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A review by jiujensu
Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense by Marcello Di Cintio
informative
medium-paced
3.0
I'm going to be honest: there are big pros and big cons. Big CN or TW for Orientalism. There are very good stories here, but the lens he's looking through will annoy the crap out of you if you're familiar with the history of the region or of resistance to occupation or international law.
Let's start with the good aspects. Di Cintio was a writer in residence in Palestine at one time - you can tell he loves literature and includes Palestinian literature in that. He highlights gay authors and meets and talks to so many poets and writers I can't list them all. He was able to tell their stories and draw out details I'd never heard them say elsewhere. If nothing else, you'll get a ton of titles and authors (&movies) for your to-read list!
When he gets into the storytelling, there's the Khalidi library, theft of books during the Nakba.(&movie called thre Great Book Robbery), intricate smelly details of how books are smuggled out of prison, role of Tamer Institute for Community Education, stories of collecting info for All That Remains - book of erased Palestinian villages, I enjoyed descriptions of the places he goes inside 48, the West Bank and Gaza, he has a detailed description of a humiliating checkpoint, there's the story of Jamal Abu Qumsan and the Gallery Café where artists meet, Kashabi Theater Company, the story of a salon for women authors, meeting Anni Kanafani, Mohammed El-Kurd, Atef Abu Saif, Abbad Yahya, khulud khamis, Dalia Taha, Adila Laïdi, Salha Hamdeen, Anahid Mlikian, Suha Arraf, Asmaa Azaizeh, Mona Abu Sharekh, Asmaa al-Ghul, Mayy Nayef, Sumaiya al-Susi, Rana Mourtaja and more.
Di Cintio seems to be sympathetic to Palestinian pain and injustices, but when confronted with negative things about Israel, he can't seem to wrap his brain around it - he puts things Palestinians tell him they've experienced in quotes, it's all "he claims," "allegedly," and never allows a Palestinian permission to be angry or advocate for freedom by any means necessary. They must be unarmed and nonviolent in his opinion. He doesn't have such requirements for Israel or Israelis, like the Western country he comes from.
A few examples:
He said of the Israeli policy of blackmailing gay Palestinians to become informants that the person he spoke to suggested this was the case. He could've verified this with books, journalism and human rights organizations in 2018. It's a fact. He doesn't seem to be able to believe this about Israel, though.
He repeats some easy false history, the US/Canada summary, of the "conflict" as he calls it - Jews accepted partition, Palestinians rejected it. I hope he reads Khalidi's Hundred Years War or Ilan Pappé's work with Said or Khalidi. They can help him out of that with what actually happened.
In his meeting with Anni Kanafani, Di Cintio shares his view that Ghassan Kanafani was assassinated in retaliation for planning the Lod airport attack with the Red Army (he labels them terrorists). Anni corrected him that Israel's plan was to liquidate intellectuals. (You can see this in the recent 2023 Israeli assault too - they called Refaat Alareer, taunted him, then leveled his building. Anyone good at communicating the struggle to Americans/Westerners is a target. It's repeated with journalists, professors, doctors.) Di Cintio still struggles for pages as he looks at photos of Kanafani, whose work he loves, with the possibility that he also could've killed someone. First, his widow said his weapon was a pen and Israel knew he was dangerous with that weapon. Second, under the daily violence Israel inflicts on the captive population, if he did plan an attack or kill someone - that would not invalidate his literary genius or the fact that Palestinians deserve equality, a life, self-determination, freedom as much as he does, as much as Israelis do. If he did plan an attack or kill someone, it certainly wouldn't in any way justify Israel's actions, occupation, collective punishment, attacks on occupied people, disproportionate violence, being THE CAUSE of the entire situation, cycle, conflict, etc - 75 years of genocide. I got really annoyed with the author at that point - just on page 21!
