2026-01-16

Nathan Thrall - Wikipedia

Nathan Thrall - Wikipedia

Nathan Thrall

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nathan Thrall
Born1979 or 1980 (age 45–46)[1]
Alma mater
OccupationWriter
Websitenathanthrall.com

Nathan Thrall is an American author, essayist, and journalist based in Jerusalem. Thrall is known for his 2023 nonfiction work A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, and is a contributor to several literary magazines. As of 2023 he is a professor at Bard College in New York state.

Thrall is the former director of the Arab-Israeli Project at the International Crisis Group, where from 2010 until 2020 he covered Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel's relations with its neighbors.

Early life and education

Thrall is Jewish, and his mother is a Jewish émigrée from the Soviet Union.[2]

Thrall received a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara's College of Creative Studies and an M.A. in politics from Columbia University.[3] He participated in Birthright Israel and learned Arabic and Hebrew at Tel Aviv University.[1]

Career

Thrall was a member of the editorial staff of The New York Review of Books, before being hired at the International Crisis Group by Robert Malley.[3] At the start of his tenure at the International Crisis Group, Thrall lived in Gaza.[4] He was director of the Arab-Israeli Project at the group, where from 2010 to 2020 he covered Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel's relations with its neighbors.[5]

As of 2021 he is a contributor to The New York Times Magazine,[6] the London Review of Books,[7] and The New York Review of Books.[8]

As of November 2023 Thrall is a professor at Bard College, a private liberal arts college in Red Hook.[9]

Books

The Only Language They Understand

Thrall's first published book was an essay collection, The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine (Metropolitan/Henry Holt, 2017; Picador, 2018). It received positive reviews in The New York Times,[10] Foreign Affairs,[11] Time,[12] and The New York Review of Books.[13] The Jewish Book Council's Bob Goldfarb wrote that his book, The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine, "brings unparalleled clarity to the dynamics of Israeli-Palestinian relations, and is an essential guide to the history, personalities, and ideas behind the conflict."[14] Mosaic selected the book as one of the best of the year, writing, "A knowledgeable and bold retelling of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that forces readers to take a serious and fresh look at their assumptions. Throughout its counterintuitive retelling of this history, it offers an unusually provocative and sometimes startling contribution to the genre."[15]

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy (2023) is a work of non-fiction that tells the story of interwoven lives of several Palestinian inhabitants of a part of Jerusalem occupied by Israel, centred around a man called Abed Salama. It was named a best book of 2023 by over ten publications, including The New Yorker,[16] The Economist,[17] Time,[18] The Financial Times,[19] The New Republic,[20] The Millions,[21] Mother Jones,[22] The Forward,[23] Booklist,[24] The New Statesman,[25] and The Irish Times,[26] and was selected as a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice.[27] The Financial Times named it a best book of 2023 in two categories, Literary Nonfiction[19] and Politics,[28] stating, "This quietly heartbreaking work of non-fiction reads like a novel. At its centre is a tragic road accident outside Jerusalem in the West Bank from which Thrall, a Jewish American journalist, carefully traces the labyrinthine lives of those involved and the tangled web of politics, history and culture that ensnare them all."[19]

It won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction[29] and was shortlisted for the 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Writing.[30]

Journalism

"The Separate Regimes Delusion"

In January 2021, the London Review of Books published Thrall's article, "The Separate Regimes Delusion," which argued, "The premise that Israel is a democracy, maintained by Peace Now, Meretz, the editorial board of Haaretz and other critics of occupation, rests on the belief that one can separate the pre-1967 state from the rest of the territory under its control. A conceptual wall must be maintained between two regimes: (good) democratic Israel and its (bad) provisional occupation."[31] Thrall's article was praised in Haaretz by Gideon Levy, who wrote, "the American writer Nathan Thrall, who lives in Jerusalem, published an eye-opening and mind-expanding piece in The London Review of Books .... Thrall doesn't hesitate to criticize the supposedly liberal-Zionist and leftist organizations, from Meretz and Peace Now to Yesh Din and Haaretz. All of them believe that Israel is a democracy and oppose annexation because it could undermine their false belief that the occupation is happening somewhere else, outside of Israel, and is only temporary."[32]

"A Day in the Life of Abed Salama"

In March 2021, The New York Review of Books published Thrall's piece, "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: One man's quest to find his son lays bare the reality of Palestinian life under Israeli rule,"[33] together with an animated trailer.[34] The article was covered in The Washington Post,[35] Foreign Policy,[36] The American Prospect,[37] Jewish Currents,[38] European publications,[39][40] the Israeli newspaper Haaretz,[41] a podcast episode hosted by New York Times columnist Peter Beinart,[42] and a two-part, forty-minute segment on Democracy Now![43][44] Longreads called it "an astonishing feat of reporting" and named it a Best Feature of 2021.[45][46][47]

Thrall went on to write a non-fiction book based on the article, completing the work with the help of New York Bard College, which awarded Thrall a writing fellowship. The college invited him to teach a course and Thrall proposed one on Israeli apartheid which he gave for Spring 2023.[48][49] A Day in the Life of Abed Salama-Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy was published on October 3, 2023 by Metropolitan Books.

