Freedom and Despair: Notes from the South Hebron Hills, by David Shulman

Sari Nusseibeh, the prominent Palestinian academic, once noted that most people encounter the word “occupied” on a toilet door. Annoying, but you know that at some point the occupation will come to an end. Not so the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, a military rule over 2.6 million Palestinians, pinned to the ground by nearly 400,000 Jewish settlers scattered in locations ranging from proper cities to outposts of a few ramshackle structures on isolated hilltops.

Israelis are prone to conclude conversations by asserting that “b’sof, yiehiye b’seder” – in the end, it’ll be all right; if it isn’t all right, it isn’t the end. Just about everyone in Israel would agree that things are not all right in the West Bank, which is in a 51-year holding pattern awaiting resolution – one-state, two-state, no-state, whatever.

David Shulman, emeritus professor of Indian studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has been a peace activist for many years, the soul of Ta’ayush, an organisation that works on the ground with Palestinians in the West Bank. Group members repeatedly put themselves at risk, confronting the Israeli army and the often aggressive Jewish settlers, helping Palestinians cultivate their lands and graze their sheep, in order to demonstrate that not all Jewish Israelis condone the nationalist narrative promoted by the government. Born in Iowa but an Israeli since 1967, Shulman is a patriot. Like many other Jews, he was inspired by the Six Day War to make Jerusalem his home. Having been part of the problem, he now tries to be part of the solution.

Freedom and Despair is based on Shulman’s field notes from his decade as a Ta’ayush activist. Therein lies the problem with the book. His motives are noble, and his ceaseless and often dangerous work in the West Bank is admirable. But as he himself admits over and over, the activism of Ta’ayush is ultimately futile because the vast majority of Israelis democratically prefer a right-wing nationalist government that supports Jewish settlements and the annexation of the West Bank. Meanwhile, leftists fear that Israel is on a twin path towards theocracy and fascism.

Worse, there are few Palestinians who have actually been helped by Ta’ayush – most are still suffering under never-ending occupation. Shulman is also aware that a village defended by Ta’ayush can find itself targeted once the Jewish Israelis have left.

Shulman is so brutally honest that he continually emphasises that he does it all for himself: “I do it because it makes me a little freer, makes me feel like a human being. I do it for its own sake.” Indeed, he turns his burden of despair and hopelessness into a kind of virtue, a purification ritual for someone whose time in Israel exactly spans the period of occupation. “I think it’s time to reclaim despair,” he writes. This is why there is so much philosophical musing in this book, on issues such as wickedness, truth, evil and so on. These are weighty matters, but they detract from Shulman’s compelling personal reportage, which succeeds only in persuading readers that things may never be b’seder.

David S. Katz holds the Abraham Horodisch chair for the history of books at Tel Aviv University. He is writing a book on William James as a historian of religion.

Freedom and Despair: Notes from the South Hebron Hills
By David Shulman
University of Chicago Press
224pp, £40.50 and £14.00
ISBN 9780226566511 and 66658
Published 30 October 2018