MIDDLE EAST BOOKS REVIEW

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They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl’s Fight for Freedom

By Ahed Tamimi and Dena Takruri, One World, 2022, hardcover, 288 pp. MEB $25

Reviewed by Delinda C. Hanley

Full disclosure: I am not an impartial reviewer of this passionate memoir co-written by Ahed Tamimi and Dena Takruri. Tamimi graced the cover of our March/April 2018 Washington Report. In my office I have a huge protest sign depicting Ahed Tamimi and her mother Nariman, left over from 2018 solidarity marches calling for their release and an end to Israel’s practice of arresting and detaining Palestinian children. The Tamimis had been imprisoned since their pre-dawn arrest at home in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh on Dec. 19, 2017. Their crimes? The diminutive 16year-old girl had slapped an armed Israeli soldier following the point-blank shooting of her 14-year-old cousin, Mohammed. Her mother’s crime was embarrassing Israel by recording the “slap heard ’round the world.”

After their video went viral, the two were arrested and protests erupted around the world. Tamimi writes, “I was not the first child to be arrested and detained by Israel, nor would I be the last, but my case seemed to be drawing attention to Israel’s abuses in a way that hadn’t been achieved before.” While Israeli soldiers or settlers are barely slapped on the wrist for murdering Palestinians, Israeli lawmakers urged lengthy sentences for this child. One Israeli journalist, Ben Caspit, wrote, “We should exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras.” Mother and daughter were sentenced to eight months in Hasharon Prison.

Tamimi’s award-winning co-author Dena Takruri, who has fearlessly reported on injustices around the world, seamlessly blends a deeply personal story with the history of an apartheid state and the constant humiliation and cruelty endured by the indigenous Palestinians. Indeed, the beginning is a heavy read as Tamimi shares her family’s history and the brutality of Israel’s occupation as the nearby illegal settlement of Halamish confiscates the village’s beloved spring and land. Soon the reader is swept up by the Nabi Saleh community’s unarmed grassroots resistance movement against incursions and harassment by soldiers and settlers.

You feel like you are right there with the child as Tamimi recalls one summer night waking up to see an Israeli soldier’s rifle poking through her open bedroom window. Your fury mounts as wantonly destructive IDF soldiers raid her family home, toss their belongings and steal their computers, over and over. Somehow, through it all, love, laughter and strength triumph, uplifting the reader.

My favorite part of the book was reading about Tamimi’s time in prison, which she says helped her grow, learn to work with a group and always fight for the interests of the collective. Despite an over-crowded cell, and girls having to take turns sleeping on too few bunk beds, the prisoners be came supportive, life-long friends. Tamimi was fortunate that Palestinian lawmaker Khalida Jarrar, repeatedly arrested and subjected to administrative detention or imprisoned “for inciting violence,” managed to teach classes to her fellow prisoners who were missing their education and exams. Jarrar was denied a temporary release from prison to attend her daughter Suha’s funeral in July 2021. “My time in her classroom is one of the many reasons I’ve never viewed this chapter of my life as a loss,” Tamimi explains.

The authors do not gloss over excruciating descriptions of strip searches and relentless interrogations without the presence of a parent or lawyer. There are also frightening narratives of Tamimi’s rides in the bosta, a freezing bus divided into cells to transport shackled prisoners, some of them insane, from various prisons to court. “The psychological toll of riding in the bosta was enough to break anyone,” Tamimi recalls. On her first bosta ride she endured “an onslaught of verbal harassment” from neighboring cells, and an Israeli man exposed himself while he leered at a shocked Tamimi. “Later, two others took off their clothes and had sex with each other for all the riders to see. As a 16-year-old girl who hadn’t witnessed anything beyond a kissing scene in a Hollywood movie, I was appalled. I closed my eyes and tried my hardest to fight back tears.”

Will there be pushback from parents or other “thought police” patrolling public libraries? Parents might object to a 16-yearold reading this. But they should be objecting to a child enduring terrible treatment, in a country supported by U.S. taxpayers.

