Book Review of “Against the Loveless World” by Susan Abulhawa.

This is a warm book about bleak situations, ranging from a Palestinian neighbourhood in Kuwait before the Iraqi invasion, through the Iraqi occupation and the return of a now-vengeful Kuwaiti government once the Iraqis were expelled, to a more difficult life in Jordan (a much poorer country than Kuwait) and then a life of knife-edge danger in Palestine itself. The heroine’s only defence against psychopathic treatment is to love those she can. (That’s what separates the sheep from the sociopaths.) The people she loves includes one person who appears to exploit her in a very serious way and another who initially despises her for her (largely misreported) sexual conduct.

Arab and particularly Palestinian culture is shown in loving detail, and this is a necessary antidote to the perceptions that Westerners usually have of Palestine, which is a dusty impact zone for whatever artillery is fired at it. That perception is shaped by journalists feeling they have to “tell the truth” about what seem to be the most important things: such as little boys being shot by Israeli settlers and so on. That needs to be reported, but if it is all you report, then the story you are telling becomes a falsehood, because you are not showing the world what is worthwhile about the culture that is being steadily destroyed. The author isn’t merely trying to show that Palestinian culture is being cruelly destroyed, but that it is well worth saving. That is not really what we get from the “victimology” of social-Marxism, because Marxism in any form seeks to destroy ALL existing culture in order for something “better” to rise from the ashes. (If the fire is hot enough, nothing ever rises from the vitrified ash at all.) Anyone seeking to “help” Palestine on the basis of such victimology is doing the work of the Israeli oppressors for them.

Along the way, the author allows her heroine to realise that if they did not have the Palestinians to oppress, the Israelis would almost certainly kill each other with vigour and enthusiasm. This may be more literally true than even the author realises: during my past attempts to befriend apparently reasonable Israelis, I was surprised and not a little disturbed to discover how just much they loathed Israelis of other persuasions and how much they were hated in return. I would refer readers to the last third or so of “Screwtape Proposes a Toast” by CS Lewis (if they cannot bear to read the whole thing, which is not very long.) This has been Israel’s problem for millennia.

The heroine and other Palestinians are not solely oppressed by the Israelis and Americans, however: they are oppressed by many Kuwaitis (not all, by any means), largely because the Palestinians were exploited by Saddam to supply a tissue of justification for his attempted conquest of Kuwait. The scope of this book does not extend quite to the present day, but the way that the Iranian regime is currently exploiting the Palestinian cause to further its own regional interests is sowing the seeds of further oppression of Palestinians by Arab regimes that the Iranian one seeks to destroy. Where, exactly, is the line drawn between such exploitation and direct oppression? Is there one?

Although this book depicts some inspiring acts of resistance and defiance (not just against the Israelis) it’s pretty clear that these will not create a solution by themselves and are really a form of pleading for some outside force to step in and change the situation. For this to happen, there has to be a change in the attitude and behaviour of several different governments, and for THAT to happen, it has to be possible for people with clean hands to access the top jobs in the countries concerned. As I have tried to make clear in my own work, if you have conventions or even formal systems which prevent persons with clean hands getting to the top (because, you know, you cannot trust anyone with clean hands: they will never do the necessary dirty work) you will be ruled by homicidal sociopaths in perpetuity and they will ALWAYS be able to think of more dirty work that needs doing.

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing 23^rd of July 2020.