Reviews

Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation by Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman

alyssarubin's review

5.0

Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon have compiled a harrowing collection of stories that feel simultaneously painful, damning, and tragically mundane. As someone who is engaged in anti-occupation work, I was shocked by how viscerally the stories affected me, and I felt that I had been desensitized to some of the horrors of the occupation. What is transformative about this body of work is the realization that occupation is as violent physically as it is temporally — the Israeli government's control of land, bodies, narratives, and most strikingly, the control of Palestinian time, is a process that dehumanizes both oppressed and oppressor.

degeneratefromnj's review against another edition

3.0

I think this a book a lot of people need to read, however it did not meet my expectations. I expected there to be more writings from actual Israelis and Palestinians, not mostly work from outsiders. They also had a few people featured who wrote about the exact same topics - this is something that could’ve been filtered out.

catherinefisher55's review against another edition

4.0

I particularly liked Hari Kunzru's essay in this anthology.

stevendedalus's review

4.0

A mixed bag of essays, mostly from outsiders, from the Palestinian perspective of Israeli occupation.

The most boring ones are the most obviously stage managed, guided by the group Breaking the Silence to specific areas, repeating the same things: too-young Israeli soldiers, a fascination with the minutely detailed oppressions of bureaucracy.

The worst of these is (unsurprisingly) Dave Eggers's overly long piece which is more about him than anything else. Why people keep employing him as a writer is beyond me.

The good ones take novel perspectives, say analyzing the conflict through professional Palestinian soccer players, or Taiye Selassi's beautiful meditation on interfaith love.

Yes, this book has an agenda but its unsensationalized presentation of the daily monotony of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is valuable, if repetitive at times.

I'd say seek out the writing that is from Palestinian authors, best able to relay the everyday nature of their lives, as well as those who bring a freshness and perspective to their writing that breaks up through the usual stories, and you'll be well served.

ironi's review

2.0

I can't move my wrist without waking up my cat so yeah, I'm totally just going to type out this review now. This is a perfect excuse for not working on my Logic homework.

In any case, Kingdom of Olives and Ash is interesting because you have various authors from different backgrounds, each one writing short parts. In that sense, this book manages to show more diversity of thought than other books I've read about the conflict.

However, I think this book would have been better if there would have been some communication between the authors as some of the stories were very similar. We don't need to be introduced to Yehuda Shaul 4 different times. It seems like the vast majority of the authors here were going into very similar spaces and writing down similar experiences.

Of course, this meant that the stories that broke this mold stood out even more. There's a part of someone who writes about his experiences in Gaza or a story about the organization that connects between Israeli terror victims and Palestinian deaths. However, I can't help but wish there was even more variety. Where are the stories about the Druze and how they feel? When do you talk about the different sects of Palestinians? At what point do you dig deep into what the army actually means and who are these soldiers that keep getting described as children? Where's my story about the people like me, the centerist Israelis who are Zionist and peace-loving?

Since I feel very strongly that certain thoughts aren't worded in this book (or are said in brief sentences), I'd like to add my input. I've split this into topics that repeated themselves throughout the book.

Occupation
As an Israel, I'm hesitant to use the word "occupation" because I've heard the slogan "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" which implies that the entirety of Israel is an occupation. Now, not only is this claim incorrect and misleading, it's also fairly antisemitic. So, when I hear people use the word occupation, I have to ask them if they're talking about the West Bank or the entire country. And, more often then not, when it comes to foreigners, some of them don't even know enough to answer this question. 

Beyond this, occupation implies that (a) there was a Palestinian country before the occupation and (b) that Israel has a different piece of land, beyond what it's occupying (i.e. Germany occupied Denmark). Neither of these are true and so I feel like the usage of the word "occupation" is a little misleading. 

However, I do use the word occupation for the West Bank but I think this occupation is a result of so many other aspects so the entire title of this book strikes me as kind of misleading.

Foreignness in Israel- Palestinian 
There's a sense of privilege that comes with being in this region and not being a local. Being able to walk both in Tel Aviv and in the streets of Ramallah is privilege. Waving your EU passport, talking to natives of each area, being able to pretend to be neutral, all of these are things that Israelis and Palestinians can't do and there is something so arrogant about the way a lot of these authors communicate.

Not all of them. Lars Saabye Christensen's part totally restored my faith in humanity. But a lot of these people just don't seem to realize that this is our identity, this is emotional, this is painful, this entire thing isn't just something that you can pop in, feel like you're so influential and enlightened, and then pop out. We don't have that privilege and so, when you voice an opinion, as an outsider, there's room to consider that you are not the one that will pay the price for the implications of it.

Pragmatism
A few weeks ago, I was asked what I think is the biggest question in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It took me a while to answer but I realized that my answer is that there is a clash of narratives. This is a clash of culture, beliefs, world views, and history.

