(thank you Raymond Deane for this review, which does a great job of describing the book and its convergent themes, and for providing analysis and a call to action)


Several of the essays in this remarkable book feature a characteristic "epiphany" (a moment when the hitherto concealed truth of a situation flashes forth). For Maia Ettinger this was a photo in the New York Times showing "a clean-shaven young Arab man" descending "the steps of a government building in Israel", " four uniformed Israeli soldiers... pushing him, tearing at his clothes, kicking his legs. And laughing." For Hedy Epstein it was the applause of "a mainstream Jewish community group" on hearing news of the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982. For Sandra Butler it was the 13th International Women in Black Conference in Israel/Palestine that made her "eyes and ... heart fill with an altered reality..." For Osie Gabriel Adelfang, who has edited the collection, it was translating from Hebrew into English a letter from her refusenik cousin for publication in the UK Guardian (May 6, 2002) that taught her "a lesson in courage and hope."

Such moments are also familiar to many Gentiles whose path to the Palestinian cause was not necessarily a self-evident one. Jews, however, have a specific opportunity - and, perhaps, responsibility - to fight the propaganda ploy that maliciously equates Zionists and Jews, and anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Contributor Emma Rosenthal is refreshingly described as "affirmatively Jewish and assertively anti-Zionist", a combination that is slowly but inevitably changing public perceptions of the Palestine issue in the two countries that hitherto have been most unquestionably supportive of the Zionist project - the USA and Germany.

Rosenthal's prose piece Good Germans (somewhere between a poem and an essay) explores a risky option that is also more available to Jews than to Gentiles: the comparison with Nazi Germany. Starhawk, a global justice activist linked to the International Solidarity Movement, places such a reference in context: "If we don't like the Nazi parallel, we must refuse to become Nazis."

The texts in Shifting Sands do indeed display "a determined sense of justice and compassion" (Michael Parenti) and "a deep sense of love for humanity" (Sam Bahour), but they are also energizing and mobilising. The final Appendix, compiled by Anna Baltzer, is subtitled Get involved! and advocates, among other activities, joining solidarity campaigns, engaging in Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, monitoring the media, and travelling to Palestine - "It will change your life."