalem with his wife and eight-year-old son, to the fall of dictators and his gripping account of what it feels like to be taken by Egyptian soldiers, blindfolded and interrogated, this is a memoir of the Middle East like no other. Drawing on a 20-year interest in the Middle East, Lyons has had extraordinary access – he’s interviewed everyone from Israel’s former Prime Ministers Shimon Peres and Ehud Olmert to key figures from Hezbollah and Hamas. He’s witnessed the brutal Iranian Revolutionary Guard up close and was one of the last foreign journalists in Iran during the violent crackdown against the ‘Green Revolution’. He’s confronted Hamas officials about why they fire rockets into Israel and Israeli soldiers about why they fire tear gas at Palestinian school children. By telling the story of his family travelling through the region, this book is extremely readable and entertaining, full of humour, colour. It is sometimes dazzling in its detail, sometimes tragic. (…) Lyons also looks at 50 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank – the mechanics of how this works and the effect it now has on both Israelis and Palestinians.

Reviews:

‘There is much that is noteworthy in this book, such as Lyons’ detailed analysis of Israel’s various attempts at “social engineering” (…) But what ultimately stands out in Balcony Over Jerusalem is the author’s examination of how the media portray Israel and how the government and the lobby groups that shield it from accountability attempt to intimidate reporters and distort their coverage’ – Electronic Intifada

 

Donald Macintyre. Gaza: Preparing for Dawn (Oneworld, 2017)

Publisher’s description: A coastal civilisation open to the world. A flourishing port on a major international trading route. This was Gaza’s past. Can it be its future? Today, Gaza is home to a uniquely imprisoned people, most unable to travel to the West Bank, let alone Israel, where tens of thousands once worked, and unable to flee in wartime. Trapped inside a crucible of conflict, the surprise is that so many of them remain courageous, outspoken and steadfast. From refugee camps to factories struggling under economic stranglehold and bombardment, Macintyre reveals Gaza’s human tragedy through the stories of the ordinary people who live and work there. He portrays the suffering through siege and war, the failings – including those of the international community – that have seen opportunities for peace pass by and the fragile, lingering hope that Gaza, with its creativity and resilience, can be part of a better future for the Middle East.

Reviews:

‘Many journalists have been fascinated by Gaza on short visits; few have bothered to try so hard to understand the story beyond the bloodshed. Macintyre’s meetings with the jeans and juice manufacturers; the music students; and that marathon runner bring the people of Gaza to life in a way that daily news reporting rarely can (…) All the individual stories are in turn directed by the larger political ones. Macintyre proves himself a well-informed chronicler of the intra-Palestinian conflict: principally between Fatah and Hamas, but also between the latter and newer Islamist rivals. Gaza: Preparing for Dawn also offers wise analysis of the conflict with Israel – and international attempts to address it’ – The Conversation

 

Anthony Robinson and Annemarie Young. Young Palestinians Speak: Living Under Occupation (Interlink Books, 2017)

Publisher’s description: In Palestine today, a second generation of children and young people is growing up experiencing life under occupation. These are children who know only fear when they see an Israeli soldier or come across a roadblock. This book provides a platform for children and young people, from all over this occupied land, to speak in their own voices about the day-to-day experience of living under occupation. It begins with an explanation of what the occupation means for those living under it, and is followed by the heart of the book: nine sections, each one focusing on one of the places visited by the authors. At the end, there is a timeline showing the main events that led up to the occupation. As you read their words, you will see that what these young people want is a stable family life, security where they live, the freedom to move around their country, safety and space in which to grow up and dream of a future. They are just like young people everywhere; it is only the circumstances of their lives that are so different.

Reviews:

‘This book is a labour of love about young people who are born in the perpetual insecurity of a conflict zone. What does it mean to live under military occupation, when soldiers raid your home in the middle of the night and drag your brother or father to jail? (…) This is a unique book showcasing the voices of young Palestinians who look and sound like other children throughout the world. They live in difficult conditions but nevertheless attempt to lead normal lives and dare to dream of a better future’ – Electronic Intifada 

‘The book is aimed at young adult readers, yet it overlaps the gap successfully enough to make it a compelling and harrowing read for adults as well. With children expressing simple wishes for safety and, more poignantly, to live as opposed to merely survive or exist, it is impossible to close the book without pondering how the international community continues to turn a blind eye to the ramifications of Israeli colonialism’ – Middle East Monitor 

 

Alice Rothchild. Condition Critical: Life and Death in Israel/Palestine (Just World Books, 2017)

Publisher’s description: Since 2003, obstetrician Alice Rothchild has travelled annually to Israel/Palestine with other concerned Americans, to learn about health and human rights situation of politically marginalized communities, especially Palestinians. Condition Critical presents key blog posts and analytical essays that explore everyday life in Israel, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza up close and with searing honesty. These eyewitness reports and intimate stories depict the critical condition of a region suffering from decades-old wounds of colonization and occupation. Condition Critical dares (and inspires) its readers to examine the painful consequences of Zionism and Israeli expansion and to bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice.

