Paul Thabet’s Reviews > The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine > Status Update

My father tried to restrain the beast he helped to create, but Israel will stop at nothing, because, as Frantz Fanon scathingly wrote, "Colonialism is not a machine capable of thinking, a body endowed with reason. It is naked violence, and only gives in when confronted with greater violence."

After taking his (Jewish) son, and his sister to practice karate in Ramallah with a group of Palestinian karate students, Miko writes: I do believe that Israelis and Palestinians will live free side by side one day. I wanted to teach them that things will change for the better, and to encourage them to believe it and to act sccordingly. The overwhelming force of the Israeli army can make anyone feel hopeless.

After being arrested at a protest in the West Bank alongside other peace activists, and taken to a police station in an Israeli illegal settlement: "Finally, the station commander came out of his office, clearly exasperated, and explained in slow, simple terms to the army soldiers, "Look, he is an Israeli citizen and he has rights. He's not a Palestinian that I can just beat up and throw in prison."

I began to think to myself, Palestine's landscape is the kind that beckons you to open doors and its people are hospitable and always welcome you with open arms. It is a land of hospitality and kindness. Yet the settlers and their protectors have chosen to impose themselves on this land and its people, to take the land by force and close themselves within fortified ghettos, called settlements.