Coffins on Our Shoulders: The Experience of the Palestinian Citizens of Israel [Paperback]

Dan Rabinowitz (Author), Khawla Abu-Baker (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520245571 | ISBN-13: 978-0520245570 | Publication Date: September 12, 2005 | Edition: 1

This highly original historical and political analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict combines the unique perspectives of two prominent segments of the Middle Eastern puzzle: Israeli Jews and the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Written jointly by an Israeli anthropologist and a Palestinian family therapist born weeks apart to two families from Haifa, Coffins on Our Shoulders merges the personal and the political as it explores the various stages of the conflict, from the 1920s to the present. The authors weave vivid accounts and vignettes of family history into a sophisticated multidisciplinary analysis of the political drama that continues to unfold in the Middle East. Offering an authoritative inquiry into the traumatic events of October 2000, when thirteen Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed by Israeli police during political demonstrations, the book culminates in a radical and thought-provoking blueprint for reform that few in Israel, in the Arab world, and in the West can afford to ignore.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

"A fascinating work. Rabinowitz and Abu-Baker succeed not only in challenging many basic assumptions and stereotypes about the victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but also in undermining much of the public discourse on the Palestinian minority inside Israel. An outstanding work of scholarship combining social science research tools with [auto-] biographic intimacy." --Salim Tamari, Director, The Institute of Jerusalem Studies

"Coffins on Our Shoulders is a profound, worrying, and insightful excursion into the lives and times of a new generation of young Palestinians in Israel. This unusually impressive volume makes it clear how deeply a politics of difference, mounted in the name of collective entitlement, calls into question the limits of liberal democracy. "--John L. Comaroff, Professor, University of Chicago, Research Fellow, American Bar Foundation

"Coffins on our Shoulders is an absorbing portrait of contemporary life in Israel. Rabinowitz and Abu-Baker give us a thoughtful, multi-vocal chronicle about Jewish majority, and Palestinian minority relations in Israel."--Susan Slyomovics, Professor of anthropology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and author of The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village

"Rabinowitz and Abu-Baker examine the making of a new generation of Palestinians in Israel who are challenging the basic ideological core of Israel as a self-defined Jewish state and redefining the asymmetrical power configuration that governs the relationship between the Jewish majority and the Palestinian minority within Israel. This bifocal look, based on a very well-informed and perceptive reading of the current scene in Israel, is complemented by the personal narratives of the two authors, giving us an illuminating and rare glimpse into the juxtaposed lives of real people, across the divide."--Anton Shammas, professor of modern Middle Eastern literature, University of Michigan

"The lucid sociological analysis of recent transformations in patterns of political behavior and conceptions of self identity among Israeli Palestinians becomes an opportunity for both authors to reflect upon their own identity and personal history. The juxtaposition of their two life stories, which have thrown them so far apart yet kept them so close together, and the integration of these stories into the theoretical analysis makes this book truly moving and exceptional."--Adi Ophir, professor, The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University

About the Author

Dan Rabinowitz is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel-Aviv University. He is the author of Overlooking Nazareth: The Ethnography of Exclusion in Galilee (1997), Anthropology and the Palestinians (1998), and The Cross Israel Highway (forthcoming). Khawla Abu-Baker is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Behavioral Science at Emek Yizrael College. She is the author of A Rocky Road: Arab Women as Political Leaders in Israel (1998) and editor of Women, Armed Conflict, and Loss: The Mental Health of Palestinian Women in the Occupied Territories (2004).

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (September 12, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520245571
• ISBN-13: 978-0520245570
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #738,774 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Intergenerational perspective on Palestinian Families in Israel, December 11, 2005

By 

Davidwmcgill "family therapist" (Cambridge, Ma USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coffins on Our Shoulders: The Experience of the Palestinian Citizens of Israel (Paperback)

This book is an excellent, very well written description of the Palestinian experience in Israel. It is particularly remarkable in its creative collaborative narrative form, a blend of social anthropological and family therapy/ family systems perspectives. The authors effectively use the personal stories of their own families, respectively Jewish and Palestinian, especially for three generations over the last 50 years, to illustrate the impact of the sociological story. The book then is a unique weaving of social anthropology with intergenerational family dynamics. The authors conclude with suggestions for hope for the younger, Palestinian "Stand Tall" generation in their relationships with their counterpart younger Jewish Israeli generation.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Political and Personal, December 6, 2005

By 

Muriel Singer (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Coffins on Our Shoulders: The Experience of the Palestinian Citizens of Israel (Paperback)

This is a must read for anyone interested in an "insider's" view of the Palestinean-Israeli conflict. By intersecting their own personal histories alongside the social and political history of the region, the authors succeed in crafting a unique work of scholarship, told from the voice of the "other." As the authors re-construct their own identities, the reader is also invited to examine his or her own assumptions about the region and the multi-faceted meaning of being a survivor. This is a truly compelling account that sheds new light on the lives of Palestinians living in Israel. Highly recommended!!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A needed insight, February 21, 2009

By 

Matthew Smith "Roger Mexico" (TN USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Coffins on Our Shoulders: The Experience of the Palestinian Citizens of Israel (Hardcover)

This is an important book for readers to understand the dynamics at play between Israel's minority and majority populations. I found the authors use of their own family histories an enlightening narrative technique they gave the book a human perspective that helped me identify more readily with the work than I otherwise would have. At first I felt that it might come off a little pretentious, but in the end it really helped tie the work together, and I found the technique to be more helpful than pretentious.

The main thing it did was illustrate the progression and evolution of the relationship between Israel and its minority population. One of the most important moments in this narrative was when as a middle aged, professional woman Khawla Abu-Bakar and her husband are delayed in an airport by Israeli security and asked humiliating and demeaning questions, she finally loses her cool and lashes out against these airport workers. The reader gets the sense that this moment is the culmination of years of tiny, seemingly innocuous little incidents that finally breaks the camels back so to speak. You realize this is a major problem; the fact that for almost a million Palestinians they are treated as strangers in their own homes. This book helps readers understand how this impossible situation affects their lives.

I also really enjoyed the discussion how the Left in Israel is really more of a problem than a solution. Their focus on supposed liberal democratic principles of freeing the individual do not take into account the group dynamic of the minority population under a government based on ethnicity. I found the discussion of the incongruities between liberal democracy and a government based on ethnicity to be very interesting. This book gave voice to some aspects of the conflict between these two concepts that I had been going over in my own mind, and as such I really enjoyed these ideas being expounded upon here.

As a further discussion of that topic they show the real world consequences of this untenable relationship by showing how the ethno-centered state uses its levers of power to shift benefits of the state toward the hegemonic majority, and how those same levers are used to shift support away from the ethnic minorities. This of course causes tensions, and further alienates the minority from the state. This book also illustrates how the "liberal" side of the government uses little half measures and progressive rhetoric to assuage the conscience of the people in court decisions that pay lip service to progressive notions of equality and minority rights, but in the end the legalese language used is such that no real change is affected. This allows the left in Israel to pretend they are supporting liberal policies, but in the end these policies do nothing for the minority.

I do have some criticisms though. I really wish they would have spent more time getting into the government and the court systems to really illustrate how this plays out. In the end several examples are used to illustrate this point, but the book I was hoping for was one that delved deep into these issues with numerous sources and examples. In the end the several in this book were enlightening, but just not as much as I was hoping for.

All in all this is an important work to read. It takes a humanistic approach to its subject, and it will give the reader a much needed insight into the Palestinian minority inside of Israel.