Reviews:

‘I cannot salute Alice Rothchild enough for daring to speak her (and my) truth so boldly and unambiguously to her American Jewish audience. She does it at the risk of excommunication from the tribe’ – Mondoweiss

 

Grant Rumley and Amir Tibon. The Last Palestinian: The Rise and Reign of Mahmoud Abbas (Prometheus Books, 2017)

Publisher’s description: Mahmoud Abbas rose to prominence as a top Palestinian negotiator, became the leader of his nation, and then tragically failed to negotiate a peace agreement. (…) Filled with new details and based on interviews with key figures in Ramallah, Jerusalem, and Washington, this book weaves together a fascinating story that will interest both veteran observers of the conflict and readers new to Israeli-Palestinian history. The authors (…) tell the inside story of Abbas’s complicated multi-decade relationship with America, Israel, and his own people. They trace his upbringing in Galilee, his family’s escape from the 1948 Israeli-Arab war, and his education abroad. (…) The authors pay special attention to the crucial years of 2005 to 2014, exploring such questions as: How did Abbas lose control of half of his governing territory and the support of more than half of his people? Why was Abbas the most prominent Palestinian leader to denounce terrorism? Why did Abbas twice walk away from peace offers from Israel and the U.S. in 2008 and 2014? And how did he turn himself from the first world leader to receive a phone call from President Obama to a person who ultimately lost the faith of the American president?

Reviews:

‘ a crisp catalogue of the events and players that have brought Abbas and the Palestinians to where they are today’ – Washington Independent Review of Books 

 

Steve Sabella. The Parachute Paradox (Kerber, 2017)

Publisher’s description: The Parachute Paradox tells the life story of artist Steve Sabella, who was born in Jerusalem’s Old City and raised under Israeli occupation. After living through both intifadas, being kidnapped in Gaza, and learning to navigate Palestinian and Israeli culture, he feels in exile at home. For him, the Occupation attaches each Palestinian to an Israeli, as if in a tandem jump. The Israeli is always in control, placing the Palestinian under threat in a never-ending hostage situation. He realizes he has two options: either surrender or unbuckle his harness. Blurring fact and fiction, love and loss, the memoir traces one man’s arduous search for liberation from within, through a confrontation with his colonized imagination.

Reviews:

‘Sabella, an award-winning photographer who has exhibited work internationally, writes of both his internal struggles as an artist and his external struggles as a Palestinian in exile. Both dovetail into and feed off each other in his mind (…) The Parachute Paradox tells much of its story in anecdotal vignettes. These allow Sabella to delve into the daily reality of life under Israeli military occupation (…) These anecdotes, supplemented by explanations of the predicament of Palestine and its “peace” process, are the strong points of the book. However, there is a self-indulgent streak that detracts from its strength’ – Electronic Intifada 

‘The Parachute Paradox is devoid of the pretension normally associated with conflict memoirs. Sabella doesn’t have anything to prove with his story. As he describes his upbringing in Jerusalem’s Old City and what life was like for his Christian family, Sabella is having a conversation with himself as much as with the reader. He floats between Palestine and Israel, but life in the seam creates more identity problems than it solves’ – The National 

 

Raja Shehadeh. Where the Line is Drawn: Crossing Boundaries in Occupied Palestine (Profile Books, 2017)

Publisher’s description: As a young boy, Raja Shehadeh was entranced by a forbidden Israeli postage stamp in his uncle’s album, intrigued by tales of a green land beyond the border. Impossible then to know what Israel would come to mean to him, or to foresee the future occupation of his home in Palestine. Later, as a young lawyer, he worked to halt land seizures and towards peace and justice in the region, and made close friends with several young Israelis. But as life became increasingly unbearable under occupation, and horizons shrank, it was impossible to escape politics or the past, and friendships and hopes were put to the test. Brave, intelligent and deeply controversial, this book explores the devastating effect of occupation on even the most intimate aspects of life. Looking back over decades of political turmoil, Shehadeh traces the impact on the fragile bonds of friendship across the Israel-Palestine border, and asks whether those considered bitter enemies can come together to forge a common future.

Reviews:

‘No one else writes about Palestinian life under military occupation with such stubborn humanity, melancholy and fragile grace (…) You will find political insights here, and moments of startling beauty. But more than anything, this book, like so much of his work, documents the excruciating effort that it takes to stay human in a place where one’s humanity is under constant attack, where tenderness and love are at once a necessity for survival and a dangerous liability. Just by writing it, he succeeds’ – Guardian

 

Ben Ehrenreich. The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine (Granta Books, 2016)

Publisher’s description: Over the past three years, American writer Ben Ehrenreich has been traveling to and living in the West Bank, staying with Palestinian families in its largest cities and its smallest villages. (…) We are familiar with brave journalists who travel to bleak or war-torn places on a mission to listen and understand, to gather the stories of people suffering from extremes of oppression and want (…). Palestine is, by any measure, whatever one’s politics, one such place. Ruled by the Israeli military, set upon and harassed constantly by Israeli settlers who admit unapologetically to wanting to drive them from the land, forced to negotiate an ever more elaborate and more suffocating series of fences, checkpoints, and barriers that have sundered home from field, home from home, this is a population whose living conditions are unique, and indeed hard to imagine. In a great act of bravery, empathy and understanding, Ehrenreich, by placing us in the footsteps of ordinary Palestinians and telling their story with surpassing literary power and grace, makes it impossible for us to turn away.

