Customer Reviews

When the Birds Stopped Singing: Life in Ramallah Under Siege

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3 star:		(1)
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This book is about the siege of Ramallah and Shehadeh tells a heartbreaking story, with plenty of villians to go around. I expected that. To my surprise, what makes the book worth reading are the heroes. Not the Isreali soldiers. Not the PLO. Not Islamic Jihad or Hamas. The heroes of this book are the everyday people who actually try to live a normal life in the West Bank.

This book left me horrified at what is going on in the Middle East. It is even worse than I thought - and I thought I knew a lot about the situation already. Raja's day to day account, written in the form of a diary, gives a first hand account of what it is like to live under Occupation.
This is hell on earth; and we in America are financing it all, with our 3 billion dollars a year that we send to Israel in military aid.
The greatest threat to World Peace lies here, and we are paying for it.

This book should be read by all of the Western world to gain a perspective on the ordinary citizen living in the Occupied territory of Palestine. So often, I don't think we actually realize what "Occupation" means and how much power remains in Israel's hands even when there is not an actual occupation of a specific city. The author helped me understand the Oslo Accord and how it failed to bring justice to the region.
This account ( using a diary format) really brings home what curfew means to daily life and the fear which comes when soldiers invade without regard to human feelings. Although written in 2003, I'm sure this holds true in 2006, and certainly makes me more attentive to news coming out of their continued struggle.

A great look into the horrible destruction and situation during the 2002 Israeli invasion. It is the struggle to stay hopeful in a hopeless situation and reminds me of the struggle of those in prison to keep their minds and bodies active in a confined space--and these are innocent civilians! Amazing.

One thing that sticks in my mind is the letters Jewish children are required to write to soldiers. Here is what they write: kill as many Arabs as possible, for me kill at least 10, ignore the laws and spray them. This stuck in my mind because we are often bombarded with images and examples of how Palestinians are teaching hate by trying to maintain their history and culture and such and on the other extreme pictures of kids with guns (context of course missing), etc and left with the assumption that Israelis are blameless.

Other incidents that stuck with me after reading was the way Israeli soldiers ransacked offices and stole and occupied houses while shoving the family (or residents of entire building) into one room.

I come away with a definite feeling that resistance to the occupation is definitely just living, in a way.

(...)I purchased "When the Birds Stopped Singing" without hesitation as I looked forward to his unique human rights and legal perspective as an adult during the intifada. While his writing style is still engaging, the content is not as strong. This small book is simply a collection of short diary entries that depict his daily experiences during the difficult times. While the situation itself is heart breaking, the entries become redunant with several descriptions of outrageous Israeli soldier behavior, Palestinian subjugation and rebellion, and the difficulties of living some semblance of a normal life under such circumstances. I did not find anything new or compelling in this book, rather I felt I was perusing a random personal journal that was likely never meant to be published. Shehadeh's human rights and legal perspective never seemed to emerge in his entries which left this as an average book that will likely only appeal to those who have not heard many personal accounts of Palestinian life during the intifiada.