Customer Reviews

My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story

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Though I've only begun reading this new release a few days ago, one feels as if he's walking with this author thru time and history --thru the memories of his grandfathers and extended family eyes..during the Ottoman Empire's end and British Mandate's rule, transitioning from one form of oppression to the next until the time when their neighbors in nearby villages with whom they'd shared meals, had doctor visits become the hunters, expelling /clearing villages from the Gazan district turning friends into homeless landless refugees. Westerners hear little and know less about Gaza than any other part of Palestine but it is so central to all key issues of peace, war and negotiation. Daily accounts of bombings of an encaged people from daily paper becomes personal to the reader when experienced so intimately in this family of several generations in the Strip. Absolute must read this compelling account.

Ramzy Baroud grips the heart from the very beginning of this book. Through the prose, I saw Baroud's father, felt the sorrow of his fate as a refugee - an intelligent, compassionate man and father who had everything taken from him, including his ability to protect and provide for his family for the single reason that he was a non-Jewish native of Palestine. I felt Ramzy's shame at leaving his family behind even though it was his only choice if he hoped to get an education and live the life he and his father had wanted for him.
My Father Was a Freedom Fighter is at once a history of Palestine and the story of one proud family, torn from its ancient roots and cast into oblivion to trod through the indignities of the refugee's life. It is at once an academic work of historic significance and a work of literary non-fiction. Baroud's historic accounts spring from meticulous research, and the story of his family is clearly poured from his heart.
This book is a must read for anyone who cares to understand the foundation of the Palestine-Israel conflict; for anyone who cares to see the genocide happening before our very eyes. There will come a day when our children and grandchildren will ask us what did we do while Palestine was being wiped off the map. As Dr Abu Sitta points out in the preface, no one can honestly say "I did not know".
Palestine lives through the words of people like Baroud and through the actions of so many of Palestine's sons and daughters, who, contrary to David Ben Gurion's prediction, have not forgotten.

I have read other books on the subject but Ramsy Baroud is very well documented, acurate and touchy he definitely knows how to write.
The problem with the Western world is that many people do not even know what is happening in the Middle East. The news-media keeps silent in the face of those crimes against humanity that are occurring right now at this very moment.
This is diabolical, because when you try to talk to people about it they even get mad. Where is the United Nations?, Where are all those Human Right Groups? and The International Red Cross?. Looks like the whole world has turned their back on the Palestinian people including the Arabs. Where are our politicians?.
This is a very interesting book that has to be read by everyone.

The more I read about the history of the Palestinian people, the more I am reminded of the history of America's indigenous people since Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola in 1492. In both cases ethnic cleansing with its accompanying genocide were norms, especially when the indigenous peoples fought back. In both cases the indigenous populations were treated with disrespect, contempt and removal. And in both cases, genocide and ethnic cleansing were denied by the conquerors and their friends. In the public discourse, we're the good guys, they the villains. As Israeli historian Shlomo Sand says "what history does not wish to relate, it omits " as if omitting it wipes the slate of history clean. It does not. Eventually, liked or not, truth emerges and has to be faced.

For the Palestinians, many people still believe the old story. Just recently I heard someone say "it's hard to feel much sympathy for them when they spend so much time killing innocent people." That's the approved story, and vested interests would like to keep it that way, but with the advent of the Internet and the vocal voice of Palestinian journalists like Ramzy Baroud, this is rapidly changing. It is way past time that we all hear the Palestinian side of the story of what has happened to them since Israel became a nation in 1948 with the blessing of the UN, the U.S., Britain, France and other European powers. The truth, it is said will make us free when we hear and understand it. It is not always a pleasant experience, nor should it be.

Ramzy Baroud's book, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter" is an important book. It is more than the story of his father, grandfather, their ancestral village of Beit Daras, its obliteration and their flight to Gaza. It is the story of the Palestinian people since 1948 when a well-trained army of 65,000 attacked them, making over 700,000 of them refugees. It is the story of their heroic will to live, to educate themselves, and to provide for their families. It is also the story of constant persecution and agony that culminates in the apocalyptic destruction of Gaza during Israel's monstrously-named "Operation Cast Lead".

Ramzy Baroud is a fine writer, his book is well-researched, and the story of his family's experience one that is easily understood. It doesn't make for pleasant reading, nor should it. I came away from it with an appetite to learn more. Pick up a copy, read and reread it, quarrel with it, listen, and do more research on your own. That's what I do.

