Discovering Israel — Part 2

What I learned from the book: I Shall Not Hate by Izzeldin Abuelaish

I took the photo of my book

This is yet another book that I read being part of the Merton PSC book club. We decided that after Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (I wrote an article about this one and will add the link), we needed something easier to read, but still informative. And I Shall Not Hate was amazing.

If you feel like you were wronged by someone, and the sense of injustice is burdening you in every way, maybe even forcing you to question your faith in God or humans, this book is for you. Some people lose their faith after an accident or a natural disaster. This man still has his faith after the people who’ve been nothing but evil to him and his whole family for decades, yet he worked with them, helped them, those people still made him a target and murdered his 3 children in a brutal attack which they had the audacity to call ‘a mistake’.

So the story is a true account of Dr Abduelaish’s life. He keeps it very short, almost down to just the major events and experiences. And he has had many of those. His life reminded me of a song called ‘Ja Luzer?’ — Me Loser?

Especially the part ‘rodjen pod sretnom, zvezdom, magicnom, ali and ovom zemljom generalno tragicnom, cemu sam blizi, tri-put pogadjaj’ — born under a lucky, magical star, but above this, generally speaking, tragic country, what am I closer to, have a guess. To make matters interesting, this song is by a Serbia singsong writer who paid a price for being against the war in Bosnia.

While it’s easy to see Dr Abduelaish as a ‘luzer’, at least in the material-world sense, he’s anything but… It’s simply impossible to say that about someone who has such strength; such heart and mind. I may not always agree with him (I will get to that), however, it impossible not to respect him.

He starts his story with his incredibly difficult childhood. I don’t want to give away too much, read the book yourself, but I will say this: How did the world allow someone…