Bibliography

Books

Book chapters

  • "Can Hamas be part of the solution?," in Jamie Stern-Weiner ed., Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel–Palestine's Toughest Questions. New York, New York: OR Books, 2018.[51]

References

  1.  "What You Are Getting Wrong About Israel, According to Nathan Thrall". Haaretz. March 15, 2024.
  2.  Rachel Cooke (October 15, 2023). "'It's lonely being a Jewish critic of Israel' – Nathan Thrall on his book about a Palestinian father's tragedy". The Guardian.
  3.  Seaton, Matt; Thrall, Nathan (March 20, 2021). "The Endless Occupation, a New Understanding". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  4.  Thrall, Nathan (May 16, 2017). The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 978-1-62779-710-8.
  5.  "Nathan Thrall". Crisis Group. July 14, 2016. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  6.  Thrall, Nathan (March 28, 2019). "How the Battle Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Is Fracturing American Politics". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  7.  Thrall, Nathan. "Nathan Thrall · LRB". London Review of Books. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  8.  "Nathan Thrall". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  9.  McGreal, Chris (November 8, 2023). "Israeli diplomat pressured US college to drop course on 'apartheid' debate". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved January 26, 2024.
  10.  Beckerman, Gal (May 22, 2017). "50 Years On, Stories of the Six Day War and What Came After". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  11.  Koplow, Michael J. (August 14, 2019). "Language Lessons". Foreign Affairs. ISSN 0015-7120. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  12.  "Is Force the Solution to Peace in the Middle East?". Time. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  13.  Shulman, David. "Israel's Irrational Rationality". New York Review of Books. ISSN 0028-7504. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  14.  "The Only Language They Understand | Jewish Book Council". 2017.
  15.  "The Best Books of 2018, Chosen by Mosaic Authors » Mosaic". Mosaic. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  16.  "The Best Books of 2023". The New Yorker. January 25, 2023. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  17.  "The best books of 2023, as chosen by The Economist". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  18.  "The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023". TIME. December 7, 2023. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  19.  Wilkinson, Carl (November 16, 2023). "Best books of 2023 — Literary non-fiction". Financial Times. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  20.  Republic, The New; Marsh, Laura; Marsh, Laura; Alam, Rumaan; Alam, Rumaan; Nwanevu, Osita; Nwanevu, Osita; Kindley, Evan; Kindley, Evan (December 18, 2023). "The New Republic's Books of the Year". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  21.  Schwartz, Madeleine (December 19, 2023). "A Year in Reading: Madeleine Schwartz". The Millions. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  22.  Jones, Mother. "The 29 books we couldn't stop thinking about in 2023". Mother Jones. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  23.  Connelly, Irene Katz (December 18, 2023). "The best Jewish books of 2023". The Forward. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  24.  Booklist Editors' Choice: Adult Books, 2023, by | Booklist Online.
  25.  Statesman, New (November 24, 2023). "Books of the year 2023". New Statesman. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  26.  "The best books of 2023: Writers and critics choose". The Irish Times. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  27.  "9 New Books We Recommend This Week". The New York Times. November 30, 2023. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  28.  Rachman, Gideon (November 17, 2023). "Best books of 2023 — Politics". Financial Times. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  29.  "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, by Nathan Thrall (Metropolitan Books)". Pulitzer Prize. Retrieved May 6, 2024.
  30.  "Orwell Prizes 2024 shortlists announced". Books and Publishing. June 11, 2024. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  31.  Thrall, Nathan (January 21, 2021). "The Separate Regimes Delusion". London Review of Books. Vol. 43, no. 2. ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  32.  Levy, Gideon (January 17, 2021). "Not 'Apartheid in the West Bank.' Apartheid". Haaretz. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  33.  Thrall, Nathan (March 19, 2021). "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  34.  The New York Review of Books (March 18, 2021). "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama [video]". Vimeo.
  35.  "Analysis | As Israel votes again, Palestinians still wait their turn". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  36.  Walt, Stephen M. (May 27, 2021). "It's Time to End the 'Special Relationship' With Israel". Foreign Policy. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  37.  Alterman, Eric (April 2, 2021). "Altercation: An Anti-Semite Who's Anything But". The American Prospect. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  38.  "Shabbat Reading List". Jewish Currents. March 19, 2021. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  39.  Schipper, Jannie (April 27, 2021). "'Apartheidsstaat Israël stevent af op compleet succes voor de kolonisten'". NRC (in Dutch). Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  40.  "" Pourquoi maintenant ? " : sur les origines de la guerre des onze jours". Le Grand Continent (in French). May 29, 2021. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  41.  "J Street Conference Marks 'A New Day in Washington' for U.S.-Israel Relations". Haaretz. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  42.  ""Occupied Thoughts": Nathan Thrall, Peter Beinart, and "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama"". Foundation for Middle East Peace. March 31, 2021. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  43.  "Nathan Thrall on the Historic Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Control from the River to the Sea". Democracy Now!. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  44.  "Nathan Thrall on "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama" & Reality of Palestinian Life Under Israeli Rule". Democracy Now!. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  45.  "What Happened to Milad? A Palestinian Father Searches for His Son". Longreads. May 24, 2021. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  46.  "The Top 5 Longreads of the Week". Longreads. May 21, 2021. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
  47.  "Best of 2021: Features". Longreads. December 16, 2021. Retrieved December 18, 2021.
  48.  McGreal, Chris (November 8, 2023). "Israeli diplomat pressured US college to drop course on 'apartheid' debate". The Guardian.
  49.  "Coursicle – Chat with classmates". www.coursicle.com. Archived from the original on November 13, 2023. Retrieved November 8, 2023.
  50.  Thrall, Nathan (2023). A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy. New York, NY: Metropolitan/Henry Holt. ISBN 9781250854971.
  51.  "Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel–Palestine's Toughest Questions − Edited by Jamie Stern-Weiner". OR Books. February 20, 2018. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
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A Day in the Life of Abed Salama

