This was a really interesting book in how it was written. I don’t typically read memoirs but this was a gripping book. The author’s portrayal of the people he met made me want to know more about them and I’m so glad for his portrayal of what is happening in Israel and Palestine. He also actually give feedback on what people can actually do and acknowledges the struggle and how hard it can be. It isn’t all sunshine and roses which I appreciated. This was overall a really great memoir and I would read more.

This is not a perfect book but it is a real account of the authors work with Palestinian and Israeli issues in desperate need of a good unbiased look. The author shared a perspective I had not heard prior. For that I am thankful and would suggest others to learn more of.

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2018/10/02/9780226566658/Among my friends and acquaintances, I hear frequent expressions of despair arising from the precarity of democracy in Europe, the United States, and around the world. Rising authoritarianism is threatening to upend the world as we know it. I have always believed political action is an antidote to despair, that win or lose, activism asserts my own agency, making me feel less powerless. When I read the description of David Shulman’s Freedom and Despair I thought he was making a similar argument.

Shulman’s argument is actually quite different. He finds that there is freedom in despair. That one should act anyway, but despair itself is a kind of freedom. Of course, he distinguishes between internal and external freedom, this is the freedom of the soul, the kind that can never be owned or imprisoned. In his words, “I recommend despair as a place to start. It is in the nature of acting, of doing the right thing, that despair recedes at least for a moment, and its place is taken by something else: hopeless hope, for example. Those who work these furrows know that hope is not contingent. Sometimes the worse things get, the more hope there is, for hope is an act of the deeper self, or the freer part of the person.” This is despair that is not helpless, but itself is a source of hope, because when you act knowing you will still lose, your resistance is liberating.

A good portion of the book describes Shulman’s activism with Ta’ayush, a grassroots solidarity organization supporting the Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills who are being dispossessed by illegal settlements and the Israeli army’s eagerness to ignore court orders and the law in aid of those settlers. It is desperate, dangerous, and they have so much stacked against them, but they struggle on.


Freedom and Despair is an interesting book and Shulman’s work with Ta’ayush is inspiring. He understands building solidarity and the euphoria of shared risk and resistance. I think it promises more than it delivers in explaining his idea of how despair creates freedom. I mean, we have all heard “Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.” and the idea of having nothing to lose as a spur to activism exists. But that’s not his point. It’s more metaphysical than that. He wrote, “I also discovered its unexpected beauty, once I was able to use it— the strange beauty of fighting a hopeless battle. And again: the more hopeless it is, the more hope one generates in oneself by recycling despair, by embracing the inner and outer torment as a gift, for that is what it truly is. Among the many good things that life offers, there is the goodness of struggling uphill against impossible odds.”

Shulman wrote about truth, conscience, freedom, morality, and despair. These are weighty concepts that he has come to understand through activism. This book offers keen insight into how we can think about activism and agency and the freedom we can find through resistance.

There are also some great quotes in the book such as this one from a friend his friend, A a rabbi named Jim Ponest, “If you have to believe in something, it means you think it’s not true.” From another friend, Yaron Ezrahi, “A clean conscience is one that has not been used.” I hope I remember it when I get an opportunity to use it aptly. This is the kind of book you want to put on the middle shelf, the one you can easily reach when you need it, in those moments when you need to remind yourself that hopeless battles are still worth fighting.

I received an e-galley of Freedom and Despair: Notes from the South Hebron Hills from the publisher through NetGalley. It will be released October 4th, 2018.

Freedom and Despair: Notes from the South Hebron Hills at the University of Chicago Press
David Shulman faculty page and Wikipedia page

4 stars

“Freedom and Despair offers vivid firsthand reports from the occupied West Bank in Palestine as seen through the eyes of an experienced Israeli peace activist who has seen the Israeli occupation close up as it impacts on the lives of all Palestinian civilians”.

