My Palestine

by Mohammad Tarbush

English 352 pages 1 edition

‘Here is a book with a big heart. A personal as well as political history of Palestine, poignantly written and closely argued. It’s impossible to read this and continue to argue for the status quo.’—Arundhati Roy ‘ My Palestine portrays, with profound sympathy and knowledge, the courage of the long-suffering Palestinian people as they cope with the catastrophe that has befallen them. It is, above all, an intimate and moving account of the resourcefulness of the human spirit to endure.’—Abdulrazak Gurnah ‘Mohammad Tarbush’s remarkable and courageous life…offers readers a keyhole through which to see the immense forces that created one nation by stealing another. While insisting on justice for the crimes of the ongoing Nakba, Tarbush’s vision for a shared future—rooted in true equality for all people—feels at once inevitable and irresistible.’—Naomi Klein Mohammad Tarbush was born in British Mandate Palestine. As an infant, he and his family were forced to evacuate their village together with its entire population, after the Zionist victory that led to the establishment of the State of Israel. Then as landless refugees in the West Bank, the family sank into poverty. When, as a teenager, Tarbush left home one day under the pretext of visiting relatives in Jordan, he in fact set off on a year-long hitchhiking journey to Europe, where he would eventually become a highly successful international banker and a key behind-the-scenes promoter of the Palestinian cause. In My Palestine , Mohammad Tarbush combines poignant personal memoir with incisive political and economic commentary on the tumultuous events that shaped the history of Israel, Palestine and the modern Middle East.