“When they throw you in prison, the occupation forces want to see you broken and defeated, your spirits as low as the ground,” Tamimi writes. “When, instead, you dare to defy their system of oppression by laugh-

ing, it shows them that not even prison will break you or stop you from caring about your cause. Laughter sends a powerful message: We’re still alive, we’re still laughing, and we love life.” That is a lesson everyone can learn.

Each year approximately 500-700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12 years old, are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system, according to Defense for Children International-Palestine. The most common charge is stone throwing, for which the maximum sentence is 20 years in prison. According to Save the Children, these kids “face inhumane treatment such as beatings, strip searches, psychological abuse, weeks in solitary confinement and being denied access to a lawyer during interrogations.” Beyond facts and numbers, this book portrays what happened to a child enduring this treatment.

A traditionally pro-Israel publication, the Washington Post recently published an article titled, “Palestinian parents fear for their children as Israel’s far right rises.” It notes that increasing numbers of children are rounded up in near-nightly raids in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. More than 30 Palestinian minors have been killed in 2022, and with a far right-wing government now forming, even more children are in danger. That is why it’s urgent for all of us to read They Called Me a Lioness, and gift copies to libraries, classrooms, newsrooms and legislators’ offices.

Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire

Edited by Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing and Michael Merryman-Lotze, Haymarket Books, 2022, paperback, 280 pp. MEB $24.95

Reviewed by Ida Audeh

This collection of 15 essays and poems, introduced by lead editor Jehad Abusalim, was conceptualized as a platform to humanize Gaza and show that the besieged territory is more than a place of destruction and impoverishment. Light in Gaza is ultimately successful in bringing Gazans to life, showing the dignity, integrity and creativity with which they endure life’s many hardships.

This is a deeply personal book for the contributors. How can it be anything else? Contributor Refaat Alareer states matter-offactly: “My wife, Nusayba, and I are a perfectly normal Palestinian couple—we have over 30 relatives killed by Israel in the past two decades.” Teaching literature to his university students is Alareer’s way of coping with death and violence all around him. Asmaa Abu Mezied describes clutching her phone and filming while fleeing destruction, as a way of documenting her own narrative and denying others the ability to distort it. It is a “plea for humanity’s help to end this horror, which is more than our cameras can bear,” she writes. The essays convey how exhausting and frightening it is to live in Gaza. Subjected to periodic brutal assaults, Gazans (70 percent of whom are refugees) live in a state of “permanent temporality,” a term Shahd Abusalama uses to describe living in a state of suspension, while waiting to return home. During its many assaults on Gaza, Israeli officials shamelessly cite as evidence of their humanity and magnanimity the advance warnings they provide to residents whose homes they are about to bomb. Dorgham Abusalim describes how the intended target processes the alert. His account leaves no doubt that giving midnight warnings to Gazans who have no safe place to seek refuge is sadistic and profoundly cruel.

Yousef Aljamal and Israa Mohammed Jamal help us understand the many practical implications of restrictions on movement. When people are unable to enter or leave Gaza, relatives become strangers to

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one another, they explain. (While the blockade of Gaza is particularly restrictive, Palestinians in the West Bank also face severe limits on their movement.)

Abu Mezied’s essay on agrarian practices explains how a rich agricultural area can, with malevolent determination, be reduced to a shadow of its former self. The Gaza District lost most of its villages and its agricultural base in 1948: Out of 22,000 dunams of citrus farms and one million dunams of grain, only 4,000 dunams and 17,000 dunams, respectively, survived the Nakba. About half of Gaza’s agricultural land has been placed off-limits (now falling in Israel’s self-declared “buffer zone”), and labor force participation in agriculture has dropped from 32 percent in 1970 to 4.7 percent in 2019. War, water salinity and the uprooting of trees are further threats to food production. These facts demonstrate the vulnerability of Gazans to an enemy on record as determined to “put them on a diet.”

