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unisonlibrarian's review
4.0
In a rare occurrence I bought this book from the author herself at the book launch in the Trades Club at Hebden Bridge. It is a collection of journal and blog entries during the Israeli attack on Gaza across 2008/2009. Sharyn Lock was present in Gaza at the time as part of the International Solidarity Movement. What is contained within these pages is a collection of her experiences on the front line as it were, with the Palestinian people.
My first thought was the same as Richard Falk’s in the Afterword, that book humanises the seemingly inhuman events. This is primarily about people, and how they cope with the endless onslaught from a much greater power. People such as Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and Ilan Pappe have written stunning theoretical arguments regarding the Palestinian people but this is one of the first books I have read that takes the real over the political, the human over the theory and presents us with a touching, violent and saddening account of life under occupation and war.
That isn’t to say there aren’t moments of humour, however dark they may be as well as simple heart warming snatches at friendship and solidarity between many of the people involved. The cruel realism or perhaps unrealism of life in the Gaza Strip always hits home however. Each page to me was the reinforcement of my views of the Israeli government, and to the uneducated reader would be the slow realisation that what happens there, constantly, is simply wrong, wrong and wrong again on so many levels. Civilian areas are bombed, illegal weaponry is used, soldiers shoot at civilians including women and children, they shoot at the people going to collect the bodies, they target ambulances, schools, hospitals in brazen contraventions of the Geneva Convention and the rules of engagement, and block the paths of emergency medical workers to the sick and injured. The saintly presence of the ISM movement and other foreign activists is not a barrier to atrocities but it does slow them down at times. This is what makes people like Sharyn Lock so important. They save lives. Whether when collecting injured people and treating them or simply by the good fortune of their presence. Israel is less likely, only less mind you, to murder people in cold blood when citizens of western governments are present.
Overall the book is difficult to read, and so it should be. Anyone who could breeze through such a publication would have something wrong with them, but it is a necessary read and more people should take time out to read such books. Especially this one.
My first thought was the same as Richard Falk’s in the Afterword, that book humanises the seemingly inhuman events. This is primarily about people, and how they cope with the endless onslaught from a much greater power. People such as Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and Ilan Pappe have written stunning theoretical arguments regarding the Palestinian people but this is one of the first books I have read that takes the real over the political, the human over the theory and presents us with a touching, violent and saddening account of life under occupation and war.
That isn’t to say there aren’t moments of humour, however dark they may be as well as simple heart warming snatches at friendship and solidarity between many of the people involved. The cruel realism or perhaps unrealism of life in the Gaza Strip always hits home however. Each page to me was the reinforcement of my views of the Israeli government, and to the uneducated reader would be the slow realisation that what happens there, constantly, is simply wrong, wrong and wrong again on so many levels. Civilian areas are bombed, illegal weaponry is used, soldiers shoot at civilians including women and children, they shoot at the people going to collect the bodies, they target ambulances, schools, hospitals in brazen contraventions of the Geneva Convention and the rules of engagement, and block the paths of emergency medical workers to the sick and injured. The saintly presence of the ISM movement and other foreign activists is not a barrier to atrocities but it does slow them down at times. This is what makes people like Sharyn Lock so important. They save lives. Whether when collecting injured people and treating them or simply by the good fortune of their presence. Israel is less likely, only less mind you, to murder people in cold blood when citizens of western governments are present.
Overall the book is difficult to read, and so it should be. Anyone who could breeze through such a publication would have something wrong with them, but it is a necessary read and more people should take time out to read such books. Especially this one.
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