The stories within this memoir are utterly heartbreaking. Freedom and Despair is actually quite hard to read because of the pain within the story. The treatment of Palestinian people is maddening and yet there is so much beauty within the pain. I was so deeply affected by the utter unfairness and hate. Yet, the snatches of kindness and decency from both sides of the conflict was also deftly shown within some of the stories. The author has done a very good job showing the pain, the hurt, the unjustified and the tragedy that lay within the borders of these citizens lives. I am so utterly astonished at the unbelievable courage and fortitude of these people.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the lives and the stories behind the news headlines.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from University of Chicago Press through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. #FreedomandDespair #NetGalley

Not often does the Western world get a glimpse of what goes on in the "real" Israel/Palestinian Territories. David Shulman has to be admired for producing this work because it goes against his birth country's allegiances. He deals with the eternal conflict at a subsistence level and comes out clearly on the side of the Palestinian cause; or rather, against the the behaviour of his own "side".
However, Schulman, who is a founding member of Ta'ayush the grass roots non-violent movement for peace, believes that "unless both sides win the war, both sides will lose".
This book didn't change my view of the issues but certainly clarified them. It's a factual, no nonsense account of the day to day strife that occurs in the farmlands and settlements of the South Hebron. I might venture even to say that if you want to understand the problems better then you need to read this book.

"Non-violence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed. But I had to make my choice. I had either to submit to a system which I considered had done an irreparable harm to my country, or incur the risk of the mad fury of my people bursting forth when they understood the truth from my lips."
- Mahatma Gandhi - Speech during the trail of 1922.

David Shulman, the famous Indologist, the author of 'Tamil' is the author of this book.I know of him as the mild-mannered author with a deep understanding of Tamil literature and have heard him speak once and found to be intellectual.

The book 'Freedom and Despair' is about David Shulman's other life as an activist in the South Hebron hills of Israel - Palestinian lands. The conflict between the Israeli settlers of the South Hebron hills and the actual owners of these lands in the villages and wadis of this area - the Palestinian farmers and shepherds form the crux of the book.

Shulman is part of the Ta'ayush - the Israeli peace activist movement - which co-ordinates protests in these areas against the settlers and in support of the Palestinians in the area. Shulman's book is a book of notes on the individual protests he participated in, the people who were part of these protests - the Palestinians, the peace activists, the soldiers and colonels and the settlers - all come in to play their part. Shulman muses around the circumstances and about the protests itself.

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves" - Thoreau.

Non-violence - by definition is an effective way of protest. However, with rabid nationalist governments, how effective Non-violence resistance movements can be is the question that comes up in the book. When the state responds with soldiers and police in riot gear against shepherds trying to get their sheep graze in their lands - how do you face that? The complete disproportionate response to simple protests means that the means of protest - being non-violent - becomes tougher to practice in the midst of mounting violence.

There are indiscriminate protests, court orders and trials for made-up cases, the response from the settlers seeing the Jewish activists siding with the Palestinians - all have to be faced with non-violence and practicing it brings forth the best in Shulman's musing around the cause which drives them and the futility of the minor victories on the ground which though boosts morale for a short while, also ends in the realization of the difficult path ahead for the attainment of the final goal.

To me, it all reminds of the way the state - here in India - responds to similar protests. The latest police violence in Thoothukudi - killing of 13 civilians during a peaceful protest and the ongoing arrest of social activists opposing the 8 lane Chennai-Salem expressway project - all reminds me of the fact that state violence is the same across the world and there is no difference between way the state looks at people's land rights and the protests around them. How do you face the state violence without resorting to violence? This is the difficult part of the musings of Shulman.

"Do not hold to the opinions of him who decides to act in violence and who wants you to decide to do the same" - Aurelius

Shulman takes the help of Marcus Aurelius and Thoreau to muse around this. Whether obeying a wicked system which thrives on violence and injustice to people is the crux of the matter and Thoreau answers it with civil disobedience as a means to face that. As Thoreau says what is good is also true and vice versa and identifying this truth is way to understanding the path one takes.

The pseudo-nationalism and the hounding of Muslims as the other are just textbook ways of the right wing to polarize the system just as the Jews were made to be in the Nazi Germany and this comes up multiple times in the book trying to make sense of the way the settlers behave and the state of Israel operates. And it all reminds me of what is being played out in the Indian politics of today. The difference is only the degree at which this tragedy being played out and in both the cases, where this will end remains to be seen - though the apprehension of this end remains high.