And I will insist that the majority of Palestinians support terror and they will continue to insist that the majority of Israelis support getting rid of all of the Arabs in the region and we will argue and argue and no matter how much we will both practice active listening and empathy, we have solved nothing.

If these authors wish to be helpful, they should jump in and be willing to get their hands dirty. I want someone to ask the hard questions. Someone who's willing to facilitate conversations that don't end with "so the Palestinians are oppressed and the Israelis are the oppressors". Let's dig deeper than that and figure out how we can actually live together, despite our deep narrative clash. Of this very long book, there is one author who does this.

So, I do have more to say but my cat left me and my homework awaits, I will hopefully continue this review later.
It's been a few weeks and it doesn't seem like I am going to finish this review. So, I'll wrap it up by saying that this book didn't have almost any Palestinian or Israeli authors. This book could have been a chance to hear perspectives of people from here and understand their own experiences. That would have been incredible.

And you know, it makes sense that the organizers didn't do that because Breaking the Silence, the organization that helped create this book, is not actually invested in creating changes locally. I think this video
really sums up my feelings about them but it's in Hebrew so I will say that they focus on creating an international buzz around the injustice in the West Bank. It's so important that we will know what's going on in the West Bank but when Breaking the Silence create demonstrations (and write books) that are for people outside of Israel, they're causing antagonism towards them.

As an Israeli, I am more than happy to acknowledge that sometimes soldiers behave against the law and that when that happens, there absolutely needs to be an Israeli response. And that's why the media and our courts exist. If a soldier feels that what they did was immoral, they should speak up and they will get support from the mechanisms that exist. However, Breaking the Silence don't do this, instead they focus on sharing these misdemeanors around the world, without any context and without clarification that they aren't the majority.

In the same vein, this book does the same by introducing these people to a specific shade of the conflict. I mean, we have two descriptions of Jerusalem Day and neither one attempt to engage with anything but a very similar mindset. (And that's just Jerusalem Day, a day where it's obvious that way too many people in this conflict are aggressive and violent.)

To conclude, some stories here were fantastic. However, for the most part, they weren't enough. They didn't attempt to engage with the diversity within this conflict. The fact that this didn't have enough Palestinian and Israeli voices is just a shame.

jordynhaime's review

2.0

I couldn't finish it.

How incredibly disappointing this book was. I was really looking forward to reading this and I was so excited when I finally got my hands on my library's copy...

This is what happens when you send a bunch of novelists to one of the most reported places in the world for ONE WEEK to write about a conflict which, to quote Chabon, many of them had never even given a second thought. The result is the same overused narratives and tropes we read in the headlines every day. That's just not what I was looking for.

I didn't want to hear the bus ride in which you stared longingly out the window at the menacing border wall, or how innocent-looking the 19-year-olds with guns looked as they stopped you at the same checkpoint that all the other contributors wrote about. I definitely didn't want to hear about how you think the problems started in 1967 when the occupation officially began, and apparently not in 1948 when people were forced out of their homes or fled them because of the war. I don't want to hear about what you "think" about the conflict that's happening there because you know so little about the history. And please, do not call us "few good Jews" "the Righteous ones," as if Judaism is an evil religion in which we all come together on a common hate of Palestinians. This is blatant anti-semitism.

I would much rather read something by a journalist or at least a decent writer next time. Two stars rather than one because of the few writers who wrote essays about something interesting and different and used real research and thought.

guiltyfeat's review

3.0

Predictably uneven collection of essays. I went to the Jerusalem book launch for this a few weeks ago and found myself in the audience at the Q&A yelling at Michael Chabon, one of my favourite authors and his wife. Not my finest hour. Now that I have read all the essays in this collection, I'm still a bit conflicted about the potential impact of this project. Saying that the Occupation is bad seems as redundant as saying that Trump's Presidency is bad. No one intelligent is going to argue with you. If anything some of the essays here are a little too even-handed because if the soldiers who maintain the occupation are partly victims too, then what exactly are the authors confronting? There's also a fair amount of repetition which I guess is to be expected given that some of these writers traveled together, but there are also some gems here including Assaf Gavron's piece about football and Colum McCann moving story about Combatants for peace. I went into this concerned that it might be a fruitless exercise and finished it finding it mostly toothless.

balancinghistorybooks's review

3.0

I had not heard of Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation before spotting it in my local Fopp store.   I felt as though this collection of essays, which all revolve around the Israeli military's occupation of Palestine, was worthy of an extended review.  Whilst I knew quite a bit about the situation and its history before picking the book up, I am always eager to learn, and hoped that it would fill in the gaps which I was certain I had.

