A novel by Susan Abulhawa
Reviewed by Steve Halpern
The main-stream news media in this country routinely gives an extremely jaded view of the events in the nation that was once called Palestine. Susan Abulhawa cuts through this mythology in her three novels that depict what it means to be a Palestinian in the world today. Against the Loveless World is latest of these important works, and it gives a unique view of how Palestinians have responded to the events over the past 20 years.
The main character in this book is Nahr, who was born in Israel, but is expelled when she was an infant. We might add that Palestinians were about 90% of the population the nation that is now Israel in the year 1900. One of the justifications for supporting the creation of the state of Israel was the Nazi holocaust where fascists murdered about six million Jews. Palestinians never murdered even one Jewish person in the Nazi concentration camps.
Nahr’s family moved to Kuwait and lived there for her early years. During that time, the government of Kuwait viewed Palestinians as second-class citizens. However, Nahr grew fond of Kuwait and all it had to offer.
Nahr’s father died. Her family needed to make a living and to save money to pay for her brother’s education. Because these and several other reasons, Nahr drifted to a life of prostitution.
We might consider that prostitution has a history that is older than marriage. While people who have power tend to openly frown on prostitution, many of these same people are some of the most affluent people who pay for sex. Because of routine discrimination, many women have felt the need to sell their bodies in order to attain the means to live. This reality exists in a world where 40 million people in this country don’t have enough food to eat, and about 40% of the world’s population lives on $2 per day or less.
My dictionary has the following definition of the word prostitution: “The unworthy or corrupt use of one’s talents for the sake of personal or financial gain.” Frederick Engels and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin both wrote about how the state, as we know it, was invented to take the wealth working people create, and use that wealth to benefit a tiny minority. Engels and Lenin also argued that the state is a “special repressive force.” Understanding this argument, we can say that government officials routinely engage in the classic definition of prostitution.
Then, the armed forces of Iraq invaded Kuwait and occupied the country for about six months. The United States went to war against Iraq and restored the Emirate of Kuwait to power. After the U.S. invasion of this region, the government of Kuwait expelled the large Palestinian population. Nahr and her family moved to Jordan.
From Jordan Nahr would eventually move to an agricultural community in the West Bank. We might think about the agreement known as the Oslo Accords of the 1990s between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel agreed to the idea of a Palestinian homeland in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, after signing this accord, the Israeli government proceeded to build numerous settlements in the West Bank. These settlements use most of the water in this area and are separated from the Palestinian majority. Today, about 11% of the population of Israel lives in the West Bank. This is the same land that the Israeli government argued might be the Palestinian homeland.
The family that Nahr lived with had much of their land confiscated. A constant concern of the people living in this village was that the Israeli settlers would take their present home.
In this environment, Nahr becomes a revolutionary. Initially, the other Palestinian revolutionaries were wary of her because she is a woman who freely speaks her mind and was once a prostitute. However, like many women who become revolutionaries in the world, Nahr gains respect from those who at one time questioned her commitment.
Nahr, like many Palestinians, spent years in prison. Susan Abulhawa researched what it means to be held in prison from several people who had been held in the dungeons of this country. This research led her to look at the lives of Mumia Abu Jamal as well as other members of the organization MOVE who have been held in prison for decades.
The title of this book is Against a Loveless World. Thinking about that idea and the prison conditions described in the book, we might think about many of the most important leaders who have also served time in prison. There was, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, Fidel Castro, and George Jackson. So, when we think of Palestinians who are held in prison today, we can also think of all those who served time in dungeons who made profound contributions to the world.
In fact, the title of this book came from James Baldwin who wrote a letter to his nephew with the words: “Here you were to be loved. To be loved baby, hard, at once, and forever, to strengthen you against the loveless world.”
My experience
There is a section in this book where Jewish settlers raid a Palestinian orchard attempting to burn down the trees. This is the kind of effort that has been used to continue to drive Palestinians off their land in the West Bank. In this section of the book a young Palestinian warned the others, “The Jews are coming.”
I happen to be Jewish. For me, it is particularly horrifying to see how the genocide of Palestinians has been justified by the absurd argument that the policies of the Israeli government in some way benefit Jews. In order to understand why I feel this way, my background might be useful.