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy
AuthorNathan Thrall
LanguageEnglish
PublisherMacmillan Publishers[1]
Publication date
2023
Publication placeUnited States
Pages272
ISBN9781250291530

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy is a 2023 book by journalist Nathan Thrall, published by Macmillan. The book details a 2012 road accident involving a school bus in which several Palestinian children and a teacher were killed. The book explores how a myriad of security measures including a separation wall and military checkpoints, forced segregation in the West Bank between Israeli Settlements and Palestinians, and bureaucratic limits on Palestinian citizens' freedom of movement led to long delays in emergency care for the children, obstacles which the author argues are entirely manmade. The book follows a father (Abed Salama) of one of the boys hurt in the accident as he searches for his son (Milad).

Thrall initially reported on the accident in a 2021 piece in the New York Review of Books and expanded upon the contents of the article into the 2023 book.[2]

The book was awarded the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction and was a finalist for the Orwell Prize for political literature.[3][4]

Narrative

The book details a 2012 road accident in which a school bus carrying Palestinian kindergartners and their teachers on Highway 60 collided with a lorry and overturned. The school bus caught fire and many of the occupants were severely burned. Six students and one teacher were killed in the accident. That stretch of Highway 60 was poorly maintained, and travelled mostly by Palestinians (with Israelis using a newly completed highway nearby). Despite an Israeli settlement being a few minutes away, emergency services were severely delayed in reaching the scene and ordinary citizens entered the burning bus to rescue victims and transported the injured to local hospitals in private vehicles. United Nations health workers as part of the UNRWA also attended to the victims, and eventually Israeli emergency workers. One of the children on the bus was 5-year-old Milad Salama who was taken to a local hospital and later died of his injuries. The narrative details his father's protracted attempts to find his son in the aftermath of the tragedy. Abed Salama did not have the blue identity card for Palestinians in the West Bank making navigating military checkpoints especially difficult.

The book explores the earlier life of Abed Salama, including his previous relationships and family life. It also details how Salama's life was shaped by the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and how many of his ambitions were destroyed by the Israeli government. During the First Intifada (Palestinian Uprising) of 1987-1993 the Israeli government closed Palestinian universities in the West Bank preventing Salama from attending college. He attempted to obtain a visa to study abroad but his application was denied by the Israeli government. Salama later joined the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and was arrested and tortured in 1989.[5] He was represented in the military court by Israeli lawyer Lea Tsemel. Salama was convicted based on a third party statement documenting his illegal activities which he was not able to provide testimony during the case. Salama spent 6 months in Ketziot Prison. Thrall documents how the mass incarceration of Palestinians in the West Bank devastates the community; with children as young as 12 being jailed for offenses such as throwing stones at soldiers. Regarding the mass incarceration, Thrall noted that Palestinians facing military tribunals in the West Bank are convicted of crimes at a rate of 99.7% and that 700,000 Palestinians had been arrested during the occupation, representing 40% of all men and boys in the West Bank.

