Category: Book reviews
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Persecution, prejudice and propaganda
What do you make of a situation where a UN investigator reads a certain name, and says “out of nowhere, I was overtaken by a host of disparaging thoughts and almost reflexive feelings of rejection”? He says he didn’t even read the email about that person, because he’d been convinced this wasn’t a topic he…
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The Battle for Home
Imagine this: you’ve been barred from your home district while those who are conducting a war got on with it. You’ve spent your time trying to find food and get on with life in the parts of your town that are still semi-functional, whilst trying to teach your kids to recognize and find shelter from…
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Trespassers Will: a great, long, monster blog-post posing as a book review
“Ownership insecurity”- a fascinating concept that, especially on the topic of land. It’s a vicious form of paranoia that threatens to manifest as soon as someone lays claim to a bit of land larger than the average family allotment. Until recently, most of us were completely baffled by the obsession Israel and its followers had…
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From Hastings to Gaza
Through this coming half term week, there is a series of workshops, and an exhibition of poetry and art for, by and about Palestinian children. Whether you want to spend a few minutes in the quiet hall, just looking at the paintings, to sit down and make use of the art materials provided to write…
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“Do more!”
Did you think it was you being childish, impatient? Did politicians manage to convince you that they’re more sophisticated than you, did they say they are not ‘playing safe’, they are ‘playing a longer game’? Among her reasons for not calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, my MP assured me that the government was doing…
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The Battle of the Land
This is the latest result of a favourite pastime of mine. One of the main reasons I still hang onto a library ticket and the habit of walking into actual buildings with actual books in them is the opportunity it gives to meander around and let things you didn’t know you wanted to read catch…