Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine (Hardcover)

by David Shulman (Author)
Key Phrases: separation wall, stun grenades, house demolitions, South Hebron Hills, Abu Dis, Tel Aviv (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"During what he calls the ''unhappy years'' from 2002 to 2006, David Shulman, an Israeli professor at Hebrew University, did some of the harder work of his country''s peace movement: clashing with police and settlers to deliver food and medical supplies to Palestinian villages. In his excellent record of these years, Dark Hope, Shulman vividly describes the small bands of Palestinians who live in caves in the Hebron Hills."--Emily Bazelon, Slate Best Books of 2007 (Emily Bazelon Slate )

"Beautifully written and emphatic in its calm insistence on the need to take both responsibility and action, Dark Hope is notable not just for the bleak picture it paints of the nightmare that the settlers and their sponsors, the Israeli government, have brought to millions of Palestinians but also, as its title suggests, for the faith it places in a basic human decency and in the belief that there must be another way. It is essential reading for anyone who wants-or hopes, however darkly-to grasp the lay of this punished land."--Adina Hoffman, The Nation (Adina Hoffman The Nation )

Product Description

For decades, we’ve been shocked by images of violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. But for all their power, those images leave us at a loss: from our vantage at home, it’s hard for us to imagine the struggles of those living in the midst of the fighting. Now, American-born Israeli David Shulman takes us right into the heart of the conflict with Dark Hope, an eye-opening chronicle of his work as a member of the peace group Ta‘ayush, which takes its name from the Arabic for “living together.”

Though Shulman never denies the complexity of the issues fueling the conflict—nor the culpability of people on both sides—he forcefully clarifies the injustices perpetrated by Israel by showing us the human dimension of the occupation. Here we meet Palestinians whose houses have been blown up by the Israeli army, shepherds whose sheep have been poisoned by settlers, farmers stripped of their land by Israel’s dividing wall. We watch as whip-swinging police on horseback attack crowds of nonviolent demonstrators, as Israeli settlers shoot innocent Palestinians harvesting olives, and as families and communities become utterly destroyed by the unrelenting violence of the occupation.

Opposing such injustices, Shulman and his companions—Israeli and Palestinian both—doggedly work through checkpoints to bring aid, rebuild houses, and physically block the progress of the dividing wall. As they face off against police, soldiers, and hostile Israeli settlers, anger mixes with compassion, moments of kinship alternate with confrontation, and, throughout, Shulman wrestles with his duty to fight the cruelty enabled by “that dependable and devastating human failure to feel.”

With Dark Hope, Shulman has written a book of deep moral searching, an attempt to discover how his beloved Israel went wrong—and how, through acts of compassionate disobedience, it might still be brought back.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 236 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (June 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226755746
• ISBN-13: 978-0226755748
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #371,600 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Difficult truth-telling, September 27, 2007

By	S. Swartz (Bloomington, IN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark Hope towards Enlightenment, May 29, 2007

By	Andy of Minnesota (Minnesota) - See all my reviews

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.

0 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointment, February 20, 2008

By	Jaysonrex (South of Equator) - See all my reviews

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!