Edited by husband and wife team Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, who also contribute an essay each, Kingdom of Olives and Ash brings together twenty-six pieces by a variety of celebrated authors, most of them novelists, from all over the world.  Each was offered a trip to the occupied zone, and was invited to write about whatever it was that struck them the most on their travels.  Their work, viewed both separately and collectively, 'shows the human cost of fifty years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.'  These 'perceptive and poignant essays', says the book's blurb, 'offer unique insight into the narratives behind the litany of grim destruction broadcast nightly on the news, as well as a deeper understanding of the conflict as experienced by the people who live in the occupied territories.'

Chabon and Waldman are frank in their introduction.  They write: 'We didn't want to edit this book.  We didn't want to write, or even think, in any kind of sustained way, about Israel and Palestine, about the nature and meaning of occupation, about intifadas and settlements, about whose claims were more valid, whose suffering more bitter, whose crimes more egregious, whose outrage more justified.  Our reluctance to engage with the issue was so acute that for nearly a quarter of a century we didn't even visit the place [Jerusalem] where Ayelet was born.'  1992, they go on to discuss, was the first time in which they visited Israel together.  This was a 'time of optimism, new initiatives, relative tranquility.'  

Despite enjoying their trip, and believing that they would often return, they did not get the opportunity to do so for over twenty years.  As violence escalated following their visit, they remark: 'Horrified and bewildered by the blur of violence and destruction, of reprisal and counter-reprisal and counter-counter-reprisal, put off by the dehumanizing rhetoric prevalent on both sides, we did what so many others in the ambivalent middle have done: we averted our gaze.  We opted out of the debate, and stayed away from the country.'  Following an invitation to a writers' festival, Ayelet returned to Israel by herself in 2014, where she also visited Hebron and Tel Aviv: 'The city sparkles, it hums.  And it averts its gaze.  One would never know, on the streets of Tel Aviv, that an hour's drive away, millions of people are living and dying under oppressive military rule.'  

As the project for Kingdom of Olives and Ash began to take shape, the editors speak of how they selected a vast array of contributors for the volume, in order to make the collection as far-reaching as was possible.  The core idea was this: 'Conscious of the imminence of June 2017, the fiftieth anniversary of the occupation, we put the word out - to writers on every continent except Antarctica, of all ages and eight mother tongues.  Writers who identified as Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu, and writers of no religious affiliation at all.  Some had already made clear and public their political feelings on the subject of Palestine-Israel, but most had not, and many acknowledged from the outset that they had never really given the subject more than a glancing consideration.'

I had heard of a lot of the authors collected here, and was familiar with some of their work.  I was particularly excited to read essays by Anita Desai, Eimear McBride, and Geraldine Brooks, all writers whose novels I admire.  There were a few writers who were new to me, too.  Some of these authors were invited to stay at houses in Palestinian refugee camps and villages, and some spoke to civilians about their experiences.  Others explored cities, some tried to cross the many checkpoints strewn over a small area, and still others interviewed those working in factories or on archaeological sites.  There are many tragic stories told here, as one might expect given the circumstances.  The contributors variously meet advocates for peace and change, artisans cultivating ancient practices (soap making, for instance), students, bereaved parents, non-conformists, and taxi drivers who have to navigate the checkpoints many times each day.

I enjoyed and engaged with several of the essays in Kingdom of Olives and Ash, but others did not capture my attention in the same way.  The pieces which I particularly enjoyed tended to be written by the authors which I wasn't already overly familiar with.  Jacqueline Woodson's essay, 'One's Own People', in which she contrasts her privileged, shielded life in New York with those she sees lived in occupied territory, was particularly striking.  She writes: 'I knew the Palestine-Israel of newspaper articles and television journalism.  This Palestine-Israel was as foreign to me as Yemen, a place somewhere out there where people who had no connection to me fought among themselves - and killed others.  People who were not 100 percent people...  how could they be?  They were outside my very comfortable America.  Outside anything I could - or needed to - imagine.'  I also very much enjoyed Norwegian author Lars Saabye Christensen's 'Occupied Words', which considers the language which we use: 'And when our language is occupied, attitudes change too, and sometimes the distance from attitude to action is short.  The front lines move quicker than the thought.  We can't keep up.'

Of course, there are elements of interest in each and every essay here, but I found some of the writing styles a little awkward in their choice of prose, overly and unnecessarily sensationalised, or not to my taste.  I found the essays which focus on one individual, or one family, particularly intriguing and accessible.  Others, like Madeleine Thien's, are overly fact-heavy, and took far longer to read and consider.

Kingdom of Olives and Ash is certainly not an easy read, but it is a challenging and important one.  A lot has been explored here.  I had intended to read the book all in one go, but it proved far better to read and consider one or two essays each day over an extended period.  Much of the information here needed time to settle.  I found this varied collection a little uneven at times, but overarchingly, the pieces are interesting and informative, and form rather an essential whole.

belgaer's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative medium-paced

4.0

This was really moving. I didn’t know very much about Israel/Palestine until this, and this was very eye opening.  In particular, “Two Stories, So Many Stories” made me tear up.