He loves talking to the Israeli curator of stolen Palestinian books now absorbed into their collection and also in a separate room. They say it's destruction and conservation, demolition and salvage - as though there's beauty or confusion there, but why isn't Di Cintio as mad as I am, as mad as one might be if a Nazi with a museum full of Holocaust victims' belongs looted from their house or taken from them at concentration camps from jewelry to furniture to teeth and saying, wow, aren't you glad I was there to save all these artifacts? It's obscene! A shrine to the massive continued injustice. It's not conservation. It's gloating over mass murder and large scale theft.
One of his interview subjects said her relative suffered intestinal illness brought on by his Israeli captors treatment of him - he used the word "claimed" as though he doubts seriously Israel caused such a thing. He hasn't read up on Israeli prisons, clearly. In the sae conversation, he couldn't believe a militant Marxist could write a sweet sappy letter to his mother. He doesn't believe the Palestinian is a person, does he?
I was annoyed of El-Kurd's behalf when Di Cintio refused to believe that an Israeli doctor tried to get his mother to abort him but not his twin sister as a demographic strategy. Instead of investigating or bringing up that Israel does experiments on prisoners and sells Palestinian organs with doctors' help, so it's possible, he just dismisses it and says, wow, look how much the sides mistrust each other.
The last annoyance I'll highlight is something he said to Atef Abu Saif asking about The Drone Eats With Me. Di Cintio wanted to know if it was a deliberate omission not to mention the Hamas rockets that "observers" (meaning the West and Di Cintio himself no doubt) say are the cause of the Israeli bombing, massacre, starvation, etc. Abu Saif responds to this siding with Israel and Western media in blaming Hamas rather than Israeli occupation, apartheid, genocide, 75 years of collective punishment by saving the book is a dairy, a human story about how that 2014 Israeli operation affected him and his family, which is a nice way of saying this isn't about Hamas, bud.
There are more examples of bias than this. I can't list them all. The Orientalism is a theme that runs through the book. It's his lens that he hasn't managed to break free from despite a healthy love of literature and genuine interest in -and empathy for- people. I think there are great discussions and details in his conversations with authors and is amazing how many he was able to meet and gather stories from. I would recommend this, but NOT for a history lesson at all (ignore his history completely and read Khalidi or someone) - only literature and human interest.
Let's start with the good aspects. Di Cintio was a writer in residence in Palestine at one time - you can tell he loves literature and includes Palestinian literature in that. He highlights gay authors and meets and talks to so many poets and writers I can't list them all. He was able to tell their stories and draw out details I'd never heard them say elsewhere. If nothing else, you'll get a ton of titles and authors (&movies) for your to-read list!
When he gets into the storytelling, there's the Khalidi library, theft of books during the Nakba.(&movie called thre Great Book Robbery), intricate smelly details of how books are smuggled out of prison, role of Tamer Institute for Community Education, stories of collecting info for All That Remains - book of erased Palestinian villages, I enjoyed descriptions of the places he goes inside 48, the West Bank and Gaza, he has a detailed description of a humiliating checkpoint, there's the story of Jamal Abu Qumsan and the Gallery Café where artists meet, Kashabi Theater Company, the story of a salon for women authors, meeting Anni Kanafani, Mohammed El-Kurd, Atef Abu Saif, Abbad Yahya, khulud khamis, Dalia Taha, Adila Laïdi, Salha Hamdeen, Anahid Mlikian, Suha Arraf, Asmaa Azaizeh, Mona Abu Sharekh, Asmaa al-Ghul, Mayy Nayef, Sumaiya al-Susi, Rana Mourtaja and more.
Di Cintio seems to be sympathetic to Palestinian pain and injustices, but when confronted with negative things about Israel, he can't seem to wrap his brain around it - he puts things Palestinians tell him they've experienced in quotes, it's all "he claims," "allegedly," and never allows a Palestinian permission to be angry or advocate for freedom by any means necessary. They must be unarmed and nonviolent in his opinion. He doesn't have such requirements for Israel or Israelis, like the Western country he comes from.