Reviews:

‘Ehrenreich’s haunting, poignant and memorable stories add up to a weighty contribution to the Palestinian side of the scales of history’ – New York Times

‘Ehrenreich lived with many of those he writes about, and so his story is wonderfully intimate’ – Guardian

 

<Nahida Halaby Gordon (ed.). Palestine Is Our Home: Voices of Loss, Courage, and Steadfastness (Palestine Books, 2016)

Publisher’s description: Palestine Is Our Home contains the memories of Palestinians who have suffered loss of home, community, and country at the hands of a people who themselves have suffered greatly. The suffering and loss experienced by the Palestinians, which they call Al Nakba, continues to today and is aided by countries of the West. In spite of a brutal military occupation of their country, Palestinians have kept their identity as Palestinians and through perseverance have kept their culture vibrant and alive. They continue to build their communities in spite of the daily hardships, humiliations, and death inflicted on them by the military occupation. The book contains a brief contemporary history of Palestine, short essays, first hand testimonies from Palestinians who experienced different periods of their country’s painful recent history, and chapters on the liberation art of currently occupied Palestine and on the origins of the traditional Palestinian costume.

Reviews:

‘These essays contain numerous first-hand accounts of the Nakba, the forced expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians by Zionist paramilitaries in 1948’ – Electronic Intifada

 

Norma Hashim (ed.). Dreaming of Freedom: Palestinian Child Prisoners Speak (Independently Published, 2016)

Publisher’s description: Dreaming of Freedom presents poignant firsthand accounts of Palestinian minors held in Israeli detention facilities in the occupied West Bank.

Reviews:

‘The book includes 24 first hand interviews with previously arrested children covered in 178 pages’ – Palestine Chronicle

‘Hashim is careful to present her child subjects as honestly as possible rather than idealizing them. Nor does Hashim romanticize the consequences of rebellion against the occupation, for which Palestinians pay a high price’ – Electronic Intifada 

 

Sayed Kashua. Native: Dispatches from a Palestinian Life (Grove Press, 2016)

Publisher’s description: An Israeli-Palestinian who lived in Jerusalem for most of his life, Kashua started writing in Hebrew with the hope of creating one story that both Palestinians and Israelis could relate to, rather than two that cannot coexist together. He devoted his novels and his satirical weekly column published in Haaretz to telling the Palestinian story and exploring the contradictions of modern Israel, while also capturing the nuances of everyday family life in all its tenderness and chaos. (…) With an intimate tone fuelled by deep-seated apprehension and a razor-sharp ironic wit, Kashua has been documenting his own life as well as that of society at large: he writes about his children’s upbringing and encounters with racism, about fatherhood and married life, the Jewish-Arab conflict, his professional ambitions, and—more than anything—his love of literature. From these circumstances, Kashua brings forth a series of brilliant, caustic, wry, and fearless reflections on social and cultural dynamics as experienced by someone who straddles two societies.

Reviews:

‘a selection from eight years of his Haaretz columns, from 2006 to 2014. In Kashua’s characteristic self-deprecating, sarcastic and closely observational style, the columns are a brilliantly written, dry and devastating record of life for one family who, in the end, would just like to be “normal”’ – Electronic Intifada 

 

Hadara Lazar. Six Singular Figures: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate (Mosaic Press, 2016)

Publisher’s description: Six Singular Figures is the story of six people who lived and worked in Palestine in the 1930s; remarkable nonconformists who tried to find a solution to the deteriorating relations between Jews and Arabs, the two peoples living under British Mandate rule. Some took an active part in dialogues between the two peoples and believed that it was possible to live together, although they knew that the chances were slim. When World War II broke out, the contacts ended.

Reviews:

‘She focuses on a period in the early 1930s when, under the British mandate, “bloody riots were rare and there was some dialogue between Jews and Arabs…. Leaders and important figures on both sides met and discussed terms of peaceful coexistence”. The people she focuses on – two Jews, Manya Shochat and Judah Lieb Magnes; two Arabs, Musa ’Alami and George Antonius; and two Englishmen, Arthur Wauchope and Orde Wingate – were, with the exception of Wingate, “actively involved in those attempts at dialogue”. Lazar paints rich, intimate portraits of these individuals that will interest biography lovers, but their life stories overshadow the political narrative’ – Publishers Weekly 

 

David Leach. Chasing Utopia: The Future of the Kibbutz in a Divided Israel (ECW Press, 2016)

Publisher’s description: Say the word ‘Israel’ today and it sparks images of walls and rockets and a bloody conflict without end. Yet for decades, the symbol of the Jewish State was the noble pioneer draining the swamps and making the deserts bloom: the legendary kibbutznik. So what ever happened to the pioneers’ dream of founding a socialist utopia in the land called Palestine? Chasing Utopia draws readers into the quest for answers to the defining political conflict of our era. Acclaimed author David Leach revisits his raucous memories of life as a kibbutz volunteer and returns to meet a new generation of Jewish and Arab citizens struggling to forge a better future together. Crisscrossing the nation, Leach chronicles the controversial decline of Israel’s kibbutz movement and witnesses a renaissance of the original vision for a peaceable utopia in unexpected corners of the Promised Land. Chasing Utopia is an entertaining and enlightening portrait of a divided nation where hope persists against the odds.

