MIDDLE EAST BOOKS REVIEW

All books featured in this section are available from Middle East Books and More, the nation’s preeminent bookstore on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. www.MiddleEastBooks.com • (202) 939-6050 ext. 1101

Reaching for the Heights: The Inside Story of a Secret Attempt to Reach a Syrian-Israeli Peace

By Frederic C. Hof, United States Institute of Peace Press, 2022, hardcover, 216 pp. MEB $24.95

Reviewed by Walter L. Hixson

Efforts to forge a peace agreement between Israel and Syria have long been overshadowed by the extensive history of failed attempts to secure a deal between Israelis and Palestinians. In this revealing insider account, Frederic C. Hof reflects on his ultimately unsuccessful mission of mediation aimed at securing an accord between Israel and Syria during the Obama administration.

Hof, a decorated Vietnam veteran turned State Department diplomat, claims that a framework for peace between the two countries was in fact established. The proposed deal entailed securing an agreement to shift Syria’s strategic orientation away from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas in return for full recovery of the Syrian Golan Heights that Israel seized in the June 1967 Six-Day War. However, negotiations on the proposed accord collapsed in 2011 as the Arab Spring unfolded and Assad began to violently repress his domestic critics.

Hof’s book is rich in detail and revealing insider accounts, but it is fundamentally flawed by his pro-Western and pro-Israeli bias. Hof, who worked for the Obama administration from 2009 to 2011, blames the failure to achieve an accord entirely on Assad. He argues that Assad’s brutal response to protests rendered him “unqualified to speak for the Syrian people on matters of war and peace,” thus destroying the prospects of an agreement.

Even as he puts the onus entirely on the Syrian leader, Hof acknowledges that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was “not a politician inclined toward taking big political risks.” Netanyahu, in fact, displayed more reluctance than Assad to enter the proposed accord, Hof notes, which in any case the prime minister insisted would have to be approved by an Israeli popular referendum. The reality is that everything in Netanyahu’s and his country’s history made it highly unlikely that Israel would hand back the Syrian territory.

Hof worked in close association with the diplomat Dennis Ross and appears to have imbibed Ross’ suspicion of Arabs and his well-chronicled pro-Israeli bias. There is no question, however, that Hof fervently hoped and genuinely believed that, while IsraelPalestine talks were hopelessly stymied, the prospect of a breakthrough between Israel and Syria was achievable. He chides Obama for failing to make a last-ditch effort to head off Assad’s campaign of domestic repression and to salvage the potential peace accord, yet Hof admits it is unlikely that Obama (who wanted the Assad regime to fall) would have been successful in such an effort.

In retrospect, it is difficult to believe that the prospect of a full-blown Syrian-Israeli peace accord entailing the return of annexed territory was more than a pipe dream. Hof should be admired nonetheless for his sincere and tireless efforts to forge an accord. In a region notorious for the failure of diplomacy, Hof was tenacious in his efforts and deeply laments his inability to broker a lasting agreement.

Despite its flawed conclusions, Reaching for the Heights is valuable for its richly detailed history of the effort to achieve an Israeli-Syrian peace. In addition to illuminating the roles of Assad and Netanyahu, Hof offers insight into the perspectives of Ross, Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Senator John Kerry and former Senator George Mitchell, who was Obama’s Middle East envoy and Hof’s close friend who chose him for the mediation initiative.

Published by the U.S. Institute of Peace, the book opens with a foreword by the bipartisan duo of veteran establishment national security elites Madeleine Albright and Stephen Hadley. The book is comprised of 11 chapters, as well as reprints of key documents.

In 2019 President Donald Trump—much to Netanyahu’s delight—recognized the Golan Heights as Israeli territory. In another example of his bias, Hof declares absurdly that the Golan Heights was ultimately a “gift to Israel by the Assad family,” a conclusion that blames Syria, the victim, in defiance of the indisputable reality that Israel seized the Golan in 1967, annexed the territory in 1981 and has illegally occupied the land for the past 55 years.

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 (available from Middle East Books and More), along with several other books and journal articles. He has been a professor of history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished professor.

Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders & Intellectuals Speak Out

Edited by Ramzy Baroud and Ilan Pappé, Clarity Press, 2022, paperback, 462 pp. MEB $28

Reviewed by Alex Bustos

Following Israel’s 10-day assault on Gaza in May 2021, Palestinian voices burst onto our screens describing their lived reality. While Western audiences hearing directly from Palestinians en masse —perhaps for the first time ever—was a welcome change, Palestinian commentators still had to fight to define their own struggle in mainstream outlets that rely heavily on a distorted, proIsrael framework.

Our Vision for Liberation, edited by Dr. Ramzy Baroud and Professor Ilan Pappé, presents a bold challenge to the discussion on Palestine. This anthology is made up of a diverse range of Palestinian leaders and intellectuals who situate the Palestinian struggle against Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid, while also giving personal accounts of their resistance against this reality.

What makes this work unique is its emphasis on overlooked forms of resistance. Adopting a “history from below” approach, we see that resistance has many expressions across different professions and arenas. Including voices from the fields of archaeology, film, journalism, science, cultural tourism and embroidery, Our Vision for Liberation avoids the cliched narratives of Palestinian resistance belonging only to official political parties or factions.

For instance, Samah Jabr’s concept of “liberation psychology” is centered on therapy as a way of helping an embattled population heal, while Hanady Halawani offers women’s educational programs in Jeru sa lem despite intense Israeli repression. Terry Boullata’s chapter on Palestinian cultural tourism declares, “our heritage has always been the central pillar of our cultural identity and the emblem of our pride.” She asserts that strengthening it “means reviving the past which lives within us and pointing us toward a future that will embed new concepts of Palestine on the global cultural map.”

The use of the word “engaged” in the title is no accident. A theme which runs throughout the book is the need to reclaim Palestinian liberation from the failings of the official Palestinian leadership. Rejecting the postOslo framework of “peace,” which hollowed out Palestinian demands and reduced liberation to refer simply to the West Bank and Gaza, Our Vision for Liberation includes key voices from Palestinian authors both inside historic Palestine and from the diaspora.

Samaa Abu Sharar writes from the perspective of Palestinians in Lebanon, Anuar Majluf Issa tells the story of Palestinians in Chile (the largest Palestinian community outside of the Middle East), Randa AbdelFattah and Samah Sabawi share perspectives from Australia, Dr. Ghada Karmi and Farah Nabulsi from the UK, Dr. Sami Al-Arian from Turkey and Laila Al-Marayati from the United States. Ibrahim G. Aoude analyzes the destructive changes in language following the signing of the Oslo Accords, while Jamal Juma’ laments how Oslo undermined international solidarity and the ways Palestinians resisted with effective grassroots organizing during the Second Intifada.

Speaking across multiple geographies and different generations, these contributors offer readers a wide range of Palestinian experiences, even as they collectively share the trauma of dispossession.

Importantly, Our Vision for Liberation features voices from ’48 Palestinians—those who live in modern-day Israel. Reem Talhami, Hanin Zoabi, Awad Abdelfattah and Johnny Mansour each give voice to the Palestinians who grew up as unwanted minorities inside a state built upon their dis-

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possession. Their voices upend official Israeli propaganda about the country being the “only democracy in the Middle East,” and instead lifts up those who know Israel’s brutality only too well from the inside. Including these voices further demonstrates how Palestinian liberation is incomplete without incorporating the entire Palestinian body politic.

Despite the Palestinian struggle being one of the most iconic and easily recognizable in the world, many Palestinians have long argued that they are denied the right to speak for themselves and to define their own narrative. Our Vision for Liberation is therefore an important corrective within the growing literature on Palestine.

Apartheid South Africa! Apartheid Israel!: Ticking the Boxes of Occupation and Dispossession

By Brian J. Brown, independently published, 2022, paperback, 250 pp. MEB $25

Reviewed by Steve France

South African born, the Rev. Brian J. Brown helped bring down the original apartheid system—goading Christians to keep faith with the teachings of Jesus Christ. Now, Brown says, a similar “moment of truth” has arrived for followers of the Way of Jesus. “The fires of the South African apartheid struggle burn as fiercely in today’s Palestine,” he writes in Apartheid South Africa! Apartheid Israel! And that, he argues, confronts Christians with a “fresh crisis of Gospel integrity.”