But Gazans have shown astonishing levels of creativity in finding solutions to problems. Salem Al Qudwa’s description of rebuilding homes that are practical, aesthetically pleasing, using local materials and respecting family needs can apply to other areas facing housing crises. Suhail Taha mentions in passing the invention of airless tires for wheelchairs, which are better on the road and require fewer repairs than regular tires. Nour Naim’s thought-provoking essay on positive applications for artificial intelligence proposes a range of uses, including three-dimensional printing as a workaround for restrictions on imports. Poet Mosab Abu Toha describes the rich cultural life of Gaza, one that probably isn’t known to most readers. I had no idea, for instance, that the Gaza Strip was home to most of Palestine’s libraries. No wonder, then, that his response to the bombing of his university’s library was to establish a lending library, with book donations from Noam Chomsky, the family of Edward Said and others.

The final essay in this collection, by Basman Aldirawi, provocatively imagines three futures for Gaza in the year 2050, only one of which (the one-state option) resembles a “normal” system.

The essays in this volume convey with urgency the need to have a “meaningful conversation about Gaza, led by Palestinians, that reflects on the past, present and future,” Abusalim writes. Gazans (and all Palestinians) desperately need a discourse that goes beyond the sterility of present political discourse—one that recognizes the vitality of Gaza’s people, the crime that has been committed against them for too long, their inseparability from the Palestinian nation and their right to chart their future free of Israeli terrorism.

We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel

By Eric Alterman, Basic Books, 2022, hardcover, 512 pp. MEB $35

Reviewed by Walter L. Hixson

Eric Alterman has produced a comprehensive and well-written history centered on how Americans have grappled with the Middle East conflict from the creation of Israel to the present. The most important point he makes in We Are Not One is that ever-mounting evidence over the years has made it clear to Americans, including most American Jews, that Israel is an oppressive and ultimately apartheid state. But that awareness has produced no fundamental change in American policy, much less a determination to call Israel to account.

Alterman’s book proceeds chronologically across the familiar contours of the history of American Zionism. In the first generation following the creation of Israel much of the American public, including Jews, were less than fully engaged with Middle East politics. That changed in June 1967 when American Jews rallied behind Israel, fearing that it might be destroyed as it went to war with Arab states. Israel’s ringing victory in the six-day conflict proved to be a turning point after which support for Israel was embedded in the identity of many American Jews. From that point forward the Israel lobby, eventually joined by the Christian right and neoconservatives, among others, relentlessly promoted Israel’s interests in the media, popular culture and especially in the Congress.

Alterman provides a straightforward, deeply researched and often damning account of this history. The book concludes fittingly with the New York Times’ tortured response to Amnesty International’s historic designation in 2022 of Israel as an apartheid state. This news apparently was not “fit to print” in America’s much-vaunted “newspaper of record.” After ignoring the report for two months, the Times finally referenced the apartheid designation by Amnesty and other human rights groups in a story buried on its inside pages. This vignette underscores the ongoing denial and failure to confront Israeli repression in mainstream American discourse.

Alterman’s book offers an excellent place to start for those with little knowledge of the U.S.-Israel dynamic, but for specialists or longtime students of the American role in the conflict, there is little that is new here. Alterman claims that his book is the first to systematically examine the relationship between American Jews and Israel, but in fact the subject has been studied by many other scholars and journalists, including Dov Waxman’s comprehensive account Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel (2016). We Are Not One thus offers an in-depth but unoriginal account.

The book does nonetheless underscore the ever-increasing concern of most American Jews that the repressive and blatantly

Contributing editor Walter L. Hixson is the author of Architects of Repression: How Israel and Its Lobby Put Racism, Violence and Injustice at the Center of US Middle East Policy, along with several other books and journal articles. He was a professor of history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished professor.

apartheid character of Israeli society is out of step with traditionally liberal American Jewish values. We Are Not One is also well researched, well organized, up-to-date and highly readable, none of which is surprising, as Alterman is an accomplished journalist and historian.

While Alterman, to his credit, does not downplay or apologize for the long history of repressing Palestinians, neither does he offer any solutions. Ironically, Alterman’s book echoes the very problem he describes, which is a growing acknowledgment of the realities of Israeli oppression combined with an absence of advice or direction on what to do about it. Ultimately, in New York publishing, which is the milieu in which Alterman operates, there are limits as to how far one can go in condemning Israel’s violent apartheid regime and demanding meaningful change. Advocating for Palestine in Canada: Histories, Movements, Action

Edited by Emily Regan Wills, Jeremy Wildeman, Michael Bueckert and Nadia Abu-Zahra, Fernwood Publishing, 2022, paperback, 224 pp. MEB $30 Reviewed by Candice Bodnaruk

Advocating for Palestine in Canada is a first-of-its-kind testament to the thriving Palestinian advocacy movement in Can ada. Assessing activism from the 1960s to the present, the edited volume is the result of an academic symposium held on the topic at the University of Ottawa in 2019.

