Publications Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’s Internet Archive
Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 178 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 178, September 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Against the Stranger: Lives in the Occupied Territories
Janine di Giovanni
Penguin £6.99
Janine di Giovanni writes quite simply about life under occupation for ordinary people, both Palestinian and Israeli. She has made a conscious decision not to write a history book or a political treatise. The result is a very interesting book – weaving together the experiences of Palestinians and Israelis since the Intifada began in 1987.
She describes the psychological, sociological and economic devastation of Gaza in graphic detail. The reader can feel the claustrophobia from the curfews, the frustration from the identity checks and unemployment, coupled with the depression that appears to permeate everything.
She interviews working class Palestinians who attempt to live with some dignity in an intolerable situation – Palestinians like the parents of an activist who committed suicide (an Islamic taboo), and 11-year-old Nisrine, eldest of six, coming to terms with life after the murder of her parents.
Di Giovanni subtly changes the mood of her book with the changing direction of the Intifada, focusing on the Palestinian attitude to life and death and the growing frustration with ‘leaders’ who seem to be doing nothing to alleviate the situation.
She attempts a ‘balanced’ view by interviewing ‘liberal’ Jews keen to set up Jewish-Palestinian dialogue, a Jewish mother who has lost her (soldier) son in a bomb attack, left-wing editors and lawyers. There are, additionally, many accounts of why individual Jews became Zionists and then, after examining the terrible reality behind the Zionist state, decided to actively campaign against it.
Perhaps some of the most powerful images are those concerning the fate of children under occupation. The graphic scenes from hospital, the inadequate equipment, the lack of staff coupled with the unhygienic conditions transport the reader into a situation of sheer hell where one can almost smell the filth and taste the desperation: ‘Collar bones stamped upon, fingers pulled out of sockets and faces smashed in from clubs.’
This is a book written with real feeling. Di Giovanni’s revulsion at the oppression and injustice inflicted on the Palestinians is skilfully told. She overestimates, however, the role of ‘radical’ Jews within Israel, by failing to point out that whilst living within a Zionist state they are themselves profiting from the exploitation of Palestinians.
But Against the Stranger is an intensely personal account of her many journeys to Palestine and the grim reality of over two decades of occupation and is clearly illustrated with photographs. A superb primer on life in Palestine.
Socialist Review Index | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 21 June 2017