Rating: 
Summary: Vital Issues, Redundant Text
Review: "Occupied Voices" is too redundant for my tastes (which is why I only give it 3 stars), although it DOES bring up vital issues (one of which is that Israel stole the land of Palestine with the UN's blessing). Also, I do not believe many Americans realize the slum-like conditions most Palestinians live in. Yet many of the occupied voices frustrated me, as an American. The Palestinian people ask for the help of America or wonder why America does not help them. I have some questions myself: WHY HAVE THE ISLAMIC NATIONS NOT HELPED THE PALESTINIANS? Why do the Palestinians look for our help and hate us at the same time? Perhaps the best thing to come out of this book-and others like it-is the growing awareness that something just is not right about the slum-like conditions the Palestinians live in. My heart goes out to the Palestinian people. So will yours if you read this well-written (and redundant) book with an open mind AND you know the history of how the Israelis stole the Land of Palestine (with the blessing of the UN).
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Volume
Review: A rich, facinating book with deeply enriching insights, "Occupied Voices" goes a long way towards illuminating the contemporary views of Palestinian citizens to external observers. The stories presented have little thematic continuity, structural similarities, or descriptive reinforcements; but that is the volume's strategy: to present distinct, dissonant windows of literature that offer searing images, symbols, and visions of daily struggle under Israeli rule. The volume also excels in portraying the mundane, the miniscule but integral elements of social and political life that many take for granted but which have become problematic in the contemporary Palestinian experience. The volume is accessible to any reader, and the stories it presents--due to their raw nature--might leave some shaken: but so much the better, as the lives of Palestinians should not be taken lightly. Overall, the book presents a valuable opportunity for the average critic to supplement her understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with details often left out of mainstream media and academic sources; and for this reason, it is an important contribution.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book!
Review: I am ordering an extra copy of this book to donate to my church, where I plan to run a discussion group on the history of Israel in the 20th century. I wish every American would read it. Ms. Pearlman's work is a must read -- haunting and tragic -- a view of ordinary people living under hellish conditions. For anyone interested, I am also ordering extra copies of "Blood Brothers" (Elias Chacour), and "Through Different Eyes" (Bookbinder, Abourezk).
Rating:
Summary: Haunting and Traumatic
Review: I truly do not understand any reviewer that says he/she found this book full of hate and anger. I read interview after interview, shocked that people can live in and survive such daily torture, and not want to strike out at those that caused their pain. Instead they just keep begging and begging for a end to the violence killing their children and ruining their families and lives. I see it this way... Imagine if a group of people started moving into the US in mass numbers, and we didn't have a government to say no to the immigration. At some point, these new immigrants started attacking and killing Americans, pushing Americans towards, say, Washington state. The killings continue, until all of the Americans are now confined in Washington. Now bloack the state borders, encourage immigrants to form communities all throughout Washington, and then build roads criss-crossing Washington that only the immigrants can use, and not the Americans. Then deny Americans the right to export their goods, and on a regular basis, crush businesses and homes with tanks. Then put roadblocks on every small road that the Americans can use, and apply unpredictable curfews that force Americans to remain in their homes more often than not. Then allow the immgrants in Washington to carry guns and shoot at who they like, and forvid the Americans from carrying weapons, but also throwing stones. Make sure the immigrants and their soldeirs kill American kids on a regular basis. What, honestly, do you think would be the appropriate response of the "imprisoned" Americans to such a situation? And there you have the situation that you will find in this book. Anyone that can read these human voices and not feel compassion and devastation lacks a heart. It really is that simple. If you can hear such pain and think nothing of it, you need to look at your own life to try and determine where you learned to lack humanity. The book is amazing, and should be read by all who want to know what their taxes pay for....
Rating:
Summary: Moving, articulate book
Review: It is very refreshing to read a scholarly book and find not just well-presented information about the conflict, but also to find such a warm, personal voice. Ms. Pearlman really provides such a compelling voice for those Palestinians who are trying to live gracefully in the midst of chaos. I didn't find that it minimizes the experience of the Israeli suffering, as one reviewer did, instead, amplifying their voices allowed me to, in effect, make eye contact with them, and walk a little while in their shoes, to glimpse the suffering, their tenacity and motivated me again to pray for a resolution to the crisis.
Rating:
Summary: Moving, articulate book
Review: It is very refreshing to read a scholarly book and find not just well-presented information about the conflict, but also to find such a warm, personal voice. Ms. Pearlman really provides such a compelling voice for those Palestinians who are trying to live gracefully in the midst of chaos. I didn't find that it minimizes the experience of the Israeli suffering, as one reviewer did, instead, amplifying their voices allowed me to, in effect, make eye contact with them, and walk a little while in their shoes, to glimpse the suffering, their tenacity and motivated me again to pray for a resolution to the crisis.
Rating:
Summary: Occupied Voices and Controlled Discourse
Review: Rafael Medoff describes "The Day Nathan Straus Went to Church" in
Zionism and the Arabs (An American Jewish Dilemma 1898-1948). Nathan
Straus is the wealthy philanthropist after whom the Israeli city of
Netanya is named. The important Zionist leader, Rabbi Stephen Wise,
persuaded Straus to send Reverend John Haynes Holmes, pastor of New
York's Community Church to Palestine. The Zionist settlement
impressed Holmes, but Holmes spoke with Palestinian Arab leaders and
developed strong reservations about the undemocratic nature of the
Zionist program. When another Zionist leader Julian Mack reported
Holmes's findings to Straus, Straus rushed to the Community Church on
Sunday, April 7, 1929, to "set Holmes straight" before Holmes could
present the results of his conversations with Palestinians to his
congregates. The pattern of the Zionist effort to control the presentation of
Palestinian views and opinions to the American public has not changed
over the last 75 years. Americans may only hear Palestinian voices
through sanctioned mediators or through the approved filter. Wendy Pearlman addresses the disconnect between American discourse
and ordinary Palestinians in hew new book, Occupied Voices (Stories
of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada). She states in the
"Introduction" on page xxvi, "Furthermore, it is my belief the
widespread misrepresentations of Palestinians and the general dearth
of materials allowing them to tell their own stories makes a
collection of exclusively Palestinian interviews crucial at this time.