In the introduction, Libby Davies, a

Palestine Hijacked: How Zionism Forged an Apartheid State from River to Sea by Thomas Suárez, Olive

Branch Press, 2022, paperback, 470 pp. MEB $25. The Israel-Palestine “conflict” is typically understood to be a clash between two ethnic groups—Arabs and Jews— inhabiting the same land. Thomas Suárez digs deep below these preconceptions and their supporting “narratives” to expose something starkly different: The violent takeover of Palestine by a European racial-nationalist settler movement, Zionism, using terror to assert by force a claim to the land. Drawing extensively from original source documents, Suárez interweaves secret intelligence reports, newly declassified military and diplomatic correspondence and the terrorists’ own records boasting of their successes. His shocking account details a litany of Zionist terrorism against anyone in their way—the indigenous Palestinians, the British who had helped establish Zionism and Jews who opposed the Zionist agenda. Suárez proves that Israel’s regime of apartheid against the Palestinians and the continued expropriation of their country are not the result of complex historical circumstances, but the intended, singular goal of Zionism since its beginning.

An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville by Reza Aslan, W. W. Norton & Company, 2022, hardcover, 384 pp. MEB $30.

Little known in America but venerated as a martyr in Iran, Howard Baskerville was a 22-year-old Christian missionary from South Dakota who traveled to Persia (modern-day Iran) in 1907 for a two-year stint teaching English and preaching the Gospel. He arrived in the midst of a democratic revolution. The Persian students Baskerville educated in English in turn educated him about their struggle for democracy, ultimately inspiring him to leave his teaching post and join them in their fight against a tyrannical shah and his British and Russian backers. In 1909, Baskerville was killed in battle alongside his students, but his martyrdom spurred on the revolutionaries who succeeded in removing the shah from power, signing a new constitution and rebuilding parliament in Tehran. In this rip-roaring tale of his life and death, Reza Aslan gives us a powerful parable about the universal ideals of democracyand to what degree Americans are willing to support those ideals in a foreign land. Baskerville’s story, like his life, is at the center of a whirlwind in which Americans must ask themselves: How seriously do we take our ideals of constitutional democracy and whose freedom do we support?

The Blue Scarf by Mohamed Danawi, illustrated by Ruaida Mannaa, Running Press Kids, 2022, hardcover, 48 pp. MEB

$18. Layla lives in a beautiful blue world. One day, her mother gives her a gift—a blue scarf that Layla lovingly wears around her neck. But when a gust of wind carries the scarf away, Layla sets out to find it, traveling by boat to various worlds of different colors. But her scarf is nowhere to be found. Eventually, Layla lands at the shores of a rainbow world and discovers the secret of her lost scarf while also finding a welcoming new home. This is a beautiful and poignant refugee story about identity, emigration and acceptance told by Mohamed Danawi and brought to life in gorgeous color by illustrator Ruaida Mannaa.

former New Democratic Party (NDP) member of parliament who has been involved in Palestinian advocacy since the 1990s, said the book, “clearly and forthrightly lays out the case of the growing strength of the pan-Canadian Palestinian solidarity movement and the need to make connections with people in elected office— especially at the federal level.”

Although many academics contributed to this collection, the book is very readable for grassroots activists and is in many ways a guidebook on how to maneuver through ongoing barriers to Palestinian solidarity activism in Canada—whether they be from the Canadian government itself or from proIsrael lobby groups like B’nai Brith Canada or Honest Reporting Canada.

Advocating for Palestine in Canada is divided into three sections: Systems of Injustice; Insights for Possible Futures; and Closeups—Media, Non-Profits and Campuses (which is the longest section).

