Summary Of Wars By Khirbet Khizeh

Chapter three of Eyal Press’ Beautiful Souls follows Avner Wishnitzer, an Israeli combat soldier serving in the occupied territories during the Second Intifada. In the 6-Day War of 1967, Israel captured the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and has since kept the land under an Israeli military occupation. In 1987 to 1991, a Palestinian uprising involving resistance and civil disobedience, known as the First Intifada, occurred in the occupied territories. Consequently, Israel deployed many soldiers into the occupied territories, and an estimated 1,674 people were killed in total. The Second Intifada, a much more violent Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories, transpired from 2000 until 2005. In response, Israel enacted Operation Defensive Shield, a large-scale military operation, in 2002 to stop the terrorist attacks and suicide bombings of the Second Intifada. An approximate 4,426 people were killed in the Second Intifada. Avner Wishnitzer’s public refusal to serve in the occupied territories was worth getting kicked out of Sayeret Matkal and being disgraced by Israeli society because it made people question the occupation and the treatment towards Palestinians. Even if Avner had been my father, I would have condoned his choices because I could create my own reputation in the military. Additionally, the current controversy over the Israeli occupation legitimizes his stance and actions for many Israeli citizens.

They deserved this land since Europe had killed millions of their people. This was the Jewish people’s rightful land. The narrator comes to this idea because of zionism, the dream of returning to the Holy Land. Never explicitly using the term “zionism” the narrator and those around him are driven to this extreme because of the belief. When the novel finally concludes the narrator understands he followed the ignorance of the masses and the hate this movement inspired against the Arabs.

This is a conflict he will never be able to resolve because he will always be Jewish. The conflict does not end after he moves camps, because each officer is just as cruel, and maybe even worse, than the last. The conflict is truly an important part of literature used in this

Israel and Palestine have been battling over territory, dominance, and political freedom for many years. After the Second World War, Israeli forces occupied Palestinian territory, ridding the land of Arabs. In response, the Palestinian people demanded control over their historic land, but the Israelis refused to relinquish power over the territory. In a matter of six days, the Jewish Israeli people conquered the West Bank all the way through to the Sinai Peninsula. After the war, the Israeli forces continued to take over Palestinian land by putting pressure on them to abandon their nation. Due to this ongoing conflict, Sahar Khalifeh utilizes violence and social constraints to explore the lives of Israeli and Palestinian men through vivid diction and descriptive imagery in the 1985 novel Wild Thorns.

She realised that people of any age will do anything to assist what they are fighting for. Furthermore, Stack lived through a portion of the second Palestinian intifada. During this struggle countless suicide bombers came by day and Israeli tanks acquired Palestinian land in the West Bank by night. Stack describes this period of time as complete chaos, where, “violence fed violence. Blood washed blood”. Stack knew a Palestinian woman who was a victim of the brutality during the first intifada. She was tortured during the days of this time period for being part of an underground Palestinian political movement. Stack’s Palestinian friend was “tortured for days, beaten, abused, threatened with rape” by a barbaric Israeli interrogator. Although she faced strong hostility from the interrogator, she also faced kindness in the form of an anonymous Israeli man who “sat with her hour after dark hour” and attempted to help her get through the pain. This shows that an individual can interact with both negative and positive things throughout a conflict. Stack later faced a conflict when she wrote a feature about how the body parts of suicide bombers had caused a policy debate in Israel. This feature caused Stack to receive hundreds of hate mails regarding as to how she “humanized [suicide bombers]” by writing about them as actual people with families.

The protagonist grapples with the moral implications of his actions, torn between self-preservation and maintaining his humanity. The brutal reality forces individuals to confront moral ambiguity as the line between victim and perpetrator blurs. This moral decay serves as a damning indictment of the Holocaust's dehumanizing effects, revealing how individuals sacrifice moral integrity for survival.

