Between River and Sea by Dervla Murphy

Between 2008 and 2011 Dervla Murphy, an Irish travel writer of 26 books and aged 77 & 80, visited Israel/Palestine, the most conflicted area of land in the world. This, her last book, is a record of conversations, observations, and reflections from visiting many places and talking with many people from all sides of the political and religious divides.

Her goal was to understand everyday life and political realities so she spent time in villages, refugee camps, and ordinary homes, listening to the personal stories of her Israeli and Palestinian hosts and recording everything in her journal. The result is a book which pulls you along with her narrative skill then stops you in your tracks as she gives yet another another example of man's inhumanity to man. It is both immensely readable and profoundly disturbing.

Despite the fraught relationships, restrictions and many frustrations Murphy insists on seeing both Israelis and Palestinians as human beings. She condemns dehumanisation on both sides and tries to find areas of mutual understanding.

"One has to rage against the cruel absurdity of it all, the calculated dehumanising of people, categorising them into oppressed and oppressors, depriving ordinary Palestinians and Israelis of the right to relate to one another as individuals."

Much of the book focuses on life under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. She documents restrictions on movement, checkpoints, settlement expansion, and home demolitions. Murphy sees these as daily expressions of systemic injustice that crush Palestinian dignity.

On the other side she also meets Israeli peace activists, ex-soldiers, and settlers and finds some Israelis deeply conflicted — aware of the moral toll of occupation but trapped by security fears and political conformity.

She also argues that Western governments, particularly the UK, EU, and US, have enabled the continuation of the conflict by failing to hold Israel to account for its breeches of international agreements. But she also condemns the suicide campaign of the 2nd Intifada that produced a powerful Israeli reaction and has had a huge impact on Palestinian society.

She meets people who despite the strong antagonism and even hatred on both sides who are trying to live normal lives and courageous members of both communities who seek to cross the divides and work for peace.

Murphy is clearly very sympathetic to the Palestinian experience and sharply critical of Israeli state policy, but she distinguishes between Israeli government actions and individual Israelis. Her resolution of the conflict at the time of writing was for a single democratic state involving all sides – now clearly out of the question.

Between River and Sea gives a grass roots perspective on perhaps the most intractable of all conflicts. Dervla Murphy is a great storyteller. The reader is carried along by her observations of people and places, the setting of context from history, ancient and modern, her persistence in going places and meeting people, her beer drinking and her ability to cut through the complexities of religion and politics to reveal the real lives of real people.

Read More

If Only They Didn't Speak English by Jon Sopel & Educated by Tara Westover

 

Bill Bryson claimed he didn’t understand the UK despite living here for 30 years. Well, Bill, the feeling is mutual. When I look across the pond at the USA, I am totally baffled, which is why I needed If Only They Didn't Speak English by Jon Sopel.

Take these conundrums for starters:

How could a man who openly lied, insulted his opponents, and ignored shocking revelations about his personal life, be elected President of The United States? How could a country in which 65% of the adults identify as Christian not change its gun laws after the killing of 20 children at Sandy Hook? How could a country that is a bastion of democracy see a violent mob try and overturn by force the result of a democratic election.

This book by the BBC’s North American editor goes a long way to explaining the enigma that is the United States. Bill Bryson says of the book: "Jon Sopel may be the sanest man in America. He is certainly one of the most insightful. . .".

In the introduction Jon Sopel says: “Through music, literature, film and TV and even through the food we eat and the clothes we wear, we have all a highly developed sense of what America is; ….but America in the election year of 2016 and its extraordinary aftermath felt about as foreign a country as you could imagine.”

The book is divided into ten chapters, beginning with “Anger” and ending with “Chaos”, neat bookends to all that lies between, God, Patriotism, Race, Truth, etc. As you might expect from an experienced journalist the book is highly readable with anecdotes, humour and telling phrases to whisk you along. “Donald J Trump played by the Queensbury Rules in reverse. There was no belt below which he would not punch, no line he would not cross.” But, he also finds a lot to admire in America: “ ….. the odds are much higher [than being shot] that you are going to be blown away by civility, decency and courtesy.”, and “the work ethic of young people is off the charts”

So, if you want to get under the skin of the foreign country that is the United States then this is the book for you.

If politics is not your thing and you much prefer to immerse yourself in a country by reading about its people then try Educated by Tara Westover.  This is the best-selling, coming of age memoir of a young girl, growing up in a strict Mormon family in Idaho. Tara’s Father was a survivalist who believed we are living in the biblical end-times - as do many of Donald Trump’s supporters. In 1992 there was a tragic siege of a family in Ruby Ridge, also in Idaho, that resulted in the death of the wife and son. This reinforced her Father’s belief that his family should be prepared to withstand a siege, be self-sufficient and have nothing to do with any government agencies such as medical care or education. Tara’s mother treated all their illnesses and injuries, some very serious, and learned midwifery from a friend. Tara had no formal education until she was seventeen but with a desire to free herself from her family’s influence and her obvious talent, she entered Brigham Young University, and eventually completed a PhD in Cambridge. “Educated” has been recommended by no less than Barak Obama and Bill Gates so need I say more. It has sold over 6 million copies, so you’ve probably already read it.

Read More

A Legacy of Spies and Red Notice

A Legacy of Spies by John LeCarré

For fans of "The Spy Who Came in From The Cold", and arch spymaster, George Smiley, this is a return to familiar and much-loved territory. We are again plunged into a world where our intelligence is stretched to the limit by crpytic jargon, non-linear narrative, and jigsaw pieces of truth that scatter as soon as we begin to piece them together. It is modern day and children of victims of "Windfall", a failed covert operation from cold-ward days, intend to sue the British intelligence services for the deaths of their parents. The fall guy is Peter Guillam who is called back from his retirement on a Breton farm and subject to interrogation. All the past files, including those kept by the Stasi, are put before Guillam and Le LeCarré uses this novel as a re-run of "The Spy..." and the hunt for the traitor in British intelligence. It's a very good, page-turning read but, to me does not have a good ending.

Red Notice by Bill Browder

This is the second book about the corruption at the heart of the Russian state that I've read this year. Bill Browder tells the story of how he became involved in making money for investors by buying into new capitalist enterprises, first in Eastern Europe and then in Russia. Just like the first book, "Nothing is True and Everything is Possible" by Peter Pomerantsev, modern Russia is revealed as an alien world to those of us living under democratic systems. Although our society has many ills, we are nowhere near the state controlled gangsterism, corruption of the police and judiciary, or state control of the media and electoral system that prevail in Russia.

The tragic heart of this book is a young Russian lawyer, Sergie Magnitsky, who was beaten to death by eight Russian police officers after exposing the theft of $230 million of taxes by Russian government officials. Eventually this led to the USA passing a Magnitsky Law that enabled the seizing of assets of Russian criminal oligarchs who are using the West to launder the millions made from their nefarious enterprises.

As Lee Child says on the cover of the book, "Reads like a classic thriller..", and I read it it in 5 days.

Read More