In his chapter, journalist Davide Mastracci reveals the censorship he experienced firsthand in the newsroom when writing about Palestine. He outlines the influence of the lobby group Honest Reporting Canada and their role in silencing Palestinian solidarity voices. Mastracci also gives many examples of Canadian journalists who were told that their articles would either be cut outright or put on hold because they were critical of Israel. Furthermore, the chapter highlights the stories of writers who lost their positions at mainstream Canadian dailies for writing honestly about Palestine.

Turning to activism, Thomas Woodley, president of Canadians for Justice & Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), explores specific roadblocks to Palestinian advocacy work, such as what he calls the “weap onization” of anti-Semitism to silence and in effect shut down any and all criticism of Israel. On this theme, other contributors discuss efforts to classify the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as anti-Semitic.

One of the most interesting aspects of this volume is the editors’ decision to include little-known historical information about Palestinian solidarity organizing in Ottawa. The chapter, “Campus Palestine Activism in Ottawa from the 1970s to the 2010s,” although limited to two universities in the capital city, provides a representative snapshot of what many activists have experienced on campuses throughout the country.

If there is a drawback to this collection, it’s the absence of analysis on activism in the Canadian Prairies (Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan) and Canada’s Atlantic provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador). The omission of these areas likely reflects the fact that the editors are all from eastern Canada.

Advocating for Palestine in Canada does conclude on a somewhat positive message. After outlining the history of Palestinian activism in Canada, the editors explain that Palestinian solidarity movements in Canada should be inspired by struggles for indigenous rights and other anti-racism struggles. Moreover, the book embraces inter-sectionalism, focusing on how Palestinian rights movements thrive when working with other groups struggling for rights and social justice.

“One of the lessons of this book is that the solidarity that can be formed among those who care about justice in Palestine is central to the strength of movements for Palestine, as well as movements for justice elsewhere,” the editors conclude.

Candice Bodnaruk has been involved in Palestinian issues for the past 14 years through organizations such as the Canadian BDS Coalition and Peace Alliance Winnipeg. Her political action started with feminism and continued with the peace movement, first with the No War on Iraq Coalition in 2003 in Winnipeg. Ida in the Middle

By Nora Lester Murad, Crocodile Books, 2022, hardcover, 224 pp. MEB $19.95

Reviewed by Mary E. Neznek

This young adult novel, written for 12- to 16year-olds, is a welcome saga of a young Palestinian American middle school girl grappling with her identity.

Ida’s family’s moved from the West Bank to Massachusetts before she was born, and she feels both out of place among her classmates and unable to fully understand her heritage. However, her life changes after she discovers a magic olive that transports her to Palestine and reveals information about her heritage and family.

In one charming and hope-filled scene, Ida and her Aunt Malayka venture into a Jewish pastry shop where both Palestinians and Israelis are dining on traditional samples of savory mushroom pies and apple turnovers. In this story, Ida’s young mind admirably envisions a world of unity, peace and camaraderie.

However, not all of Ida’s trips are uplifting. In one “adventure,” she travels back to the Second Intifada and witnesses the violence that forced her family to make the difficult decision to move to the United States. Here, we learn about the horrific demise of her aunt, who dies in an automobile accident while covering a story for her newspaper. Palestinian emergency personnel were delayed at an Israeli checkpoint and thus unable to provide medical care at the scene of the crash.

Ida also witnesses the demolition of her friend Layla’s family home. In the dramatic scene, she is chased by armed soldiers and mighty tanks, but is able to elude capture by hiding out in an abandoned store.

Tragically, back in Massachusetts, Ida experiences regular taunts at school due to her Palestinian heritage. In this way, her story mirrors the immigrant experience of many Palestinians, Arab Americans, Muslim Americans and other minorities who do not fit into the stereotypical white middle-class norm. The book also explores the paltry curriculum regarding the Middle East in U.S. schools. “Nobody even says

the word ‘Palestine’ in my school,” Ida relates. “The teachers are afraid to teach anything about the Middle East, even if the topic has nothing to do with politics.”

