Nathan Thrall’s book, published in 2023, is centred around a bus accident in the West Bank where several Palestinian schoolchildren were killed. The bus collided with a truck on a day of heavy rain and caught fire. The response from the Israeli rescue services took far too long. As noted, if kids were seen throwing stones at an Israeli truck, there would be a reaction in minutes. The response from the Palestinian rescue services was hamstrung by the tortuous procedural and geographical obstacles which the occupation of the West Bank has put in place. Thrall’s book perfectly captures the way in which Israel is an apartheid state, discriminating mercilessly against the Palestinians, both those who live within the official boundaries of Israel and those who live on the side which is in theory governed by the PA (or in Gaza, Hamas). Events of the past year have made this beyond obvious. What Thrall’s book shows, beyond the tragedy of the event it relates, is how the groundwork for the racist actions of the Israeli state in both Gaza and the West Bank had been constantly put in place ever since the Nakba. The tragedy Thrall’s book describes, of young kids needlessly dying a horrible violent death, now seems like a prelude to that which has come to pass. We inhabit an obscene era. Every day there are images of children, mutilated, killed in the most disgusting, cowardly manner. And it is excused by global politicians, or even celebrated by Israelis and other elements of a neo-fascist class which seeks to destroy the very notion of a shared humanity. Thrall was the Cassandra to all this, and the warnings contained within his devastating book are coming true every day in front of our desensitised eyes.
No comments:
Post a Comment