In the past decade it has become more common in the media, college campuses, and among public intellectuals argue for the sake of “Anti-Zionism,” and state that Israel is an “illegitimate” state (Harrison, p. 9). Those who are looking to start a “New” anti-Semitism often have this opinion. Harrison states the rebuttals that have follows these claims. One of the rebuttals is that, “anti-Zionism, by its nature cannot be anti-Semitic, since it consists in opposition to Zionism, not in opposition to Jews or to Judaism per se” (Harrison, p. 9). This rebuttal goes against the opinion of other authors who state anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism interchangeable. Another rebuttal is that “if there has been a resurgence in anti-Semitism in the West, and in the Islamic world, it is entirely occasioned by justifiable indignation at the conduct and policies of Israel” (Harrison, p. 9). Harrison states that “anti-Zionists” wish to be regarded as “anti-racists,” as if Zionism is a form of racism. Harrison continues to state that Zionism is not a form of racism, but a form of nationalism. Harrison’s idea that Zionism is a form of nationalism coinsides with C.R. Power and Sharon Power’s

The Israeli army is very important during this time. Maya’s brother decides he wants to make a change and join the Israeli army. ‘“Someone needs to defend Israel,” [Maya’s father] said. “If I won’t let my son do it, how can I ask other people to let their sons go?”’ (Stein 225).

‘Wild Thorns’ by Sahar Khalifeh is an insightful commentary that brings to life the Palestinian struggle under the Israeli Occupation and embodies this conflict through the different perspectives brought forth by the contrasting characters. We are primarily shown this strife through the eyes of the principal character, the expatriate Usama, as well as the foil character of his cousin, Adil. Khalifeh skillfully uses literary devices such as emotive language, allusions and positive and negative connotations to highlight life under the Occupation. As the audience, these techniques help encourage us to consider the struggle more in depth, and due to the wide variety of characters, invite us to relate to them.

Joe Sacco’s graphic novel, Palestine, deals with the repercussions of the first intifada in Israel/Palestine/the Holy Land. The story follows the author through the many refugee camps and towns around Palestine as he tries to gather information, stories, and pictures to construct his graphic novel. While the book is enjoyable at a face level, there are many underlying themes conveyed throughout its illustrated pages and written text.

Ever since, Palestinians have had to adapt to new places and cultures in order to survive, which makes it more difficult for them to preserve their own. Said presents several examples of transculturation throughout the essay. For instance, the use of the Mercedes, even though Said describes it in negative terms, the use of the Mercedes has come in handy for Palestinians. Enduring one disaster after another, Palestinian identity is arduous to preserve in exile. It is a struggle of having no country. Our country is a big part of who we are. As we are born, we are destined to become a part of it. It becomes part of our identity. Things that we grew up with meant something to us. We usually treasure things that became part of our lives. Even unconsciously, we take hold of it. Home brings us memories, memories that we want to hold on up to our last breath.

The graphic novel Palestine, published by Maltan journalist Joe Sacco in the early ‘90s, is a journalistic piece that represents his recollections of two months spent talking to and living with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. The casual narrative style, which some might say is too shallow for such heavy subject matter, in fact allows Sacco to avoid many of the pit falls that have made Western reporting on non-Western conflicts unhelpful at the very least and more often incredibly damaging.

Imagine that one day, soldiers storm to your village and demand you to leave the area temporarily due to security reasons. The next day, you find out that your house and the entire village have been pillaged and destroyed, leaving you with no shelter. Well, this was just the beginning of the many tragic incidents that Elias Chacour experienced during his life as a Palestinian. In the book, Blood Brothers, Chacour recounts the events of his life as a testament of peace and reconciliation among all ethnic and religious groups in Israel. In the book, Chacour uses a first-person narrative structure, the theme of peace, and logos in his story to urge the readers to re-evaluate their deeply held biases on issues involving the conflict and to become

Yizhar’s Khirbet Khizeh is a very interesting novella because it gives the reader a look into the the exodus of the Palestinians to be able to make way for the new Jewish state. Even though the events that take place in this novella are not real, they still reflect what occurred during the founding of Israel. This text is also written in first person and on a very personal scale. Throughout the text, the reader is able to witness how the narrator is completely haunted by his own actions. Furthermore, it is interesting how the rest of the soldiers do not seem to feel this way. For instance, they sometimes refer to Palestinians as “animals”. The importance of this is how powerful Zionist ideals can be. Zionism puts a great deal of importance

A few years after the Holocaust, one of it’s victims, Elisha, is recruited from his home in Paris as a terrorist in the city of Palestine. In his short time there, he has participated in violent group retaliation against the British, yet has never been forced to kill individually- until now. This story documents the tale of a young boy’s struggle to come to term with the human’s ability to commit cruel acts, as well as his struggle to justify the ultimate act of cruelty: murder. Within it’s startling revelations of the human conscience, Dawn illuminates that the comforts of revenge are only temporary; murder terminates all answers.