The book also documents the lives of other Palestinian parents who searched for their children on the tragic day as well as other Israelis and Palestinians connected by the tragedy. Thrall documents how endocrinologist Huda Dahbour, who was working at a nearby UNRWA mobile clinic, rushed to aid the victims of the tragedy. Thrall explained that her own son had been imprisoned by the Israeli government for throwing stones at IDF soldiers. Thrall also documents how some Israelis are working to improve relations with their Palestinian neighbors. Thrall describes how Adi Shpeter (from the Jewish settlement of Anatot) is working to improve relations with the Palestinian Authority by working with local representative Ibrahim Salama (Abed's cousin), how Israeli paramedic Edlad Benshtein had had his own past traumas unearthed after he tended to the accident victims, how Duli Yariv collected monetary donations to help the victims of the tragedy. Thrall concluded that the tragedy was a result of a system of forced segregation (separate roads, towns, schools), willful neglect of Palestinian infrastructure, denial of Palestinian rights including the militaristic denial of freedom of movement. Thrall concluded that the tragedy was preventable and a result of the oppressive system in which Palestinians live in.

Reception

Writing for The New York Times Rozina Ali stated that Thrall was able to meticulously document the oppressive political system in which Palestinians live under without including political biases.[6] Writing for The Guardian, Alex Preston stated that in the wake of the October 7 attacks and the Gaza war; "...a book such as A Day in the Life of Abed Salama brims over with just the sort of compassion and understanding that is needed at a time like this." Preston also stated that Thrall examined the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with nuance, comparing the reporting to Colum McCann's novel Apeirogon.[7]

References

  1.  "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama". us.macmillan.com. Macmillan Publishers.
  2.  Thrall, Nathan (March 19, 2021). "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama". The New York Review of Books.
  3.  "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, by Nathan Thrall (Metropolitan Books)". Pulitzer.org.
  4.  "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A Palestine Story | The Orwell Foundation". www.orwellfoundation.com. Orwell Foundation.
  5.  Curthoys, Ned (April 1, 2024). "A Palestinian bus crash that killed six kindergarteners represents an oppressive system – but a father's story offers hope". The Conversation.
  6.  Ali, Rozina (October 2023). "The Deadly Red Tape of Israel's Occupation in Palestine". The New York Times.
  7.  Preston, Alex (October 12, 2023). "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A Palestine Story by Nathan Thrall – review". The Observer.
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The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine

Nathan Thrall
Henry Holt and Company, 2017. 5. 16. - 288페이지


In a myth-busting analysis of the world's most intractable conflict, a star of Middle East reporting, "one of the most important writers" in the field (The New York Times), argues that only one weapon has yielded progress: force.

Scattered over the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea lie the remnants of failed peace proposals, international summits, secret negotiations, UN resolutions, and state-building efforts. The conventional story is that these well-meaning attempts at peacemaking were repeatedly, perhaps terminally, thwarted by violence.

Through a rich interweaving of reportage, historical narrative, and powerful analysis, Nathan Thrall presents a startling counter-history. He shows that force—including but not limited to violence—has impelled each side to make its largest concessions, from Palestinian acceptance of a two-state solution to Israeli territorial withdrawals. This simple fact has been neglected by the world powers, which have expended countless resources on initiatives meant to diminish friction between the parties. By quashing any hint of confrontation, promising an imminent negotiated solution, facilitating security cooperation, developing the institutions of a still unborn Palestinian state, and providing bounteous economic and military assistance, the United States and Europe have merely entrenched the conflict by lessening the incentives to end it. Thrall’s important book upends the beliefs steering these failed policies, revealing how the aversion of pain, not the promise of peace, has driven compromise for Israelis and Palestinians alike.

Published as Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza reaches its fiftieth anniversary, which is also the centenary of the Balfour Declaration that first promised a Jewish national home in Palestine, The Only Language They Understand advances a bold thesis that shatters ingrained positions of both left and right and provides a new and eye-opening understanding of this most vexed of lands.« 간략히



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목차


Preface 1


DOMINATION 75


Going Native 94


COLLABORATION 109


Palestinian Paralysis 124


The End of the Abbas Era 130


Not Popular Enough 137


Rage in Jerusalem 149




Trapped in Gaza 167


NEGOTIATION 179


FaithBased Diplomacy 190


Obamas Palestine Legacy 210


Notes 225


Acknowledgments 309


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