Khirbet Khizeh

"Jews being killed. Europe. We were the masters now", 15 February 2015

This review is from: Khirbet Khizeh: A Novel (Paperback)
I didn't think I was going to get into this work, with its sometimes meandering sentences, but made a determined effort and read it in one sitting (120 p) and it's absolutely brilliant.
First published in 1949, it's narrated by a young Israeli soldier out with his platoon, carrying out orders to clear out the eponymous Arab village, remove the occupants and blow up the houses. Yizhar brings the whole situation to life, with vivid descriptions of the Palestinian landscape and of the soldiers' demeanour:
'there was to be no battle for us today...today we were going on an outing.'
But as the remaining Arabs are show more heartlessly 'cleared' onto 'transports', the reader sees uncomfortable similarities with the awful situation of the Jews themselves in Europe just a few years previously. As the narrator, himself opposed to the situation, observes:
'the Diaspora...Our nation's protest to the world: exile! It had entered me, apparently, with my mother's milk. what, in fact, had we perpetrated here today?'
Very powerful read, and for readers like myself who weren't around in the 40s, very informative. This edition is enhanced by an afterword by David Shulman which explains some of the Biblical references in 'Yizhar's dense web of allusion', and discusses the situation today between settlers and their Palestinian neighbours. show less

Khirbet Khizeh is an Arab village in the newly formed state of Israel, designated to be cleared by Israeli forces, made uninhabitable, and its occupants exiled. The novel, originally published in 1949 and written from an Israeli soldier's perspective, it was only recently translated from Hebrew. While nearly seventy years since the birth of the Israeli state and the genesis of this story, it expresses a fundamental tension that still exists: a many-times exiled Jewish people find themselves doing the same unto another group. It's a short, thought-provoking read, told by someone who understands the stress, the fear, the boredom, and the conflicts that can arise between duty and conscience in service to the state. I can't speak to the show more quality of the translation, but I can say it's expressed beautifully in English. The NYT book review intrigued me enough to read it http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/books/review/khirbet-khizeh-by-s-yizhar.html show less

It's not KK, it's me: that this book is wise I can agree with absolutely. That it is "still-shockingly wise," as the blurb suggests, is a little bit much. Turns out the Israeli occupation wasn't and isn't all that noble a thing. The prose was decent, but not so good that it took me away from the obviousness of the rest of the book. I'm glad this was written, that it's still in print, and that people are reading it. But I think I just expected too much.

An anomalously lovely account of the evacuation of a Palestinian village by young Israeli soldiers largely unaware of what they are doing to other people's lives. It is connected in various ways to My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: a Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century by Adina Hoffman, about Israeli Arab poet Taha Muhamad Ali.

It's hard to say I "loved" this book, because the subject is so tough. That said, it is beautiful, spare, and poetic even in translation. The history of Israel's war for independence in 1948 is complicated, and relying on a novel as a guide has its complications. But the book's focus on one small sliver of that moment makes it effective.

I mentioned the book in my essay "Dueling E-mails," at http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2009/01/dueling-e-mails.html

Also, there are two good reviews I can recommend, both of which provide helpful external context:
The New York Times, "Cultural Crossroads of the Levant," by Rachel Donadio,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/books/review/Donadio-t.html
The Economist, "The good soldier," show more target="_top">http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11010266 show less

Et dokument fra 1949 skrevet af en israelsk soldat og forfatter, som beskriver israelske soldaters indtagelse af en arabisk landsby og fordrivelse af befolkningen. Forfatteren føler sig magtesløs, skønt hans samvittighed martrer ham. Smukt sprog med mange billeder.

Samengevat : De Joden met hun aanklacht van hun volk tegen de wereld : ballingschap !
En wat richtten dezelfde nu aan in Palestina. Zij, die Joden, legden hun die ballingschap op.