For reasons of common culture and political history, Westerners tend
to be more familiar with the Israeli narrative than its Palestinian
counterpart. Palestinians deserve a forum in which they can speak
freely. We in America, in Europe and even, if not especially, in
Israel stand to gain tremendously if we stop and listen." Americans are so well trained at this point that the reviewer from Publisher's Weekly probably attacked the whole premise of the book
purely out of conditioned reflex. He appears to believe that Pearlman
should have been correcting and reeducating Palestinians instead of
researching and revealing Palestinian opinion to the US public. "[Pearlman's] book grows out of her sojourn and 'provide[s] a window
into the human dimension of their struggle' by letting the
Palestinians speak for themselves. Think of it as Studs Terkel goes to
the Middle East -- except that only one side in the conflict gets to
speak. The first thing that emerges from these interviews is that the
Palestinians have suffered a great deal -- if someone hasn't been
hurt, jailed or degraded by the Israeli occupation, they know someone
who has. 'The army just opens fire whenever it wants to,' says
Mahmoud, whose house was razed by the Israeli army. But while Pearlman
says her aim is to gain a deeper understanding of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, some readers will come away only with
despair, a sense that the conflict will never be settled. One
Palestinian after another here shows an inability to see any
legitimacy in the Israeli side, or to support an end to the current
intifada or any attempts at peace-the moribund Oslo peace process is
seen as a sellout. And when Pearlman fails to question such statements
as that Israel has failed to comply with any U.N. resolution since
1948, many readers may despair regarding Pearlman as well." Despite the misguided complaints of the above review, American
readers should be grateful that Pearlman has published this book,
for the current level of US involvement in the ME requires that all
Americans be aware of current Palestinian thinking whether true or
false. If Palestinians believe something that Americans do not,
Americans might want to consider the possibility that common
wisdom in the USA may be wrong. Pearlman's transcriptions of Palestinian opinion are all valuable. Suzanne's comments on p. 54 are particularly worthwhile because US
reporters and political analysts, who for the most part do not read or
speak Arabic, rarely challenge Zionist and Israeli claims that
Palestinian school textbooks are loaded with anti-Semitism and
incitement. President Bush never fails to express his sympathy for victims of
Palestinian terrorism even though he never criticizes Israeli state
terrorism, but the toxic terror culture in Israel/Palestine is beyond understanding unless one is aware of the casual cruelty of Israeli
policy even when the State of Israel does not employ deadly force. I
direct the reader to pages 135-6 of Pearlman's book. This little book is a gem that should be in the library of anyone that
tries to comprehend the issues in Palestine and the ME. It has flaws
but they are minor. I wish the book had been accompanied by a CD that
contained the original interviews. I understand the absence.
Providing such a CD would have required effort from a sound engineer
and probably would have delayed publication. Nevertheless, the value to
a specialist in linguistics would have been immense. When Zionist forces murdered Arab Palestine with premeditation in
1947-8, not only did they kill thousands of Palestinians and expel
80-90% of the native population from its homes, but they also followed
up the ethnic cleansing with the bulldozing of hundreds of Palestinian
villages in many cases 1000s of years old. Nowadays most scholars are
aware that Zionists compounded their main crime against the native
population of Palestine with an atrocity against the disciplines of ME
archeology and anthropology, but philologists are generally less aware
of the wealth of diachronic and synchronic Arabic and Semitic
linguistic data that Zionists destroyed as they uprooted the native
population of Palestine. If a CD had accompanied Occupied Voices, a
specialist might have been able to analyze it to determine how much of
the unique regional Palestinian phonemic, morphological, semantic and
syntactic dialect features still survived among the current
generation.
Rating:
Summary: Courage, Hope and Survival.
Review: This book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the human cost to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. It is a poignant and factual rendering from people of enormous faith, hope and courage, under conditions that most of us cannot come close to understanding. Once you read it, you will want to do something to help the people of Palestine. Read it, keep it, or pass it on. The world has to know the day to day tragedies that do not reach the pages of the newspapers, or the voices of the newsreaders.
Rating:
Summary: Haunting and Traumatic
Review: Wendy Pearlman's "Occupied Voices" addresses an often overlooked aspect of the conflict in the Middle East. By recounting the stories of individuals living under conditions that (thankfully) none of us can even imagine, Pearlman sheds light on the crucible that is Palestine. The book helps the Western reader see Palestinians as individuals--something most texts fail to do, and something essential to truly understanding and resolving the conflict. I found the stories evocative and so moving, the photographs stunning.
Rating:
Summary: A poignant, compelling book
Review: Wendy Pearlman, a gifted writer, has succeeded in capturing the human dimension of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza. Through a series of vignettes and interviews with people from all walks of life -- ranging from filmmakers to students to doctors and more -- Pearlman brings an entire nation to life. Readers learn about the Palestinian perspective through regular people, not government spokespeople and negotiators. If you like books that open your mind to new thoughts, new cultures and new perspectives know that this book accomplishes that in spades.
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