I was raised in the southern section of Newark, New Jersey known as Weequahic. The novelist Phillip Roth was also raised in this neighborhood and wrote about it in his book Portnoy’s Complaint. I’m younger than the late Philip Ross, and when Ross lived in Weequahic the neighborhood was overwhelmingly Jewish. I lived in this neighborhood when it changed from a Jewish to an African American community.
My father and uncle would never buy a German car because of the Nazi holocaust. During that holocaust, the Nazis murdered about one third of the international Jewish population. I believe that one of the reasons why my parents sent me to Hebrew School was their effort to continue the Jewish identity the Nazis attempted to exterminate.
At that Hebrew school, the teachers routinely glorified the state of Israel. In fact, it wasn’t until I reached the age of nineteen that I heard the word Palestinian for the first time. At that time, I discovered that all those arguments aimed at glorifying Israel were a bold-faced lies.
My years at the Hebrew school culminated with my Bar Mitzvah. This is a celebration of a Jewish boy’s thirteenth birthday. The Bar Mitzvah traditionally signifies when a boy becomes a man. My opinion is that in ancient times, young women began to menstruate at this age, and men became adults because they would soon become fathers.
The Rabbi who supervised my Bar Mitzvah was Joachim Prinz. Prinz was also the President of the World Jewish Congress. He represented that organization marching with Martin Luther King in the 1963 March on Washington that demanded an end to Jim Crow segregation.
Joachim Prinz became a Rabbi in Germany, the nation where he was born. He was a Zionist who argued that Jewish people around the world would only be liberated if they had a homeland in Palestine.
There were about six years after the election of Adolf Hitler where Jews experienced persecution, but they continued to live in Germany. Joachim Prinz was a Rabbi in Germany during those years.
At that time Prinz became friends with a Nazi SS officer who had been charged with carrying out the ruthless programs of the government. We might think about the fact that while the Nazis argued for a homeland for the Arian race in Germany, the Zionists argued for a homeland for Jewish people in Palestine. These were similar philosophies.
Because of information Prinz received from his SS agent friend, he managed to leave Germany before massive numbers of Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. This is when Prinz moved to Newark, New Jersey.
While Prinz celebrated the establishment of the state of Israel, he also protested against the persecution of Palestinians. He was one of the first to advocate for what became the Peace Now movement in Israel. In my opinion, Prinz lived with the contradiction that the establishment of the state of Israel could only lead to the genocide against Palestinians.
Several years ago, I attended a demonstration in Washington D. C. protesting the enormous aid the United States government gives to Israel every year. That demonstration culminated in Lafayette Park that is across the street from the White House. In the middle of that park is a statue of former President Andrew Jackson. Jackson’s portrait is also on the $20 bill.
The so-called history books of this country have labelled Jackson as a “populist.” This is because he pretended to support the interests of working people in this country. However, Jackson was also a slave owner who viciously brutalized human beings he called “slaves.” Jackson was also indifferent to a Supreme Court decision arguing that the Cherokee people had a right to live in their homeland located in what is now the state of Georgia. Because of Jackson’s indifference to that decision, thousands of Cherokee died when they were forced to march hundreds of miles to the Indian Territory that is now the state of Oklahoma.
While I attended the demonstration and viewed the statue of Jackson, I thought about the similarity of the struggles of the Cherokee and the Palestinians. Both had been forced off their homeland by politicians who argued that this genocide served the “greater good.”
We live with a political economic system known as capitalism. Literally all capitalist enterprises depend on a continuing flow of oil in order to survive. Most of that oil is located in the same region of the world as the state of Israel. My opinion is that this is the fundamental reason why Israel has received massive imperialist support for the past 72 years.
While I am Jewish, I’m also a part of the working class of the world. Over the years, I’ve learned that the only way for the working class to advance is by acting on the idea that an injury to one is an injury to all. In other words, the struggle for unconditional liberation for Palestinians, Black people, immigrants, Native Americans, and women can only benefit the interests of workers all over the world.
Susan Abulhawa’s book Against the Loveless World gives us a clear view of why we need to support the unconditional liberation of the women and men who happen to be Palestinian.
