Reporting from Ramallah : An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land (Semiotext(e) / Active Agents)

Rating:
Summary: Insightful and Humane Reporting
Review: Amira Hass is a wonderfully perceptive and deeply humane reporter. This book is a collection of her reports from the Occupied Territories, in which we meet individuals who daily experience the humiliations, abuse, violence, frustrations and injustices of living under conditions in which every aspect of their lives is controlled by an occupying military force, while also having to deal with the corruption and injustices of their own civil authorities. Ms Hass spares neither the IDF nor the Palestinian Authority nor the radicals of both sides from criticism, while always revealing the cost of occupation: the lives and dreams of ordinary people shattered, the suffering, the struggles, the anger and yet the human spirit that shows through, hoping and yearning for justice and peace. I was so moved by this book that I bought several copies for friends and asked them to pass them on to their friends after reading it.

Rating:
Summary: Can this be true?
Review: As an individual who has taken a life-long interest in Israel and the Zionist movement, I was shocked by this book because it has forced me to realize that many of my firmly held beliefs about Israel and Zionism were mistaken. Specifically this book shows that the Israeli government is in many respects guilty of mistreating its Arab citizens, and in doing so creating a type of hopelessness and despair, which explains their suicide attacks on Israel. At the same time the book explains that the Palestine Authority itself is riddled with corruption, and therefore equally unable to satisfy the hopes of its own citizens. This is an important book which should be widely read.

Rating:
Summary: Reporting From Ramallah
Review: Poorly connected review of the uprisings and occupation from 1997 - 1002. Fragmented reading with no obvious direction.