My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story A book written with great passion and sensitivity. A really well-written and authoritative account of the harsh reality of life for the Palestinian people so brutally exiled from their homeland in 1948-49 at the hands of the Israeli military. It made me both sad and angry. A must-read for anyone wanting to understand the issues behind the Middle East conflict.
Mike Griffin

I feel that most people could identify with Palestinian neighborhoods whether they grow up in cities like Brooklyn in the 50s, 60s and many other places- even the country , but suburbia and sterile modern America it was not , and is not...what's left of it.
This book will hold your interest. Writer is calm and seems genuine. I am learning a lot. He understands the human heart. This book shows how we all have the same needs- family stability, jobs, places to gather, homes, a reason to live. Their world was shattered...somewhat resembles British genocide committed on Ireland- for a thousand years- but really culminating in the famine of the 1840s- that is when my father's ancestors came to America. One and one-half million Irish died from starvation while so called cultivated English enjoyed the deaths of poor, innocent people. No wonder the Irish can't stand them.
I take the side of President Jimmy Carter who stood up for Palestinians. I am glad I bought this book.
I think that Americans are brainwashed and that they hear the word Palestinian, and that automatically means terrorist. How far from the truth- Americans just fed horrible propaganda.

It is not easy to talk about one's life in public with total honesty, specially if it includes some humiliating episodes, but the whole world should know the truth. This book is an honest rendering of almost all the Palestinians' ordeal .

My Father was a Freedom Fighter is a page-turner though I read it in small bites, the way you would eat a rich chocolate cake. It is a great read not only for those interested in the Israel/Palestine conflict but for anyone who loves books about family, courage, hope and resilience. For while clearly illustrating the trajectory of the long and complex history of the conflict - My Father was a Freedom Fighter tells a story of survival that is beyond this particular conflict. It is a personal story told through the keen eye of Ramzy Baroud, it reads like a novel, and is universal in its tone, its humanity, its psychology. Mohammed Baroud, the 1948 Palestinian refugee, the subject in the book's title, who lives in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip "is" my Jewish mother who lived under the military fascist regime in Bucharest, Romania that collaborated with the Third Reich. Or anyone who'd been occupied and brutally treated! Mohammed "is" also my mother for they both share an exaggerated concern for their children, choices they were forced to make to feed their families, a cynical view of the world, their humor, dignity and pride, and down to the long-Kent-cigarettes they each smoked, Mohammed in Gaza, my mother in Tel Aviv.

On the personal level, I appreciated the disclosure of family dynamics, the dark side, the wound: Brothers' rivalry, domestic violence - patterns and attitudes that are part and parcel of many societies at all socio economic and educational strata. On the political level the book sheds light on the growing split between the factions in the PLO and how this split was created. And why Mohammed, an atheist and a Marxist, puts on his best suit and goes to vote for religious Hamas.

The book is filled with unforgettable scenes, many that bring tears, but what's a Palestinian story without humor? In his desperate attempts to keep his dignity and his livelihood, Mohammed falls into all kinds of mishaps and disastrous traps that would make a great comedy of errors. You really don't know whether to laugh or to cry. And he is so intelligent, so resourceful, that I wished I could get his advice on my own problems! But Mohammed is also a man who never got over the loss of his family's house and field, and his people's lands and freedom! His brokenness is inconsolable. It is one face to a dispossession and expulsion tragedy.

As someone who grew up in Israel, it hurt me so much while reading the book to think back at Palestinians like Mohammed who worked in Israel after the 1967 war, how they were humiliated, shamed and exploited. I also remembered Prime Minister Rabin's policy "break their bones." To experience this policy from the point of view of young boys in Gaza, as so movingly described in the book, broke my heart and made me understand the emotional mind set of a Palestinian boy who holds a stone in the face of a tank, the mixture of fear and revenge, and the moment the stone is hurled toward an Israeli soldier and the boy becomes a man...

My Father was a Freedom Fighter was written from a generous heart and will appeal to the hearts of many worldwide, not only to those interested in political science or the Palestine/Israel conflict. Though get ready for a story that is very different from those told on FOX TV and all other corporate media outlets!

Very readable and full of history and facts. This book is all the more relevant since Israel killed 9 people on the freedom flotilla. This gives the Palestinian perspective on the whole issue while Israel remains intransigent.

Baroud's is a historically informative book and a well researched one. It is told through the personal account of generations of a typical Palestinian family from Gaza, a land that lives under continued Israeli opression.

This is the way history must be told and taught.