The Human Scale, by Lawrence Wright.
So. On the human
scale, who is worth more: an Arab or a
Jew? An Arab who has farmed and nurtured
his ancestral land for centuries in the same family, or recent Jewish migrants
who want to buy the land and settle on it themselves – because God and their Zionist leaders told them they could. This is their Promised Land, and if those
Arabs won’t give it up, then they’ll find other means of taking it, and all the
worthless Palestinians can drown themselves in the sea.
And
by the time that American-born Palestinian FBI Agent Tony Malik decides to
attend a family wedding in Hebron and renew old ties and acquaintances as part
of his convalescence (he was the only survivor of an attempt TO dismantle a
bomb built by Hamas to blow up a Jordanian aircraft), he is in a pretty frail
state, certainly not up to his usual professional expertise, which means he is
entirely unprepared for the lack of action by police against the flagrant,
everyday abuse that Palestinian Arabs endure – and their savage retaliations
against such injustice (Palestinian boys are athletes of Olympian stature when
it comes to throwing stones.) And
stealing! He saw one wearing his hat
when he had his rental car robbed; the consequent
pursuit ended up with him being arrested by the local cops and a very surly
bunch they were, too.
Tony’s
visit has not started well, and he is appalled by the blatant criminality, the
corruption that he sees on both sides of the spectrum; it’s only after he proves his worth in
exposing the worst of that corruption that he starts to gain some respect –
until the local police chief is discovered cruelly murdered. Bridegroom Jamal (nicknamed the Peacemaker)
immediately goes on the run despite the fact that he is innocent: – he knows
how justice works in Hebron: it doesn’t
work at all.
Lawrence
Wright has produced an extraordinary, exhaustive and brilliant story of hatred
and enmity as old as civilisation itself; the conflict and animus will never
end, especially when the I.D.F. carefully targets the apartment of a Gazan
family who has given Jamal the Peacemaker shelter: that fatal attack turns Peacemaker into
Avenger, with predictable, awful results
A reader of this fine book before me gave it a score of 10 out of 10. And how right they were. Thank you Lawrence Wright, for showing us what everyone has ended up with for all their machinations: a lifelong burden of grief. SEVEN STARS.
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