Seen as Antisemitic? This Book? Nah

The book opens in the 1940s, in the small village of Ein Hod, before the forced relocation of residents to the Jenin refugee camp. Once in the settlement, a young girl named Amal Abulheja becomes the story’s focus. Through Amal’s eyes, readers see the daily routines of generations of refugees and glimpse the indignities imposed on Palestinians by the Israeli army; they‘ll also see people fall in love, have babies, and develop an appreciation for poetry and scholarship. While some readers might see this novel as anti-Semitic, it is not. Indeed, Abulhawa goes to great lengths to highlight the universal desire of all people for a homeland. Furthermore, Abulhawa‘s compassion for American victims of 9/11 and for those who suffered in the Holocaust illuminates what it means to be humane and spiritually generous. The Pennsylvania-based Abulhawa, herself Palestinian, has crafted an intensely beautiful fictionalized history that should be read by both politicians and those interested in contemporary politics.

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What book is this?

This book:-

The Scar of David is a historic fiction set in the lap of one of the 20th century’s most intractable political conflicts. Though the course of this story, a Palestinian boy grows up as a Jewish Israeli who becomes tangled in a truth he cannot reconcile, and his identity can find no repose but in the temporary anesthetics of alcohol. A would-be suicide bomber is given a name, a face, and life of a man pushed to incomprehensible limits. An Arab girl of pious and humble beginnings escapes her destiny and lives the “American Dream,” which her soul cannot bear. And a nation of destitute refugees living under the general label of “terrorists” emerges in the context of an unredeemed history.

Three massacres and two major wars provide five corners to this novel:

Sabra and Shatila, Southern Lebanon, 1982;
US embassy bombing, Beirut, 1983;
Refugee camp of Jenin, West Bank, 2002;
The Naqbe, Mandate Palestine, 1948; and
The Six Day War, Middle East, 1967.
During the family’s eviction from their ancestral village, Amal’s brother Ishmael is lost in the mayhem of people fleeing for their lives. Just a toddler at the time, Ishmael is raised by a Jewish family and grows up as David, an Israeli soldier. During the 1967 war, Amal’s eldest brother, Yousef, comes face to face with David, his brother the Jew. Yousef recognizes his brother by a prominent scar across David’s face. The title of this story takes its name from this scar, and assumes other layers of meaning as it is told.

The end is the beginning: terrible suffering packaged by Western press into perfidious sound bites like “the Middle East Conflict” and “War on Terrorism.” But through the course of this story, a would-be suicide bomber is given a name, face and life of a man pushed to in comprehensible limits; an Arab girl of pious and humble beginnings escapes her destiny and lives the “American Dream,” which her soul cannot bear; an Israeli man becomes tangled in a truth he cannot reconcile, and his identity can find no repose but in the temporary anesthetic of alcohol; and a nation of destitute refugees, living under the general label of “terrorists,” emerges in the context of an unredeemed history. This story reveals Palestinians in the fullness of their humanity