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Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation

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There are millions of Americans like me. I urge you all to read Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation.

As a Christian born and raised in the United States, I was always told that Israel was a "land without a people for a people without a land". I was told that supporting Israel would bring blessings and not supporting Israel would bring curses. I readily believed the media's one-sided representation of the conflict through the lens of my Christian beliefs.

After 9/11 and all that has happened since, I wanted to discover the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. My journey has been a very difficult and painful task and throughout I have yearned to know other people who feel as strongly as I do about the injustices done to the Palestinians. Through this book, I have now come to know sixteen women who bravely share the truth with the world. The women who contributed to this book are my heroes for they are willing to speak the truth that no one wants to hear. They will be shunned and verbally attacked for their truthful words, but they are willing to take this "punishment" and I hold each of them in highest regard.

Each essay conveys a strong voice for peace and justice for all humanity. Their words renew my hope that voices throughout the world will be encouraged to shed their timidity and demand a change in US support of Israel and recognition of human rights for Palestinians.

"Throughout history" writes American Israeli activist Emily Schaeffer, "women's stories have played a key role in drawing attention to social injustices and human rights violations". This book, edited by Osie Gabriel Adelfang is just that: A collection of essays of 14 Jewish women who collectively say, 'Not in my name'. It is prefaced by Amira Hass, an Israeli journalist who routinely writes about the horrors of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank as well as the inherent inequalities in Israel amongst Jews and Palestinians. The forward is written by Cindy Sheehan, no stranger to pain herself.

Then there is Osie's essay in the book, reading it will provide the entire motivation behind this beautiful book. It was her cousin Haim who refused to serve in the Israel Defense Force, inspiring her to edit this book and to open her eyes to the true and harsh realities that exist in Israel and the occupation. Hedy Epstein is also a contributor. A Holocaust survivor who writes, "The Israeli government's arrogance, its chutzpah, and its violent practices stand in the way of accomplishing the peace Israelis say they want. It stands in the way of Palestinians having the same rights all human being s deserve. The Palestinians will not go away. They are a resilient, ever-hopeful people. They are my brothers and sisters".

Buy the book. Read it. Recommend it. It is a powerful combination of pain, loss, empathy, compassion and razor sharp reasoning on why Israel must, for the sake of Jews and Palestinians, cease its violent and racist policies, and enter into a meaningful and just peace based on equality and fairness for everyone.

Honest and brave Jewish women express their outrage against Israel's treatment of the same Palestinians whom it dispossessed and expelled in 1948, then resumed the process of ethnic cleansing since it occupied their remaining lands and refugee camps in 1967 to this day. These graceful women, including the book's editor who was inspired by her cousin's moving letter to his commander declaring his refusal to be a soldier enforcing occupation, and along with thousands of other Jewish and Israeli human rights activists and hundreds of Israeli soldiers refusing to serve the occupation, are a living testimony that genuine humanitarian feelings go across the superficiality of ethnic and religious barriers.

Anis Salib, May 10, 2010

Several of the essays in this remarkable book feature a characteristic "epiphany" (a moment when the hitherto concealed truth of a situation flashes forth). For Maia Ettinger this was a photo in the New York Times showing "a clean-shaven young Arab man" descending "the steps of a government building in Israel", " four uniformed Israeli soldiers... pushing him, tearing at his clothes, kicking his legs. And laughing." For Hedy Epstein it was the applause of "a mainstream Jewish community group" on hearing news of the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982. For Sandra Butler it was the 13th International Women in Black Conference in Israel/Palestine that made her "eyes and ... heart fill with an altered reality..." For Osie Gabriel Adelfang, who has edited the collection, it was translating from Hebrew into English a letter from her refusenik cousin for publication in the UK Guardian (May 6, 2002) that taught her "a lesson in courage and hope."

Such moments are also familiar to many Gentiles whose path to the Palestinian cause was not necessarily a self-evident one. Jews, however, have a specific opportunity - and, perhaps, responsibility - to fight the propaganda ploy that maliciously equates Zionists and Jews, and anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Contributor Emma Rosenthal is refreshingly described as "affirmatively Jewish and assertively anti-Zionist", a combination that is slowly but inevitably changing public perceptions of the Palestine issue in the two countries that hitherto have been most unquestionably supportive of the Zionist project - the USA and Germany.

