Customer Reviews

Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

It's a pity one cannot find a really objective book about the conflict between Israel and its Arab Muslim neighbours. For a moment I thought that I found one but I was wrong: the victimhood complex permeates the book and nowhere could I find anything about Palestinians working, creating or building a better life for themselves.

Israel was built with the help of the international Jewish community. Why can't the "oil filled" Arab Muslim nations provide their brothers with a similar support? The book did not touch, explain or clarify this topic. Pity!