Reviews:

‘An eye-opening look at an Eden of eco-villages gradually giving way to economic exigencies’ – Kirkus Reviews 

‘Leach covers the kibbutz phenomenon from every imaginable angle. He sketches some communes’ problematic abandonment of the hard socialism that constituted their original founding in favour of the soft capitalism that drives them today. He touches on gender issues. He discusses communes with specific mandates, such as Nes Ammim, a Christian kibbutz that attempted (unsuccessfully) to heal the rift between Jews and Christians in the wake of the Holocaust. He describes the kibbutz as an agent of environmentalism – so-called “eco-Zionism”. And, most significant of all, he examines how the role of kibbutzim in Israeli society has exacerbated the conflict with the Palestinians’ – Quill & Quire 

 

Lotte Buch Segal. No Place for Grief: Martyrs, Prisoners, and Mourning in Contemporary Palestine (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016)

Publisher’s description: Westerners ‘know’ Palestine through images of war and people in immediate distress. Yet this focus has as its consequence that other, less spectacular stories of daily distress are rarely told. Those seldom noticed are the women behind the men who engage in armed resistance against the military occupation: wives of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention and the widows of the martyrs. In Palestine, being related to a detainee serving a sentence for participation in the resistance activities against Israel is a source of pride. Consequently, the wives of detainees are expected to sustain these relationships through steadfast endurance, no matter the effects upon the marriage or family. (…) Lotte Buch Segal offers a glimpse of the lives, and the contradictory emotions, of the families of both detainees and martyrs through an in-depth ethnographic investigation. No Place for Grief asks us to think about what it means to grieve when that which is grieved does not lend itself to a language of loss and mourning.

Reviews:

‘No Place for Grief is an ethnography of the lives of Palestinian women whose husbands became martyrs or were incarcerated in Israeli prisons. Lotte Buch Segal explores the language available to these women to express their suffering and analyses how this suffering can become acknowledged in a society that struggles under Israeli military occupation. Dealing with a most sensitive, politically charged, and grave reality, Buch Segal delivers a delicate and nuanced ethnographic account that is as committed to sophisticated anthropological inquiry as it is sensitive to the hopes and needs of the women whose stories her book tells’ – Medical Anthropology Quarterly

 

Salman Abu Sitta. Mapping My Return: A Palestinian Memoir (American University in Cairo Press, 2016)

Publisher’s description: Salman Abu Sitta vividly evokes the vanished world of his family and home on the eve of the Nakba, giving a personal and very human face to the dramatic events of 1930s and 1940s Palestine as Zionist ambitions and militarization expanded under the British mandate. He chronicles his life in exile, from his family’s flight to Gaza, his teenage years as a student in Nasser’s Egypt, his formative years in 1960s London, his life as a family man and academic in Canada, to several sojourns in Kuwait. Abu Sitta’s long and winding journey has taken him through many of the seismic events of the era, from the 1956 Suez War to the 1991 Gulf War. This rich and moving memoir is imbued throughout with a burning sense of justice and a determination to recover and document what rightfully belongs to his people, given expression in his groundbreaking mapping work on his homeland. Abu Sitta, with warmth and wit, tells his story and that of Palestine.

Reviews:

‘Abu Sitta’s memoir conveys a still burning sense of outrage at the injustice of the dispossession of the Palestinians and the denial of their rights – a personal and collective Nakba without end. But it offers scant hope for a better future for two peoples suffering – albeit unequally – under the burden of their intertwined history’ – Guardian

 

Yasir Suleiman (ed.). Being Palestinian: Personal Reflections of Palestinian Identity in the Diaspora (Edinburgh University Press, 2016)

Publisher’s description: How does it feel when you cannot find Palestine under P in the encyclopaedia your father brings home? Why cultivate fig and orange trees in the Arizona desert? What does it mean to know every inch of a village you have never seen, a village that no longer exists? In this groundbreaking volume, 102 Palestinians in North America and the United Kingdom reflect in their own words on what it means to be Palestinian in the diaspora. Men and women, young and old, Christians and Muslims, including well-known academics, poets, writers, faith leaders and singers, reveal their tangled ties to home and homeland , exploring how Palestine in the diaspora can be both lost and found, bereaved and celebrated, lived and longed-for. Touching, often troubling, but full of character and wit, the reflections in Being Palestinian offer a radically fresh look at the modern Palestinian experience in the West. And the time-honoured issues of identity, exile and diaspora give acute sense to these very personal reflections.

Reviews:

‘Being Palestinian is a compilation of short essays written by people from within the Palestinian diaspora. It contains personal stories of Palestinians from all walks of life talking about their experiences as Palestinians living abroad, their sense of belonging to a country that is not recognised and to a culture that is constantly dismissed or under threat (…) Both informative and emotional, this book addresses the essence of the Palestinian-ness and captures it in an exceptional light’ – Palestine Book Awards

 

Jasmine Donahaye. Losing Israel (Seren, 2015)

Publisher’s description: In 2007, in a chance conversation with her mother, a kibbutznik, Jasmine Donahaye stumbled upon the collusion of her family in the displacement of Palestinians in 1948. She set out to learn the story of what happened, and discovered an earlier and rarely discussed piece of history during the British Mandate in Palestine. Her discoveries challenged everything she thought she knew about the country and her family, and transformed her understanding of the place, and of herself. (…) Losing Israel is a moving and honest account which spans travel writing, nature writing and memoir. Losing Israel works on many levels – family relationships, the nature of patriotism and nationalism, cultural dislocation, the story of the Jewish diaspora and Israel, how history changes from one generation to the next, the histories of the dispossessed and the oppressed.