Of course, few people want to believe there’s apartheid in the Holy Land. That’s why Brown’s book title is as blunt as a man crying “fire!” He builds his case for emergency action by dissecting the similarities and differences between the former apartheid state of South Africa and the ever-harsher racist system in Israel/Palestine today.

Complementing the irrefutable findings of the many reports published since 2020 by global human rights groups, Brown’s analysis draws on the long arc of his life under apartheid, and the notable success he and comrades such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Rev. Allan Boesak registered in moving reluctant Western churches to fight against South African apartheid.

A White Methodist minister, Brown experienced first-hand what he calls the “denialism” of church leaders—the nuances of hypocrisy and heresy exhibited in evading the truth on the ground, and avoiding the imperative of standing up for justice.

Brown powerfully indicts today’s Christian Zionist perversions of the faith, from the apocalyptic imaginings of fundamentalists to the blind eye that many mainstream Christians turn to Israel’s crimes against Palestinians in a misguided gesture of respect for Jews. He makes clear that Christians are not doing Palestinians a favor when they stand against Israel’s apartheid; rather, they are acting against the deadly corruption of their own faith, just as they were in the case of South Africa.

The author provides an unusual set of comparisons between the apartheid psychologies of the oppressor group in each society: racial theologies and tribal myths used to justify their positions of supremacy over Blacks or Arabs. Examples include the “Day of the Covenant”—a national holiday that commemorated the 1838 Battle of Blood River, when “God fought for the Boers,” who defeated the Black Zulu nation, which was expected to accept, if not honor, its supposedly God-ordained inferior status.

As for facts on the ground, Brown describes 37 instances of systematic “violations of human rights of Palestinians and of international law.” With meticulous detail, he distinguishes the differences between apartheid in South Africa and apartheid in Israel, although he notes it is the “dispossession of land, nationality, human rights and freedoms” that has driven the liberation struggles in both cases.

In the aftermath of victory in South Africa, Brown was moved by Tutu and Nelson Mandela to take up the Palestinian cause. He harkened to Mandela’s belief in the “indivisibility of freedom,” that no one in the world should be oppressed by another—or by the heavy sin of oppressing others. Thus, Mandela often said neither he, nor his people, would really be free as long as the Palestinians weren’t. And so, Brown applied to the Holy Land lessons he learned from the Christian liberation theology of the South African Black Consciousness Movement, preserved in the timeless, urgent language of the 1985 Kairos Document (“Kairos” being a biblical Greek word for the “Moment of Truth”).

His message will resonate strongly with many Christians, but Brown fervently believes it applies to everyone. Indeed, his whole point is that identity should never be an excuse for violence, hatred or suspicion of the other. Moreover, he hopes non-Christians will not be put off by his theological language. His book is nothing if not critical of Christians and their churches, who through history so often persecuted others, especially Jews.

Such arrogance was what Brown was taught as a child and continued to believe all the way through his studies in an evangelical seminary. The crucial event that liberated him from belief in an exclusive Christianity was his association with the legendary Beyers Naudé, who was a senior leader of the pro-apartheid (White Afrikaans) Dutch Reformed Church—until he turned against apartheid as contrary to the Gospel. After he was defrocked by the DRC, Naudé formed the radically antiapartheid Christian Institute of Southern Africa. Brown became his chief of staff.

Brown knows that Christian action against Israel’s apartheid can’t replicate the South African precedent, as Judaism and Islam are the predominant faiths of the land.

Steve France is an activist and writer affil‐iated with Episcopal Peace Fel low ship, Palestine‐Israel Network.

However, he says the voice of the awakened church is part of a “convergence of three forces: of human rights, international law and the churches that speak truth to power.” The truth they are speaking is “prophetic,” he says, explaining that the truthful word of God, when spoken, never returns empty. That is his faith.

Yet In the Dark Streets Shining: A Palestinian Story of Hope and Resilience in Bethlehem

By Bishara Awad and Mercy Aiken, Cliffrose Press, 2021, paperback, 217 pp. MEB $12

Reviewed by Daoud Kuttab

One of the recurring Israeli excuses for refusing Palestinian refugees the right of return is the contention that they were never violently forced to leave their homes and lands. This theory persists in some Zionist circles, even though the historical record is full of information about the brutal displacement of Palestinians at the hands of Jewish militias in 1948.