"All good things are wild and free" - Thoreau

While it is a romantic notion to think of truth as wild and free - it is probably the right thing to think of and Shulman ends the book with a Iftar party in the caves of the Hebron hills and in a positive note towards what freedom will mean to everyone involved. That optimism is the only way to live through the misery and despair of the day-to-day existence.

Thanks to NetGalley for the prerelease version of the book given for review.

Israeli peace activists are probably having a good effect on Palstinians, but is their message
getting through to other Jewish people? I find myself in a conundrum : I believe God has given the land of Israel to the Jewish people. But Palestinians are also His creation, they are also people with basic rights of living - and a history with the land.
I tend towards Daniel Barenboim's idea as embodied in the East-West Orchestra, where the young from both sides get to know each other as they create music together. I think a peaceful future lies in the next generation becoming friends, seeing each other as fellow-humans first. As to the landgrabbing : it is wrong, but I don't see the answer being in confrontation. Educate the rest of the world, get other govenments involved in objecting directly to the Israeli government. It is not right to keep taking lives over this, on either side - that will only breed further hatred. And above all else, pray : only God has the answer.
We must see this from both sides - the Palestinians are not the only victims here. The Jewish people have had to be so strong in order to have endured what has happened to them over the centuries, but should the current generation of Palestinians be held responsible? I think there are closed minds on both sides, which need light shining in. But it is so important for both sides to feel they are heard.
I was shocked to learn just how hostile & violent the settlers are; with their history, surely they know what it feels like to be subject to such treatment. It is good that they have changed their mindset, & are now prepared to defend themselves, but they have further to go in their journey - having been the victims of bullies for so long, they must not now become the bullies.(Isn't it so much easier to sit outside a situation like this, & judge....!)
These were my thoughts after reading the beginning of this book. Having now finished it, David Shulman is changing my mind : not all Jews are good, & not all Palestinians are bad... I must accept the reminder that these are fellow-humans, not the enemy. I did not realise that they are actually people of peace, my knowledge of them being formed by news stories about Hamas, & their violence against Israel. There is much food for thought in this book, which deserves to be widely shared. But having done that, is it not time for action - must we not do more?
What are the new breed of settlers achieving? How much more could they achieve by changing their modus operandi, to one of negotiation. There are future generations to think of, for both sides : the present-day behaviours are setting up their future history, into posterity.
And yes - what the writer & other likeminded Jews are doing is helpful, at least in that it is showing the victims they are not alone. They are not forgotten, & not all Jews are bad...
Mr Shulman is a brave man : physically, for what he risks from the soldiers & police during confrontations, but also reputationwise, for his standing in his own community. It is not an easy choice he has made.

A memoir of the author's work as a peace activist in the West Bank of Israel. Shulman, a Jewish college professor, details the many occasions in which he has placed himself between Palestinians and Jewish settlers who are intent on displacing them. It is a story of modern day nonviolent protest in the face of grave injustice.
I have visited Hebron and have seen the hostility between Israeli soldiers and the Palestinians who have lived there for generations. I saw the contrast between the run down homes of the Arab residents and the shining new housing complexes occupied by Jewish settlers. However, it was not until I read this book that I became aware of the constant violence and injustice that is perpetrated by the Israeli government. The settlers are relocated to lands long occupied by the Palestinians and by violent bullying tactics gradually push the residents off their lands. The settlers are supported by the police and army who always side with the Jews.
I am a fan and supporter of the nation of Israel. I believe that God has placed the Jewish people in the promised land for a purpose. However, the actions taken by modern Israel look more like the tactics of Germany and Russia in the 1930's than the actions of a progressive modern country occupied by God's Chosen People.
This book is a must read for anyone who wants to know the truth about Israel.
Thanks to NetGalley and the University of Chicago Press for making a pre-publication version of this book available for me to read in exchange for an honest review.