Reviews:

‘a highly eloquent and thoughtful meditation on what it means to exist in history and as a product of history. She addresses the gaps, silences and palimpsests that emerge through geographies, languages, cultures and identities, and makes all of these things at once deeply political and strikingly personal’ – New Welsh Review 

‘part autobiography, part history, part nature writing and part travelogue. Donahaye’s work is not merely another rehash on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but a unique look at one person’s relationship with Israel: She goes from being an uncritical Zionist to someone whose ties to Israel are blighted by her own family’s less-than-savoury involvement in the Zionist enterprise’ – Ha’aretz

 

Ghada Karmi. Return: A Palestinian Memoir (Verso, 2015)

Publisher’s description: Having grown up in Britain following her family’s exile from Palestine, doctor, author and academic Ghada Karmi leaves her adoptive home in a quest to return to her homeland. She starts work with the Palestinian Authority and gets a firsthand understanding of its bizarre bureaucracy under Israel’s occupation. In her quest, she takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the heart of one of the world’s most intractable conflict zones and one of the major issues of our time. Visiting places she has not seen since childhood, her unique insights reveal a militarised and barely recognisable homeland, and her home in Jerusalem, like much of the West Bank, occupied by strangers. Her encounters with politicians, fellow Palestinians, and Israeli soldiers cause her to question what role exiles like her have in the future of their country and whether return is truly possible.

Reviews:

‘[Karmi] is at her very best when she writes about herself. In Search of Fatima was a beautifully written and moving narrative of her displacement from Jerusalem in 1948 set against the backdrop of the major political events that shaped the course of modern Palestinian history. Return is both a sequel and a standalone memoir. On display is the same fluent writing style, the psychological insight and the outstanding skill for mixing the personal with the political’ – Guardian

‘Karmi’s chronicle is like being given night vision binoculars. What had seemed impenetrable, too murky to interpret, comes into focus. People come to life: families, workers, politicians, officials and soldiers are human again, living regular lives – or trying to – in profoundly irregular conditions’ – Herald Scotland 

 

Cate Malek and Mateo Hoke (eds.). Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Lives Under Occupation (Verso, 2015)

Publisher’s description: For more than six decades, Israel and Palestine have been the centre of one of the world’s most widely reported yet least understood human rights crises. In Palestine Speaks men and women from the West Bank and Gaza describe in their own words how their lives have been shaped by the conflict. This includes eyewitness accounts of the most recent attacks on Gaza in 2014. The collection includes Ebtihaj, whose son, born during the first intifada, was killed by Israeli soldiers during a night raid almost twenty years later. Nader, a professional marathon runner from the Gaza Strip who is determined to pursue his dream of competing in international races despite countless challenges, including severe travel restrictions and a lack of resources to help him train.

Reviews:

‘The voices of these ordinary individuals, so similar to those Palestinians I encounter regularly in the territories, speak here with unsettling eloquence’ – New York Review of Books 

‘The oral histories in Palestine Speaks attempt to convey a person’s life from birth to the present in novel-like detail. Editors Cate Malek and Mateo Hoke succeed admirably in undertaking this task. The fifteen people interviewed in this book are presented in a more rounded way than one would generally find in case studies undertaken by human rights organizations. Each person interviewed gets final approval over his or her story, with the narratives carefully fact-checked’ – Electronic Intifada

 

Dervla Murphy. Between River and Sea: Encounters in Israel and Palestine (Eland, 2015)

Publisher’s description: Dervla Murphy describes with passionate honesty the experience of her most recent journeys into Israel and Palestine. In cramped Haifa high-rises, in homes in the settlements and in a refugee camp on the West Bank, she talks with whomever she meets, trying to understand them and their attitudes with her customary curiosity, her acute ear and mind, her empathy, her openness to the experience and her moral seriousness. Behind the book lies a desire to communicate the reality of life on the ground, and to puzzle out for herself what might be done to alleviate the suffering of all who wish to share this land and to make peace in the region a possibility.