While an estimated 750,000 Palestinians fled their homes during the first year of the Nakba, it is often forgotten that some refused to abandon their homes under any condition.

Award‐winning Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab is founder and director general of the Community Media Network in Amman, Jordan. His book, Sesame Street, Palestine: Taking Sesame Street to the Children of Palestine, describes the ups and downs of producing a world‐famous program for children enduring Israeli occupation.

Palestine Across Millennia: A History of Literacy, Learning and Educational Revolutions by Nur Masalha, I.B. Tauris, 2022, paperback, 352 pp. MEB

$40. In this magisterial cultural history of the Palestinians, Nur Masalha illuminates the entire history of Palestinian learning with specific reference to writing, education, literary production and intellectual revolutions in the country. The book introduces Palestine’s long cultural heritage to demonstrate that the place is not just a “holy land” for monotheistic religions. Rather, the country evolved to become a major international site of classical education and knowledge production in multiple languages. The cultural saturation of the country is found then, not solely in landmark mosques, churches and synagogues, but in scholarship, historic schools, colleges, famous international libraries and archival centers. This unique book unites these renowned institutions, movements and multiple historical periods for the first time, presenting them as part of a cumulative and incremental intellectual advancement rather than disconnected periods of educational excellence.

Hollywood and Israel: A History by Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman, Columbia University Press, 2022,

paperback, 368 pp. MEB $35. From Frank Sinatra’s early pro-Zionist rallying to Steven Spielberg’s present-day “peacemaking,” Hollywood has long enjoyed a “special rela tionship” with Israel. This book offers a groundbreaking account of this relationship, both on and off the screen. Shaw and Goodman investigate the many ways in which Hollywood’s moguls, directors and actors have supported or challenged Israel for more than seven decades. They explore the complex story of Israel’s relationship with American Jewry and illuminate how media and soft power have shaped the Arab-Israeli conflict. Drawing on a vast range of archival sources to demonstrate how show business has played a pivotal role in crafting the U.S.-Israel alliance, the authors probe the influence of Israeli diplomacy on Hollywood’s output and lobbying activities. Bringing the narrative up to the present moment, Shaw and Goodman contend that the Hollywood-Israel relationship might now be at a turning point. Hollywood and Israel shows the world’s entertainment capital is an important player in international affairs.

Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy by Stephen Wertheim, Belknap Press,

2022, paperback, 272 pp. MEB $20. For most of its history, the United States avoided making political and military commitments that would entangle it in global power politics. Then, suddenly, it conceived a new role for itself as an armed superpower—and never looked back. In Tomorrow, the World, Stephen Wertheim traces America’s transformation to World War II, right before the attack on Pearl Harbor. As late as 1940, the small coterie formulating U.S. foreign policy wanted British preeminence to continue. Axis conquests swept away their assumptions, leading them to conclude that America should extend its form of law and order across the globe, and back it at gunpoint. No one really favored “isolationism,” a term introduced by advocates of armed supremacy to burnish their cause. We live, Wertheim warns, in the world these men created. A sophisticated and impassioned account that questions the wisdom of U.S. supremacy, Tomorrow, the World reveals the intellectual path that brought us to today’s endless wars.

Such families also endured tremendous physical costs and personal tragedy.

Yet In the Dark Streets Shining is the story of the family of Elias and Huda Awad, as narrated by their son Bishara. In excruciating detail, Bishara relates how his family refused to leave their home in Musrara, just outside the walls of the Old City, in May 1948. Many others, including his two uncles (one of them my father), fled to the Jordanian city of Zarqa.

Elias, who was born in Jaffa and the father of seven children, was shot dead shortly after refusing to move, most likely by Jewish snipers. The Musrara neighborhood would eventually become part of Israeli West Jerusalem and the Awads would never have a chance to properly rebury their father, who was quickly buried in their family’s backyard.

