Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine [Hardcover]

David Shulman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226755746 | ISBN-13: 978-0226755748 | Publication Date: June 1, 2007

For decades, we’ve been shocked by images of violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. But for all their power, those images leave us at a loss: from our vantage at home, it’s hard for us to imagine the struggles of those living in the midst of the fighting. Now, American-born Israeli David Shulman takes us right into the heart of the conflict with Dark Hope, an eye-opening chronicle of his work as a member of the peace group Ta‘ayush, which takes its name from the Arabic for “living together.”

Though Shulman never denies the complexity of the issues fueling the conflict—nor the culpability of people on both sides—he forcefully clarifies the injustices perpetrated by Israel by showing us the human dimension of the occupation. Here we meet Palestinians whose houses have been blown up by the Israeli army, shepherds whose sheep have been poisoned by settlers, farmers stripped of their land by Israel’s dividing wall. We watch as whip-swinging police on horseback attack crowds of nonviolent demonstrators, as Israeli settlers shoot innocent Palestinians harvesting olives, and as families and communities become utterly destroyed by the unrelenting violence of the occupation.

Opposing such injustices, Shulman and his companions—Israeli and Palestinian both—doggedly work through checkpoints to bring aid, rebuild houses, and physically block the progress of the dividing wall. As they face off against police, soldiers, and hostile Israeli settlers, anger mixes with compassion, moments of kinship alternate with confrontation, and, throughout, Shulman wrestles with his duty to fight the cruelty enabled by “that dependable and devastating human failure to feel.”

With Dark Hope, Shulman has written a book of deep moral searching, an attempt to discover how his beloved Israel went wrong—and how, through acts of compassionate disobedience, it might still be brought back.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Beautifully written and emphatic in its calm insistence on the need to take both responsibility and action, Dark Hope is notable not just for the bleak picture it paints of the nightmare that the settlers and their sponsors, the Israeli government, have brought to millions of Palestinians but also, as its title suggests, for the faith it places in a basic human decency and in the belief that there must be another way. It is essential reading for anyone who wants—or hopes, however darkly—to grasp the lay of this punished land.”--Adina Hoffman, The Nation

(Adina Hoffman The Nation )

"During what he calls the ''unhappy years'' from 2002 to 2006, David Shulman, an Israeli professor at Hebrew University, did some of the harder work of his country''s peace movement: clashing with police and settlers to deliver food and medical supplies to Palestinian villages. In his excellent record of these years, Dark Hope, Shulman vividly describes the small bands of Palestinians who live in caves in the Hebron Hills."--Emily Bazelon, Slate Best Books of 2007

(Emily Bazelon Slate )

About the Author

David Shulman is the Renee Lang Professor of Humanistic Studies in the Department of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was born in Iowa but moved to Israel in 1967 at age eighteen. Named a MacArthur Fellow in 1987, Shulman is the author or coauthor of nineteen books, including The Hungry God: Hindu Tales of Filicide and Devotion, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

 

Product Details

• Hardcover: 236 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (June 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226755746
• ISBN-13: 978-0226755748
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,151,886 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Difficult truth-telling, September 27, 2007

By 

S. Swartz (Bloomington, IN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine (Hardcover)

As an American Jew who just spent 6 months in Israel, this was a difficult and important book for me to read. The author writes of first-hand experience in the Israeli peace movement, and the challenging relationships between people on both sides of the Green Line. No one comes off looking perfect - not Israelis or Palestinians, right-wing or left-wing - but all the actors are flawed in one way or another, product of a terrible history. The book gave me hope that human beings can mend long-standing conflict, even if imperfectly and slowly. The story is, of necessity, biased, as it tells of one man's personal experiences, but still worth reading.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark Hope towards Enlightenment, May 29, 2007

By 

Andy of Minnesota (Minnesota) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine (Hardcover)

Extremely well-written account of Israeli peace activists working to bring a bit of justice to the day to day lives of Palestineans under the Occupation.

Reveals a glimpse of the future in the fraternal interactions and warm personal relations that develop between Palestineans and Israelis when the task is to clear a roadblock, bring blankets to a village or harvest a crop faced with hostile settlers.

A great read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It is easy to be for perfection, July 27, 2011

By 

Gary Mullennix "Bjorn Free" (Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine (Hardcover)

Were I a father of a son killed by those who would destroy Israel, I would have a distinct dislike of David Shulman. Being for peace is easy...when one is only working on one side of the problem. Shulman, smart, capable and with a big heart does not however take his message to the other side. Doubtlessly, the actions he described happened..but, we only get to see it through his eyes. He speaks continuously of TERROR caused by the Israeli's...but, I've no idea what he means when he uses the word. I see babies crumbled, women and children destroyed, innocents slaughtered. Shulman sees mistreatment. He does his adopted country a disservice. He has it easy...at anytime he wants, he puts himself and his family on a jet leaving Tel Aviv and lands with is sense of moral superiority intact, in Iowa. To actually test his thesis of peace, I'd suggest he take the idea to the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas and work out a deal whereby Israel, with ANY borders, has the sworn legal support of the Arab states or political entities to the existence of Israel as a state. What we know is the hundreds of millions of Arabs are determined to see to it that Israel and all its Jews are destroyed. Period. Negotiation means nothing when there isn't any kind of a middle ground to be reached. How does anyone negotiate with people what want the state and all of its inhabitants destroyed. Shulman would be dead in a few moments after crossing...well, maybe not...he is a great propagandist for the Arabs.