Reviews:

‘There are no no-go areas for the wonderfully intrepid Dervla Murphy. In her late seventies, with a “dicey hip” but armed with insatiable curiosity and apparently formidable ability to connect with everyone she meets, she takes buses and tramps through the cities, villages, olive groves and pathless hills of the West Bank over five months in 2009 and 2010 (…) She is at her best when observing the occupation’s more casual humiliations at first hand (…) Ms Murphy is a convert to the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign and a confirmed believer in the “one state solution”. So too are most of the interlocutors – both Israeli and Palestinian – she finds most sympathetic, though, like many “one staters” (her own term), she is less than clear about how their objective of a binational state could be achieved’ – Independent

‘It is now 50 years since Dervla Murphy published Full Tilt, her account of a bicycle ride from Ireland to India (…) In recent years, despite fresh travels to Cameroon, Rwanda, South Africa, Laos, Cuba – itinerary lists are unavoidable but also slightly beside the point – her attention has been taken by the fate of that assassinated placename, Palestine. Between River and Sea reflects on a three-month visit to Israel in 2008, with five months spent on the West Bank over the next two years. It has already been leapfrogged by the widely admired A Month by the Sea, which describes a summer 2011 visit to Gaza. The story the present book tells is necessarily less savagely dramatic and also more complex’ – Herald Scotland

 

Vijay Prashad (ed.). Letters to Palestine: Writers Respond to War and Occupation (Verso, 2015)

Publisher’s description: This book traces the swelling American recognition of Palestinian suffering, struggle, and hope, in writing that is personal, lyrical, anguished, and inspiring. Some of the leading writers of our time, such as Junot Díaz and Teju Cole, poets and essayists, novelists and scholars, Palestinian American activists like Huwaida Arraf, Noura Erakat, and Remi Kanazi, give voice to feelings of empathy and solidarity – as well as anger at US support for Israeli policy – in intimate letters, beautiful essays, and furious poems.

Reviews:

‘Reading this collection with a desire to learn more about the conflict from a Palestinian point of view, one might expect little more than anti-Israeli propaganda and rhetoric. Letters to Palestine is nothing of the sort. It is an earnest collection of essays, poems and diary excerpts that seeks to understand both the conflict and history of Palestine’ – Passion to Understand

‘[O]ne of the most powerful essays in Letters to Palestine, a collection of US writing about the conflict, in the ironically titled “Imagining myself in Palestine” by the novelist Randa Jarrar, is her memory of her father weeping when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, saying he had been the Palestinians’ “last chance”. Jarrar describes in minute detail her arrest, detention, and questioning at Ben Gurion airport ending in arbitrary deportation and a 10-year entry ban, which eliminates her hopes of visiting her sister in Ramallah. Though Jarrar never makes the point explicitly, the experience reads like a metaphor of Palestinian exclusion, exile and dispossession’ – Independent 

 

Lillian Rosengarten. Survival and Conscience: From the Shadows of Nazi Germany to the Jewish Boat for Gaza (Just World Books, 2015)

Publisher’s description: In 1936, Lillian Rosengarten and her family fled Nazi Germany for New York. But even there, the legacy of the Nazis’ brutality continued to cast a shadow over her family for many decades. In Survival and Conscience Rosengarten describes how she faced those challenges within her own life while gaining empathy for the struggles of others, realizing that all forms of extreme nationalism and hatred must be vigorously resisted. Like many other refugees from Nazism and survivors of the Holocaust, Rosengarten became a strong advocate of Palestinian rights. In 2010, she joined the “Jewish Boat to Gaza,” designed to break Israel’s punishing blockade of the Strip. Though the Israeli Navy obstructed their humanitarian mission, nothing can stop Lillian Rosengarten’s inspiring story of love, self-discovery, and activism.

 

Atef Abu Saif. Drone Eats With Me: Diaries from a City Under Fire (Comma Press, 2015)

Publisher’s description: On 7 July 2014, in an apparent response to the murder of three teenagers, Israel launched a major offensive against the Gaza Strip, lasting 51 days, killing 2145 Palestinians (578 of them children), injuring over 11,000, and demolishing 17,200 homes. The global outcry at this collective punishment of an already persecuted people was followed by widespread astonishment at the pro-Israeli bias of Western media coverage. The usual news machine rolled up, and the same distressing images and entrenched political rhetoric were broadcast, yet almost nothing was reported of the on-going lives of ordinary Gazans – the real victims of the war. One of the few voices to make it out was that of Atef Abu Saif, a writer and teacher from Jabalia Refugee Camp, whose eye-witness accounts (…) offered a rare window into the conflict for Western readers. Here, Atef’s complete diaries of the war allow us to witness the full extent of last summer’s atrocities from the most humble of perspectives: that of a young father, fearing for his family’s safety, trying to stay sane in an insanely one-sided war.

Reviews:

‘Abu Saif is a prominent Palestinian, but still an ordinary one. For him, the war appears out of nowhere; its escalations and truces appear out of nowhere; its end appears out of nowhere. Israel is bombing Gaza, but Israel is as distant (though it isn’t distant) and impersonal as the vast atmospheric conditions that cause a storm. The storm is the war, and in Abu Saif’s perfect, appalling metaphor, the drones and F16s on relentless patrol, even the warships out in the Mediterranean, are animals caught up in its tempest as much as Gazans’ – The Rumpus 

‘Intelligently, passionately, fluently, and sometimes poetically, written, it’s the story of a family in Ramadan, of the agony and joy of fatherhood under fire and of a community which somehow survives through rolling blackouts and sudden flashes of light, queueing for food or to use the bathroom, with whirring drones as familiar an irritant as mosquitoes’ – The National

 

Tom Sperlinger. Romeo and Juliet in Palestine: Teaching Under Occupation (Zero Books, 2015)

Publisher’s description: Is ‘Romeo and Juliet’ really a love story, or is it a play about young people living in dangerous circumstances? How might life under occupation produce a new reading of ‘Julius Caesar’? What choices must a group of Palestinian students make, when putting on a play which has Jewish protagonists? And why might a young Palestinian student refuse to read? For five months at the start of 2013, Tom Sperlinger taught English literature at the Abu Dis campus of Al-Quds University in the Occupied West Bank. In this account of the semester, Sperlinger explores his students’ encounters with works from ‘Hamlet’ and ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ to Kafka and Malcolm X. By placing stories from the classroom alongside anecdotes about life in the West Bank, Sperlinger shows how his own ideas about literature and teaching changed during his time in Palestine, and asks what such encounters might reveal about the nature of pedagogy and the role of a university under occupation.