Bishara relates the days, weeks and months later when they were homeless, living literally on the grace of Palestinian families in Jerusalem. For months, the family was sheltering in a dark room that a local school principal allowed them to use. Bishara’s mother, Huda, used her nursing skills to try and bring some food to the family, but eventually Bishara and the boys were put in an orphanage, Dar al Awlad, and the girls were sent to the Dar al Tifel school, originally established to take in children whose parents were killed in the Deir Yassin massacre.

Those early days were so difficult that at one point it took extreme courage on Bishara’s part just to lead a small protest against the orphanage administration to demand the right of eating one egg a month. The protest succeeded for a few months, but the administration eventually reversed course.

While growing up as orphans could easily have turned the Awads into angry fighters wanting to avenge their father’s death, the Christian faith of their mother, uncle and grandmother rechanneled their anger into public work, non-violent struggle, spiritual service and a zeal for education.

The book chronicles the Awads’ pursuit of education both locally (at St. George’s in Jerusalem) and in the U.S. Bishara eventually returned to Palestine and ran an orphanage school in Beit Jala, which he renamed Hope School, where eggs were provided regularly to students. He later established the Bethlehem Bible College, along with his youngest brother Rev. Alex Awad. Together, they became leaders of a Palestinian Christian effort to theologically combat Christian Zionism.

The book also tells the story of another brother, Mubarak, who returned to Jeru salem to help establish a center for non-violence. Mubarak, referred to by some as the Palestinian Gandhi, was eventually deported by Israel. His non-violent methodology has been partially credited for the launch of the First Intifada, which was initiated as a peaceful uprising.

Yet In the Dark Streets Shining also offers the dramatic story of the Israeli reoccupation of Bethlehem during the Second Intifada. Bishara’s son and his pregnant wife were trying to reach a hospital in Jerusalem when Israeli tanks surrounded Bethlehem. The couple eventually made it to safety and their child was born on April 5, 2002.

Elias Awad may have been killed in 1948, but a great-granddaughter of his, Layyaar Sami Awad, is now an energetic college student fulfilling the subtitle of the book: “A Palestinian Story of Hope and Resilience in Bethlehem.” The Awads show that the hope of freedom continues to shine, even in the darkest of Palestine’s streets.

Internment: A Novel

By Samira Ahmed, Little, Brown and Company, 2020, paperback, 400 pp. MEB $10.99

Reviewed by Delinda C. Hanley

From the first page of Internment, this reader felt queasy, right along with the 17year-old Muslim American narrator, Layla Amin, whose neighbors in a small college town are at a book burning. Those books include poetry written by her recently fired professor father, as well as other “banned books, dangerous books.” Set in a horrifying near-future United States, Samira Ahmed’s best-selling novel doesn’t seem far-fetched. Not when daily news reports reveal that parents, school boards or even governors are initiating book bans and threatening criminal charges against public school librarians and teachers for making certain books available.

In fact, schools and libraries have long been the canary in the coal mine in the United States. Back in the Oct./Nov. 1999 issue of the Washington Report, I wrote about phone calls and notes we received from librarians and teachers fighting selfappointed “thought police,” including parents, staff or patrons who purged our magazines from shelves and class discussions about conflict resolution because they “disturbed” readers.

Samira Ahmed’s book depicts what can happen when “thought police” are given free rein. Before long, Layla and her family have a lot more than book burnings to worry about. In quick succession, starting two and half years earlier, an Islamophobe who vowed to make America great again was elected president. Nazis marched on DC, a Muslim ban was enacted and U.S. borders were closed to stop chain migration and “illegals.” Muslims like her parents were fired from public sector jobs. Marking “Muslim” as your religion on the census resulted in your name being added to a registry. Like the Japanese Americans during WWII, Muslim American citizens on that registry are rounded up, relocated and locked in internment camps.