A few examples:
He said of the Israeli policy of blackmailing gay Palestinians to become informants that the person he spoke to suggested this was the case. He could've verified this with books, journalism and human rights organizations in 2018. It's a fact. He doesn't seem to be able to believe this about Israel, though.
He repeats some easy false history, the US/Canada summary, of the "conflict" as he calls it - Jews accepted partition, Palestinians rejected it. I hope he reads Khalidi's Hundred Years War or Ilan Pappé's work with Said or Khalidi. They can help him out of that with what actually happened.
In his meeting with Anni Kanafani, Di Cintio shares his view that Ghassan Kanafani was assassinated in retaliation for planning the Lod airport attack with the Red Army (he labels them terrorists). Anni corrected him that Israel's plan was to liquidate intellectuals. (You can see this in the recent 2023 Israeli assault too - they called Refaat Alareer, taunted him, then leveled his building. Anyone good at communicating the struggle to Americans/Westerners is a target. It's repeated with journalists, professors, doctors.) Di Cintio still struggles for pages as he looks at photos of Kanafani, whose work he loves, with the possibility that he also could've killed someone. First, his widow said his weapon was a pen and Israel knew he was dangerous with that weapon. Second, under the daily violence Israel inflicts on the captive population, if he did plan an attack or kill someone - that would not invalidate his literary genius or the fact that Palestinians deserve equality, a life, self-determination, freedom as much as he does, as much as Israelis do. If he did plan an attack or kill someone, it certainly wouldn't in any way justify Israel's actions, occupation, collective punishment, attacks on occupied people, disproportionate violence, being THE CAUSE of the entire situation, cycle, conflict, etc - 75 years of genocide. I got really annoyed with the author at that point - just on page 21!
He loves talking to the Israeli curator of stolen Palestinian books now absorbed into their collection and also in a separate room. They say it's destruction and conservation, demolition and salvage - as though there's beauty or confusion there, but why isn't Di Cintio as mad as I am, as mad as one might be if a Nazi with a museum full of Holocaust victims' belongs looted from their house or taken from them at concentration camps from jewelry to furniture to teeth and saying, wow, aren't you glad I was there to save all these artifacts? It's obscene! A shrine to the massive continued injustice. It's not conservation. It's gloating over mass murder and large scale theft.
One of his interview subjects said her relative suffered intestinal illness brought on by his Israeli captors treatment of him - he used the word "claimed" as though he doubts seriously Israel caused such a thing. He hasn't read up on Israeli prisons, clearly. In the sae conversation, he couldn't believe a militant Marxist could write a sweet sappy letter to his mother. He doesn't believe the Palestinian is a person, does he?
I was annoyed of El-Kurd's behalf when Di Cintio refused to believe that an Israeli doctor tried to get his mother to abort him but not his twin sister as a demographic strategy. Instead of investigating or bringing up that Israel does experiments on prisoners and sells Palestinian organs with doctors' help, so it's possible, he just dismisses it and says, wow, look how much the sides mistrust each other.
The last annoyance I'll highlight is something he said to Atef Abu Saif asking about The Drone Eats With Me. Di Cintio wanted to know if it was a deliberate omission not to mention the Hamas rockets that "observers" (meaning the West and Di Cintio himself no doubt) say are the cause of the Israeli bombing, massacre, starvation, etc. Abu Saif responds to this siding with Israel and Western media in blaming Hamas rather than Israeli occupation, apartheid, genocide, 75 years of collective punishment by saving the book is a dairy, a human story about how that 2014 Israeli operation affected him and his family, which is a nice way of saying this isn't about Hamas, bud.
There are more examples of bias than this. I can't list them all. The Orientalism is a theme that runs through the book. It's his lens that he hasn't managed to break free from despite a healthy love of literature and genuine interest in -and empathy for- people. I think there are great discussions and details in his conversations with authors and is amazing how many he was able to meet and gather stories from. I would recommend this, but NOT for a history lesson at all (ignore his history completely and read Khalidi or someone) - only literature and human interest.