Reviews:

‘Lucid and open-minded about its location – and about education generally – this book deserves a wide audience’ – Guardian

 

Sandy Tolan. Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land (Bloomsbury, 2015)

Publisher’s description: Children of the Stone is the unlikely story of Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan, a boy from a Palestinian refugee camp in Ramallah who confronts the occupying army, gets an education, masters an instrument, dreams of something much bigger than himself, and then inspires scores of others to work with him to make that dream a reality. That dream is of a music school in the midst of a refugee camp in Ramallah, a school that will transform the lives of thousands of children through music. (…) Children of the Stone is a story about music, freedom and conflict; determination and vision. It’s a vivid portrait of life amid checkpoints and military occupation, a growing movement of nonviolent resistance, the past and future of musical collaboration across the Israeli-Palestinian divide, and the potential of music to help children see new possibilities for their lives. against the odds to create something lasting and beautiful in a war-torn land.

Reviews:

‘Tolan is a scrupulous craftsman if not always a dazzling one. The end notes to the book run for nearly 100 pages, a workmanlike demonstration of rigor. But it isn’t poetic sentences or surprising metaphors that propel us forward; it’s the hard work of getting the story right – diligence required of any serious project about this, the most contentious of regions. Perhaps most helpfully, Tolan is careful enough to let us make up our own minds, never making the case for or against either “side”’ – Los Angeles Times 

 

Nahla Abdo. Captive Revolution: Palestinian Women’s Anti-Colonial Struggle within the Israeli Prison System (Pluto Press, 2014)

Publisher’s description: Women throughout the world have always played their part in struggles against colonialism, imperialism and other forms of oppression. However, there are few books on Arab political prisoners, fewer still on the Palestinians who have been detained in their thousands for their political activism and resistance. Nahla Abdo’s Captive Revolution seeks to break the silence on Palestinian women political detainees, providing a vital contribution to research on women, revolutions, national liberation and anti-colonial resistance. Based on stories of the women themselves, as well as her own experiences as a former political prisoner, Abdo draws on a wealth of oral history and primary research in order to analyse their anti-colonial struggle, their agency and the appalling treatment. Making crucial comparisons with the experiences of female political detainees in other conflicts, and emphasising the vital role Palestinian political culture and memorialisation of the ‘Nakba’ have had on their resilience and resistance, Captive Revolution is a rich and revealing addition to our knowledge of this little-studied phenomenon.

Reviews:

‘[filled] with the vivid voices, stories and experiences of Palestinian women political fighters and ex-detainees from the 1960s to the 1980s: a period marked by high levels of women’s participation in anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and national liberation movements globally’ – Rabble

 

Cynthia Franklin et al. (eds.). Life in Occupied Palestine, Special Issue, Biography, 37.2 (University of Hawaii Press, 2014; or downloadable from Project Muse – details here)

Editor’s introduction: This special issue tells stories about the everyday and extraordinary lives of Palestinians as well as the Zionist efforts to delegitimate, disempower, and eradicate those who live these lives. And it does so through a variety of life narratives that include and often intermix diaries, letters, Facebook updates, oral histories, memoir, interviews, poetry, photographs, analysis, and theory. So, too, resistance is encoded in this special issue’s crossings and connections: as contributors write, in English, for an international journal coming out of a US university, and as those of us working together to make this special is- sue embody differences of national identity, race, ethnicity, and religion, Life in Occupied Palestine challenges the false and deadly divisions that structure apartheid, settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and occupation, while also offering visions of life together, and of a free Palestine.

Reviews:

‘the contributors to this issue of the journal are almost exclusively Palestinian, and they explore issues such as diaspora, migration, confinement, oppression, nostalgia and longing through the lens of Palestinian life stories’ – Electronic Intifada

‘These pieces beautifully and powerfully capture both the mundane and the extraordinary of life in occupied Palestine’ – This Week in Palestine

 

Lipika Pelham. The Unlikely Settler (Other Press, 2014)

Publisher’s description: The Unlikely Settler is none other than a young Bengali journalist who moves to Jerusalem with her English-Jewish husband and two children. He speaks Arabic and is an arch believer in the peace process; she leaves her career behind to follow his dream. Jerusalem propels Pelham into a world where freedom from tribal allegiance is a challenging prospect. From the school you choose for your children to the wine you buy, you take sides at every turn. Pelham’s complicated relationship with her husband, Leo, is as emotive as the city she lives in, as full of energy, pain, and contradictions. As she tries to navigate the complexities and absurdities of daily life in Jerusalem, often with hilarious results, Pelham achieves deep insights into the respective woes and guilt of her Palestinian and Israeli friends. Her intelligent analysis suggests a very different approach to a potential resolution of the conflict.