“I don’t understand how this is happening,” Layla whispers to her parents, her voice barely a scratch, as they pack the one bag they each may carry as they’re forced to leave their home. “How can we be dangerous to the state? A poet, a chi-

ropractor and a high school senior?” Her father, a philosopher as well as a poet, explains, “It’s not about danger. It’s about fear. People are willing to trade their freedom, even for a false sense of protection…There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

The Amins and other Muslim families are assigned trailers located in segregated blocks divided by ethnic and cultural backgrounds—Arab, South Asian, Persian, Black, etc. But Layla notes, “each of us, to a person, has the same look: abject fear.” Layla looks around the cavernous auditorium where the director of Camp Mobius is stating the rules to new arrivals, and thinks, “Again, I’m struck by the Americanness of the throngs of people. Every race, dozens of ethnicities, different ways of dressing, and, certainly, widely varying opinions about politics and life and Islam. But I guess that’s the old America. Now we all have one thing in common—a religion that makes us enemies of the state. The state all of us are citizens of, the one most of us were born into.”

A spoiler alert isn’t required. This all happens in the first chapter! It’s how our feisty heroine meets this shocking fate that is so inspiring. If the state’s hope was to isolate, divide and conquer Muslims behind fences, razor wire and guns, the Muslim American community rallies to save itself. While the older folks organize daycare, schools, book clubs, vegetable plots and exercise classes, Layla and her new friends become daring revolutionaries.

America is represented in books, movies and songs as a melting pot, a mixed salad, a shining city on a hill, Layla thinks, as she is hauled away in handcuffs to a secret site after breaking camp rules. “America is the country where a skinny kid with a funny name can defeat the odds and become president. But America doesn’t seem like any of those things anymore. Maybe it never was.”

Ahmed’s book, a New York Times best seller, may be written for ages 12 and up but readers of every age will find it a gripping page-turner. And just maybe it will challenge Americans to speak up and resist when they encounter thought police, hate and ignorance. ■

Dancing in the Mosque: An Afghan Mother’s Letter to Her Son by Homeira Qaderi, Harper Perennial, 2022,

hardcover, 244 pp. MEB $17.99. In the days before Homeira Qaderi gave birth to her son, Siawash, the road to the hospital in Kabul would often be barricaded because of frequent suicide explosions. With the city and the military on edge, it was not uncommon for an armed soldier to point his gun at a pregnant woman’s bulging stomach, terrified that she was hiding a bomb. Frightened and in pain, she was once forced to make her way on foot. Propelled by the love she held for her soon-to-be-born child, Homeira walked through blood and wreckage to reach the hospital doors. But the joy of her beautiful son’s birth was soon overshadowed by other dangers that would threaten her life. No ordinary woman, Homeira refused to cower under the strictures of a misogynistic social order. Defying the law, she risked her freedom to teach children reading and writing and fought for women’s rights. Devastating in its power, Dancing in the Mosque is a mother’s searing letter to a son she was forced to leave behind. In telling her story Homeira challenges readers to reconsider the meaning of motherhood, sacrifice and survival, asking all to consider the lengths they would go to protect themselves, their family and their dignity.

Nour’s Secret Library by Wafa’ Tarnowska and Vali Mintzi, Barefoot Books, 2022, paperback, 32 pp. MEB

$10. Forced to take shelter when their Syrian city is plagued with bombings, young Nour and her cousin begin to bravely build a secret underground library. Based on the author’s own life experience and inspired by a true story, Nour’s Secret Library is about the power of books to heal, transport and create safe spaces during difficult times. Each page of this children’s book is full of gorgeous illustrations by Romanian artist Vali Mintzi superimposing the colorful world children construct over black-and-white charcoal depictions of a battered city. This book shows the spirit of the children and communicates that no matter the devastation around them, they will still find a way to dream of a better world.

Ever Since I Did Not Die by Ramy Al-Asheq, translated by Isis Nusair, edited by Levi Thompson, Seagull

Books, 2021, hardcover, 96 pp. MEB $17. Having grown up in a refugee camp in Damascus, Ramy Al-Asheq was imprisoned and persecuted by the Syrian regime in 2011. He was released from jail, only to be recaptured and imprisoned in Jordan. After escaping, he spent two years in Jordan under a fake name and passport, during which he won a literary fellowship that allowed him to travel to Germany in 2014, where he now lives and writes in exile. Through 17 powerful testimonies, Ever Since I Did Not Die vividly depicts what it means to live through war. Exquisitely weaving the past with the present and fond memories with brutal realities, this volume celebrates resistance through words that refuse to surrender and continue to create beauty amidst destruction— one of the most potent ways to survive in the darkest of hours.