Customer Reviews

Grains Of Sand: The Fall Of Neve Dekalim

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Grains of Sand offers clarity and voice to the albeit silenced perspective of those displaced from their homes and lives in Gush Katif. Through the eyes of teenager, Shifra Shomron fleshes out the realities of those caught amidst hope and despair struggling for peace, identity, and community within the chaotic terror created by eventual disengagement and evacuation. Echoing the angst inherent in loss, this story is a must read for anyone who has experienced broken promises. Ms. Shomron provides a single, yet telling perspective, that enlivens integrity in us all.

Awesome I wish I had done more in those days. She wrote everything truthfully from the perspective of the eyes and the feelings of an adult. May Moshiach, the Goel Tsedek, come speedily in our days ,Malkah

In August 2005, the community of Neve Dekalim (and several neighboring communities in Gush Katif, the "Harvest Belt" of southern Israel) were destroyed by a corrupt and misguided politician; the longtime residents lost their homes and their livelihood for no reason. Shifra Shomron - a young writer who was among those forced to leave her home in Neve Dekalim - has written a very impressive novel about these events. She shows what Neve Dekalim ("Palm Oasis") was like before all this happened, and follows the struggles and hopes of the residents as they try to save their community. The likeable characters bring us into the events, giving us an inside view. I believe this book is of value to all readers, since it shows what can happen when political corruption is allowed to overrule the rights of ordinary citizens - even in a democratic country. This is an excellent first book by a young author, and I hope to be able to read more books in the future by Shifra Shomron.

The author Shifra Shomron gives you a good insight of what it must have been like to live under the doom of being expulded from your home and have it destroyed. It kind of reminds me of Nazi Germany when Jews by the thousands and millions got thrown out of their homes only to be hauled of in cattle cars to their certain death. True, you cannot make the exact comparison. After all the government offered financial compensation and people didn't get cart off into death camps. But the truth is that half of 9000 Gush Katif inhabitants still live in tents or hotels and have no jobs. And as far as the government is concerned, many have not seen anything of the compensation the Knesset offered. As a German it was heart wrenching for me to watch this happen. It's enough to have to live with the fact that we as a country were able to commit large scale genosite but it's even more so to see Israel's own government rip their own people from their homes and thriving communities. Of course Shifra Shomron's writing style is more that of a teenager which she was at the time she started to write her book. But this makes it even more appealing because in the story of the family she picked she lets the reader glimpse into her own personal struggle from pain to frustration to hopelessnes. I hope she will write another book about how the Gush Katifians are dealing with their situation nowadays. They need much financial support.

Shifra Shomron's book, "Grains of Sand," initially started out as quite a slow read and I had to convince myself to persevere. To my surprise, it was well worth it. Shifra examines almost every aspect of life in Gush Qatif, while pumping up the glowing menace, not only of the Arabs of Khan Yunis, but also, lehavdil, the insane Ariel Sharon expulsion initiative, supported by the leftist media bandwagon against liberated-territory settlers. Shifra, though, goes beyond mere political commentary and even examines the psychology of denial of many of the soon-to-be expellees. Shifra's character, Efrat, relishes in the nature that she grew up in, making her personal expulsion that much more painful. Reviewing the expulsion events through the eyes of Shifra in hindsight is painful because now instead of chronological, but scattered media reports, her book is a chronicled document of cause and effect which gives us a startling big-picture view that forces us to ask, "what were they thinking?" On the last page of Shifra's novel I found myself thinking one thing over and over...I want to read MORE of Shifra Shomron's saga in an expanded epilogue, though a full-novel would be even better.

Even though 8 PLUS years of Gazan Arabs constantly shooting & murdering the Jews in these settlements is a VERY GOOD REASON to HATE these Arabs, this is NOT at all evident in Shifra's novel. The reviewer Yonit claims that the supposed hate of Jewish settlers towards the Arab colonialists is a reason for the removal of the Jews. According to that logic the Gazan Arab bombing of Jewish Israel was CERTAINLY motivated by hate & that means that Yonit should be at the forefront of the expulsion of those Jew-hating Arabs of Gaza. BTW, is there anyone who would NOT hate someone constantly shooting at him?


Ra'anan Elozory
BA Eng MA Eng Ed
English teacher
Jerusalem, Israel

I would like to begin by stating that I was not very well versed on the subject matter of this book prior to reading it. I knew of Jewish settlements in Israel and thought they were no more than a political football that was kicked around by both sides. This book changed everything..
The book takes you right into the heart of the Gush. It made you feel that you were right alongside the main characters as they led a happy and productive lives amidst falling mortars and terrorist attacks. They were not naive to the terror surrounding them but they also didn't let it stop them from living their lives.

As news began to circulate about the upcoming disengagement. We followed the family as they go from modest curiosity to disbelief to finally despair. The book is written through the hopeful but not naive eyes of a High School student whose love of her hometown is felt on every page.

After finishing the book I understood why the first few chapters went into so much detail about the somewhat ordinary lives of the characters. Its purpose was to make the reader part of their family and it succeeded. By the end of the book I felt a pit in my stomach as the days got closer and the hope for saving their hometown became dimmer and dimmer.

This book moved me. It has stayed with me daily since finishing it. Everyone should read this book and learn about what happened to the Gush and work towards never letting it happen again anywhere in Israel.

The flow of the book was great. It was a well paced and it was very difficult to put down.

I could not recommend this book any higher.

instead of writing her diary for real, the author choses to create characters who live her day to day life. if she would have written the real thing, her real experiences without the mask of fictitious characters, this book would have been more exciting to read and still give over the information - which very obviously - is the real goal of this book. the author's real life position as second in a family of seven sounds much more interesting than a family with one son and one daughter who are absolutely best friends.

I have only read about 25% but what I have read up until now spews with hatred towards all Arabs...so totally akin to what we would call antisemitism if it were directed at us. I have absolutely no interest in continuing this read. Instead of understanding what happened, all this does is to reinforce my belief, that these and most if not all of the outlying settlements need to be removed.