Reviews:

‘Bittersweet memoir of a multicultural marriage riding the perilous shoals of Jerusalem’s ethnic split (…) A touching personal delineation of divided loyalties and riven hearts’ – Kirkus Reviews

 

Shlomo Sand. How I Stopped Being a Jew (Verso, 2014)

Publisher’s description: Shlomo Sand was born in 1946, in a displaced person’s camp in Austria, to Jewish parents; the family later migrated to Palestine. As a young man, Sand came to question his Jewish identity, even that of a ‘secular Jew’. With this meditative and thoughtful mixture of essay and personal recollection, he articulates the problems at the centre of modern Jewish identity. How I Stopped Being a Jew discusses the negative effects of the Israeli exploitation of the ‘chosen people’ myth and its ‘holocaust industry’. Sand criticizes the fact that, in the current context, what ‘Jewish’ means is, above all, not being Arab and reflects on the possibility of a secular, non-exclusive Israeli identity, beyond the legends of Zionism.

Reviews:

‘Sand, a history professor at Tel Aviv University, is the author of The Invention of the Jewish People (2009), a discursive yet polemical work that systematically undermines the claim that Jewishness is necessary – let alone sufficient – to justify the claims of the Israeli state to the territory formerly known as Palestine. Now comes this short, highly personal text, which repurposes some of these arguments to serve existential ends; Sand asks the question: what, in this day and age, exactly is a secular Jew?’ – Guardian 

 

Salim Tamari and Issam Nassar (eds.). The Storyteller of Jerusalem: The Life and Times of Wasif Jawhariyyeh, 1904-1948 (Interlink Books, 2014)

Publisher’s description: The memoirs of Wasif Jawhariyyeh are a remarkable treasure trove of writings on the life, culture, music, and history of Jerusalem. Spanning over four decades, from 1904 to 1948, they cover a period of enormous and turbulent change in Jerusalem’s history, but change lived and recalled from the daily vantage point of the street storyteller. Oud player, music lover and ethnographer, poet, collector, partygoer, satirist, civil servant, local historian, devoted son, husband, father, and person of faith, Wasif viewed the life of his city through multiple roles and lenses. The result is a vibrant, unpredictable, sprawling collection of anecdotes, observations, and yearnings as varied as the city itself. Reflecting the times of Ottoman rule, the British mandate, and the run-up to the founding of the state of Israel, The Storyteller of Jerusalem offers intimate glimpses of people and events, and of forces promoting confined, divisive ethnic and sectarian identities. Yet, through his passionate immersion in the life of the city, Wasif reveals the communitarian ethos that runs so powerfully through Jerusalem’s past. And that offers perhaps the best hope for its future.

Reviews:

‘a remarkable and unique memoir of the life and times of Wasif Jawhariyyeh, a talented composer, oud player, poet and chronicler from the Old City of Jerusalem. The memoir is a collection of observations, notes on his personal life and recordings of historical moments in Jerusalem’s history. Spanning over four decades, they cover the city’s most turbulent changes (…) It is not a memoir of a member of high society; Wasif is immersed in all strata’s of Jerusalem life and his heart seems to beat with the city’ – Palestine Book Awards

 

Erica Weiss. Conscientious Objectors in Israel: Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)

Publisher’s description: Based on long-term fieldwork, this ethnography chronicles the personal experiences of two generations of Jewish conscientious objectors as they grapple with the pressure of justifying their actions to the Israeli state and society – often suffering severe social and legal consequences, including imprisonment. While most scholarly work has considered the causes of animosity and violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Conscientious Objectors in Israel examines how and under what circumstances one is able to refuse to commit acts of violence in the midst of that conflict. By exploring the social life of conscientious dissent, Weiss exposes the tension within liberal citizenship between the protection of individual rights and obligations of self-sacrifice. While conscience is a strong cultural claim, military refusal directly challenges Israeli state sovereignty. Weiss explores conscience as a political entity that sits precariously outside the jurisdictional bounds of state power.

Reviews:

‘Weiss offers us if not a wholly original than an interesting and potentially useful example of the interaction between individual liberty and mutual necessity in a strongly communal and, arguably still in many ways, liberal society’ – LSE Review of Books

‘Weis­s’s study exam­ines eth­i­cal ques­tions as well as the effects of con­sci­en­tious objec­tion on the lives of these young peo­ple who may face prison, court tri­als, and ostracism. It also expos­es con­tra­dic­tions in mod­ern Israeli soci­ety. Is moral auton­o­my real­ly per­mit­ted? Is mil­i­tary vio­lence eth­i­cal? Under what con­di­tions? Read­ers will meet brave young peo­ple who are will­ing to oppose their gov­ern­ment and their soci­ety to stand up for their per­son­al beliefs. They will be chal­lenged to think about their own posi­tions about this issue. Although the book’s focus is aca­d­e­m­ic, gen­er­al read­ers inter­est­ed in this sub­ject will find it compelling’ – Jewish Book Council