By David Shulman
University of Chicago Press, 2007
In Dark Hope, American-born Israeli David Shulman takes readers into the heart of violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Dark Hope is an eye-opening chronicle of Shulman’s work as a member of the peace group Ta‘ayush, which takes its name from the Arabic for “living together.” Though Shulman never denies the complexity of the issues fueling the conflict—nor the culpability of people on both sides—he forcefully clarifies the injustices perpetrated by Israel by showing us the human dimension of the occupation. Here we meet Palestinians whose houses have been blown up by the Israeli army, shepherds whose sheep have been poisoned by settlers, farmers stripped of their land by Israel’s dividing wall. We watch as whip-swinging police on horseback attack crowds of nonviolent demonstrators, as Israeli settlers shoot innocent Palestinians harvesting olives, and as families and communities become utterly destroyed by the unrelenting violence of the occupation.
David Shulman was born in Iowa but moved to Israel in 1967 at the age of eighteen. Named MacArthur Fellow in 1987, Shulman is the author or coauthor of nineteen books. (Publisher’s description)
