Scan barcode
A review by thegothiclibrary
Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation by Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman
5.0
This book was a powerful and difficult read. Before going into it, I was embarrassingly uninformed about Israeli occupation in Palestine, but I knew I wanted to read up on the subject before going to Israel for the first time last month. Reading a few of the essays before my trip definitely helped me to have a more informed experience.
This collection presents a nuanced, personalized, and multi-faceted view of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. Each of the twenty-six authors comes at the subject from a different angle. A handful of the authors are Palestinian, one is Israeli, several are members of the Jewish Diaspora, and the rest are third-party observers from countries around the world that do not necessarily have a dog in this fight.
The collection starts strong with the essay "The Dovekeeper" by Geraldine Brooks, in which she follows the story of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy in East Jerusalem who joins his cousin on a mission to attack their neighboring Jews with kitchen knives. His cousin stabs a 13-year-old Jewish boy and is subsequently shot by Israeli soldiers. The essay asks difficult questions like, how do young children and teens become radicalized? Can children be considered terrorists? How should they be treated if they commit an act of violence?
Other authors come at the conflict from unique perspectives, such as Taiye Selasi, who investigates the taboo topic of Israeli-Palestinian romance in "Love in the Time of Qalandiya," and Porochista Khakpour, who reports on Palestinian hip-hop in "Hip-Hop Is Not Dead."
One perspective I found particularly interesting was that of Irish writer Colm Toibin. In his essay "Imagining Jericho," Colm discusses the sympathy he feels for Israel, born partly from guilt over the fact that Ireland stood by, doing essentially nothing while 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. But Colm can also identify with the Palestinians, relating their situation to Irish Catholics were driven from their land and controlled by the English. His essay goes on to compare his first visit to Israel, during the election of Yitzhak Rabin in 1992, to the Israel-Palestine that he finds in 2016.
One of the most moving, and most hopeful, essays is "Two Stories, So Many Stories" by Colum McCann which highlights two fathers in the Parents Circle for bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families, and their hope that they can end the violence by sharing their pain.
This collection presents a nuanced, personalized, and multi-faceted view of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. Each of the twenty-six authors comes at the subject from a different angle. A handful of the authors are Palestinian, one is Israeli, several are members of the Jewish Diaspora, and the rest are third-party observers from countries around the world that do not necessarily have a dog in this fight.
The collection starts strong with the essay "The Dovekeeper" by Geraldine Brooks, in which she follows the story of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy in East Jerusalem who joins his cousin on a mission to attack their neighboring Jews with kitchen knives. His cousin stabs a 13-year-old Jewish boy and is subsequently shot by Israeli soldiers. The essay asks difficult questions like, how do young children and teens become radicalized? Can children be considered terrorists? How should they be treated if they commit an act of violence?
Other authors come at the conflict from unique perspectives, such as Taiye Selasi, who investigates the taboo topic of Israeli-Palestinian romance in "Love in the Time of Qalandiya," and Porochista Khakpour, who reports on Palestinian hip-hop in "Hip-Hop Is Not Dead."
One perspective I found particularly interesting was that of Irish writer Colm Toibin. In his essay "Imagining Jericho," Colm discusses the sympathy he feels for Israel, born partly from guilt over the fact that Ireland stood by, doing essentially nothing while 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. But Colm can also identify with the Palestinians, relating their situation to Irish Catholics were driven from their land and controlled by the English. His essay goes on to compare his first visit to Israel, during the election of Yitzhak Rabin in 1992, to the Israel-Palestine that he finds in 2016.
One of the most moving, and most hopeful, essays is "Two Stories, So Many Stories" by Colum McCann which highlights two fathers in the Parents Circle for bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families, and their hope that they can end the violence by sharing their pain.