Rosenthal's prose piece Good Germans (somewhere between a poem and an essay) explores a risky option that is also more available to Jews than to Gentiles: the comparison with Nazi Germany. Starhawk, a global justice activist linked to the International Solidarity Movement, places such a reference in context: "If we don't like the Nazi parallel, we must refuse to become Nazis."

The texts in Shifting Sands do indeed display "a determined sense of justice and compassion" (Michael Parenti) and "a deep sense of love for humanity" (Sam Bahour), but they are also energizing and mobilising. The final Appendix, compiled by Anna Baltzer, is subtitled Get involved! and advocates, among other activities, joining solidarity campaigns, engaging in Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, monitoring the media, and travelling to Palestine - "It will change your life."

Even though I consider myself a very informed US citizen, I knew next-to-nothing about the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. This book is a great way to become informed, and how better than through individual women's stories? I recommend this book to everyone who wants to know more about this situation, especially in light of how much money the US government sends to Israel every year, and the atrocities that happen there while much of the rest of the world turns a blind eye. Get informed, get involved, and enjoy a great read!

I was really touched by the content of the book. the stories were beautifully written, interesting, and called for understanding of a tough, tough situation. An important addition to anyone's understanding of a sad situation in an important and beautiful part of the world.

In this collection of essays, editor and writer Osie Gabriel Adelfang has brought together a number of compelling pro-Palestinian voices from among Jewish American women. They all speak to the need for Israel to engage in good faith in the long-postponed peace process which would grant Palestinians the right to live free and independent of their IDF occupiers. More than that, as much for Israel as Palestine, they argue for the need to recognize Palestinians as human beings with full human rights and not simply as obstacles to policies of Israel's assumed manifest destiny - claiming ownership of all lands believed to be part of the biblical Israel and driving out all who have made a home there over the past 2000 years.

As contributors to the book argue, the political parallels to South African apartheid are easy to make. More devastatingly, the parallels to the genocidal treatment of Europe's Jews during WWII and the "good Germans" who turned the other way suggest a disturbing erosion of basic human morality among modern-day Israelis and American Jews who reflexively support them. Like Old Testament prophets, these writers dare to speak truth to power. Their essays range in tone from tentative accounts of assumptions surrendered to starkly factual reports of human suffering in Gaza and the Occupied Territories. The book closes with maps showing the progressive settlement of Palestine by Jewish immigration over the last 100 years and calls to action.

Readers will find a more thorough analysis of the history and prospects of Israel/Palestine relations in Sylvain Cypel's book Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse. Novels about the displacement of Arabs in 1948 include Ibrahim Fawal's On the Hills of God. Film versions of some of the situations described in the book can be found in Private and Color of Olives, The.

I read this in galley form because Osie lives in my city (so she's on my "beat," so to speak). I'd expected to skim it for a superficial review, but found the essays compelling in their scope and viewpoints. Here is the story about this project -- well worth the time of anyone interested in the faces of the troubles in Israel and Palestine: [...]

Who should read this book? 1) Anyone- of any background- who is confused or intimidated about conflicting information about the Israel/Palestine conflict and is not sure where to turn. 2) Jews who are feeling like something is very wrong but are not getting support from their families or Jewish communities. 3) Zionists- Jewish and Christian- please Zionists, read this book. Open your minds enough to admit even the possibility that there is another point of view. The contributors to this book are not all on the same page. It bugged me a little while reading it- a couple of them seemed to have "liberal Zionist" leanings, while most seem to be Anti-Zionist. In retrospect, this is actually a strength of the book. All of the contributors (except one who came from an Anti-Zionist Jewish family) have had to struggle with the contradiction between the popular Zionist mythology they had learned growing up (which is still widely accepted in the Jewish community) and the information that they had found later, and they're in different places in their struggle with it. What does one do with new information- especially when that information is threatening to our comfort zone? That's what this book is about. Highly recommended.

I suspect that I am like many Americans who don't fully understand the plight of the Palestinians. I feel a genuine sense of relief that Israel provides a homeland and safe haven for the Jewish culture but have never questioned what happened to the people that were displaced in the process. "Shifting Sands" is an eye-opening account of the human stories behind the political conflict. The subject matter is challenging but the essays are approachable, informative and compelling. Most of the accounts are told in first person and seem genuinely focused on revealing the truth versus projecting a political agenda. I strongly recommend that everyone read this book. It may not change your political frame of reference but it will expose you to a story that needs to be heard.