At one point, Ida feels excluded and undervalued as she witnesses a school club promoting the ties between Judaism and Israel. As a Palestinian Muslim, she lacks a forum to tell her own family’s story, and worse yet, is often ridiculed by her peers calling her “terrorist.” Ultimately, Ida is able to embrace her identity as a Palestinian American through a project that offers her the opportunity to share her story with the school community.

After leaving her public school named after the notorious ethnic cleanser President Andrew Jackson, Ida attends an artsinfused private school which embraces a curriculum for creative children who have trouble fitting in at public schools. This only goes so far, but Ida finds relief and joy in the friendships of her immigrant friends.

Ida also receives tremendous love and support from her close-knit family in Massachusetts. With limits on her screen time, Ida is free to enjoy soccer games, shared family meals and stories about Palestine.

In this young adult novel, one can teach the story of Palestine and the challenges Palestinians face every day living under Israeli occupation. At the same time, the book helps children understand and empathize with the plight of immigrants who have come to the United States due to the danger of political and economic turmoil in their native lands.

Ida in the Middle is sure to capture the minds of its teenage readers. Told with a magical realism, one cannot help but become engrossed as Ida vividly travels from homework sessions and soccer games in Massachusetts back to occupied Palestine.

An educator’s guide for the book, as well as resources for teaching and learning about Palestine, are available at <IdaInThe Middle.com>. ■

Mary E. Neznek is an educator who has taught special education and English as a second language in the District of Columbia. She has also been an instructor in children’s literature at the Catholic University of America.

War and Me: A Memoir by Faleeha Hassan, Amazon Crossing, 2022, paperback, 364 pp. MEB $14.95.

Faleeha Hassan became intimately acquainted with loss and fear while growing up in Najaf, Iraq. Now, in a deeply personal account of her life, she remembers those she has loved and lost. As a young woman, Hassan hated seeing her father and brother go off to fight, and when she needed to reach them, she broke all the rules by traveling alone to the war’s front lines—just one of many shocking and moving examples of her resilient spirit. Later, after building a life in the U.S., she realizes that she will coexist with war for most of the years of her life and chooses to focus on education for herself and her children. In a world on fire, she finds courage, compassion and a voice. A testament to endurance and a window into unique aspects of life in the Middle East, Hassan’s memoir offers an intimate perspective on something wars can’t touch: the loving bonds of family.

Arab Boy Delivered: A Novel by Paul Aziz Zarou, Cune Press, 2022, hardcover, 240 pp. MEB $22.

In 1967 Michael Haddad, the teenage son of Palestinian immigrants, maneuvers through his working-class American neigh bor hood delivering groceries and enters the homes and lives of his customers. He’s confronted by the violence of racist bullies and falls for the radical college coed who teaches him about sex, love and protest. Michael grieves with the mother whose only son died in the Vietnam War and is embraced by the first Black couple to move into the neighborhood. They all shape him, and through the conflict of hate, acts of kindness and his sexual awakening, Michael struggles to figure out who he is as the dutiful son of an immigrant family. Michael’s life is buffeted by the killing of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the death, two months later, of Bobby Kennedy. His girlfriend opens his eyes to the ongoing struggle to test national ideals against the growing diversity of America. But when Michael experiences a sudden tragedy, he must learn to get past his fears, come to terms with his heritage and set himself free.

Slipping: A Novel by Mohamed Kheir, Two Lines Press, 2021, paperback, 187 pp. MEB $16.95.

A struggling journalist named Seif is introduced to a former exile with an encyclopedic knowledge of Egypt’s obscure, magical places. Together, as explorer and guide, they step into the fragmented, elusive world the Arab Spring. But what begins as a fantastical excursion through a splintered nation quickly winds its way inward as Seif begins to piece together the trauma of his own past, including what happened to Alya, his lover with the remarkable ability to sing any sound: crashing waves, fluttering wings, a roaring inferno. Musical and parabolic, Slipping seeks nothing less than to accept the world in all its mystery. An innovative novel that searches for meaning within the haze of trauma, it generously portrays the overlooked miracles of everyday life, and attempts to reconcile past failures—both personal and societal— with a daunting future. Delicately translated from Arabic by Robin Moger, this is a profound introduction to the imagination of Mohamed Kheir, one of the most exciting writers working in Egypt today.