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12 of 13 found the following review helpful:
This man loves the holy land Oct 21, 2006
By P. BENNETT
With every word, every phrase, Israel Shamir displays his love
of the holy land. I've read lots of books on the Middle East,
but this is - by far - the most compelling. I really cannot
express how important this book is to me, so I'll include a
quote from Nick Pretzlick, which I agree with wholeheartedly:
"Israel Shamir is in love with the Holy Land. He has a
passion for the land and its people; he believes the
two are umbilically linked. For him there is only one
viable solution to the conflict that has ravaged the
region for so long and that is the one state solution.
Shamir is a humanist and although he is scathing about
Palestine's enemies - the Jewish elite - he takes
pride in and writes lovingly about the courageous
Jews, who resist Israeli crimes.
Flowers of Galilee is a collection of essays, so full
of affection - such an elegy of love - that, reading
it for the first time, I felt impelled to delay the
turning of pages, preferring instead to linger over
images - to savour the sentiments.
Shamir does not pull any punches. He challenges
conventional thinking, but he does so with honesty,
affection and such thorough understanding and
knowledge that his outspokenness is reasonable and
rational. Flowers of Galilee is an eye opener - a
learning experience. It is also enchanting."
12 of 14 found the following review helpful:
The Rarest of Poetic Geniuses Who Writes in Prose Mar 09, 2006
By seekerotruth
"seekerotruth"
It's books like this that remind you some things definitely need to be put into book form to be properly appreciated. I remember reading it sitting outside of a Starbucks several nights in a row and having revelation after revelation alter my perception of the world - and for the better, I knew as one who experiences an epiphany.
The beautiful essays in this book show the heart of someone who truly loves Palestine and its people and makes the reader share that love. I'm ashamed to think of how I used to fall for the portrayal, by "the masters of discourse," of the Palestinians. Shamir, through this book, most certainly helped wise me up.
Shamir has been accused of being anti-Semitic, but actually this formerly Jewish convert to Orthodox Christianity is not against any innocent people, be they Jewish or non-Jewish. He is against the ideology of Judaic Supremacism, and God bless him for that.
Reading this book is so rewarding that I can't even come up with words to explain how I feel about it. Divinely inspired, for the most part, I scarcely think are words of hyperbole.
5 of 6 found the following review helpful:
A rich and deeply felt examination... Oct 27, 2006
By Michael Santomauro
"What sort of Truth is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?"
A rich and deeply felt examination...
Details life in the Occupied Territories with sensitivity, insight and a fine eye for moral ambiguities. Highly recommended!
Dances With Wolves in Palestine Aug 15, 2011
By A. Turgeman
"turgeman"
This is a brilliant collection of essays by Israel Adam Shamir, an Israeli journalist and ex-paratrooper. It has the same power of Dances With Wolves to change an entire generation's perception of the Israel/Palestine conflict and shed light on the machinations of Israeli apartheid. This is why Zionists and their apologists were quick to label Shamir an antisemite (he is a former Jew) and wield the ultimate weapon of excommunication - "Holocaust denier" (although many of his family perished in the Holocaust).
Shamir does not mince words. He describes the Zionist enterprise in Palestine for what it is: a brutal project of ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinians, supported by many misinformed people throughout the West. He laments the Zionist transformation of the Holy Land from a land of olive trees and the people who tend to them, into a giant military base with barbed wire and walls and steel machines imported from the US to raze villages and confine the natives of the land in ghettos. Palestine, which for centuries embodied the spirit of religious coexistence and is central to Christianity, Islam and Judaism, is now a nuclear volcano at the hands of a supremacist state, ready to erupt and rain destruction on the entire region and beyond.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the forces that are shaping today's world, as Mr. Shamir makes clear: the struggle for Palestine goes far beyond the land itself. Whether you are a layman who was told that it is "a fight between Jews and Muslims for land" or an erudite who believes that a Palestinian "state" (as the definition of "state" varies widely) is the prized elixir, this book is bound to enlighten and inform and reshape your opinion on what is happening in the Holy Land.
I highly recommend.
4 of 7 found the following review helpful:
comparable with all the best essayist. Mar 28, 2008
By Jm Leven
I was stunned by the quality of Shamir's writing. No dry review can convey the richness of his descriptions of the Palestinian landscape and people, and their brutalisation and dispossession by Israel. This is up with the best travely writing, and the best literature ever. The eye and mind just effortlessly gulp up his writing. He is controversial, not just because he exposes the injustice of the occupation, but because he goes to the heart of the matter ( where few dare look), identifying the locus of Israel's power in the financial power of US jewish elites. I think this is obviously correct, but he goes even further; he identifies some facets of jewish culture and religion which he considers malign. I think this should not be off limits, considering the amount of coverage given to those who claim that there is something inherently violent in Islam. But I don't accept his answer - that jews convert to Christianity. I think it's time we all outgrew religion, of any kind. This latter trend in his writing, is not so evident here as in his later writing where it intrudes too much for my taste.
Even if you violently disagree with Shamir, few could fail to be impressed by his writing. At one point, he even draws an analogy with the tv science fiction series, Babylon 5 (my all-time favourite), which shows, to me, that he has a profound sense of what's valuable.Babylon 5 - The Complete Television Series (5-Pack)
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