Second Person Singular

"Sayed Kashua is a Palestinian citizen of Israel: a Palestinian in origin, living in Israel. Most Jewish people would call Palestinian citizens of Israel ‘Israeli-Arabs’ because many Jews don’t acknowledge the idea of Palestinian identity, but they would call themselves Palestinian citizens of Israel because they’re saying, ‘We’re not just Arabs, we’re Palestinians living in Israel and we do consider ourselves Palestinians, and you won’t be the ones who decide which identity we have.’ This is exactly what this novel is about. It is about the struggle to have an identity. “He knows that he will never be part of Israeli society unless he is Jewish” Kashua wrote this brilliant novel about this situation. His protagonist is a Palestinian social worker who lives in Jerusalem and works in Jerusalem, and wants to feel part of Israeli society, while knowing that he will never be part of Israeli society unless he is Jewish. I think it asks a lot questions about of what sides of your own identity you have to be willing to cut in order to be accepted. I think it is because he dares to tell the truth, and people are fascinated by it, but there is only so much truth one can take before it’s too much. For a long time, he was very much loved, and then in the middle of the Gaza war, he wrote a very painful article about how he felt that everybody on the Israeli side was too busy with what was happening to the Israeli soldiers. He said, ‘OK, but what’s happening to the people in Gaza?’ People couldn’t stand it, because, for them, writing about the Palestinian suffering is like saying that you don’t care about the Israeli suffering, which, of course, is not what he meant at all, but when you think it is a zero sum game, then I think today it’s very difficult for some of the Israeli public to accept what he is writing. But I think he’s the most important Israeli writer today."