Two State, One State:The Dilemma of Israel and Palestine in Two Books

The New York Times carried a very interesting essay earlier this week by Anthony Lerman, "The End of Liberal Zionism."  This summer's war in Gaza underscores the difficulties Jews who embrace liberal values have with the coalition of right wing and theologically pure interests which now hold sway in Israel.  I've invited my liberal Jewish friends to comment on Facebook, but so far I have no input from them.

So I've returned to thinking about two books read in recent months which gie fascinatin background to the ongoing troubles between Irsaellis and Palestinians.  The first is David Grossman's To the End of the Land and the other is Guy Delisle's  Jerusalem Chronicles: Tales from the Holy City.

The former novel is by one of Israel's best known novelists and tells the story of a woman who through magical thinking tries to stop learning that her son has been killed during the last Israeli conflict with Lebanon.  Rooted in a walking trip the Grossman himself took through his country, it examines how it got to its current sorry state.  Too long by about 50 pages (the book would have profited from an editor cutting out a sentence here and another one there), the novel nevertheless is engrossing on a human level: I understood completely why the heroine covered up the windows on her door so she wouldn't see the messenger of death arrive.  After reading it I also could appreciate much better why Israeli is the way it is today.  My admiration for Grossman only grew when I learned that one of his sons was killed in the final days of the Lebanon incursion.   He
did not succumb to rage at what had happened, but continued to work on his rather measured account.

The second book is a graphic novel that Delisle wrote after  he and his family spent in a year in Jerusalem while his wife worked for Doctors without Borders. It's a view you won't find anywhere else, and a great complement to Grossman's novel.

Grossman, by the way, wrote an eloquent plea in the July 28, 2014 New York Times, that could be an answer to the Lerman's much less hopeful piece.  He concludes as if to point out to Lerman where liberal Jews are now:

"There are many who still “remember the future” (an odd phrase, but an accurate one in this context) — the future they want for Israel, and for Palestine. There are still — but who knows for how much longer — people in Israel who understand that if we sink into apathy again we will be leaving the arena to those who would drag us fervently into the next war, igniting every possible locus of conflict in Israeli society as they go.

"If we do not do this, we will all — Israelis and Palestinians, blindfolded, our heads bowed in stupor, collaborating with hopelessness — continue to turn the grindstone of this conflict, which crushes and erodes our lives, our hopes and our humanity."