ON RECONCILIATION: What Israelis and Palestinians Can Learn from South Africa and Rwanda

ON RECONCILIATION: What Israelis and Palestinians Can Learn from South Africa and Rwanda
MAYA SAVIR (foreword Aziz Abu Sarah; tr. Todd Hasak-Lowy)
Plough Publishing House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: What Israelis and Palestinians – and everyone else – can learn from South Africans and Rwandans about ending conflict and healing and rebuilding in the aftermath.

All conflicts end. It’s in their nature. The only question is how much time and how many lives will be lost, and when the hard but necessary work of healing begins. Maya Savir, an Israeli professional in humanitarian and development work and peacebuilding, and a mother, spent years working in Rwanda and South Africa, countries that went through successful reconciliation processes many had thought impossible. In this book, she dares to ask whether what she observed and learned there can be applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Reconciliation is an artichoke. It’s not an onion, made up of layer upon layer you peel away until nothing is left. It has layers, yes, but at its center is a heart. This book peels away those characteristics that are not essential for reconciliation until all that is left is the heart. But before examining this heart, we take a close look at the outer layers in specific conflicts, because although they vary with context and may not all be necessary to bring about reconciliation, they are among the most noble and inspiring human expressions and can be part of the dynamics of reconciliation.

Savir invites readers to explore this process of reconciliation candidly and soberly, showing what it takes for peacemaking and restoration to unfold between peoples and within individuals after conflicts. She leads the reader on this journey with compassion, intellectual precision, literary skill, and conviction. Though healing is difficult to imagine in the wake of October 7 and the war in Gaza, On Reconciliation helps us to reconsider the limits of what is possible.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Extended in this translated edition by one chapter, "Reconciliation After October Seventh," dealing with the heinous crimes that figleafed the ongoing war against the Palestinians and thus addresses the biggest reason this book is so urgently needed. It is in Africa that Savir finds her models for a better way forward, one that begins the world's healing process by acknowledging harms done, presenting rational means of defining them, and maintaining a focus on achieving peace with ongoing dialogue within structured boundaries of behavior.

It will be a miracle if Savir's excellent words make the world better on their own, a miracle I myownself will herald as an Act of God with joyous tears should it occur. My more modest, more reality-based hope is that people will pick the book up to see what help they themselves can find for conflicts in their own lives. If it worked in South Africa and Rwanda it will work with your MAGAt cousin or your religious homophobe aunt.

This pull-quote is precisely and exactly correct about Maya Savir; it is for this reasn I want all y'all to read the work it's discussing to feel wistfully hopeful as well as to get real-world tested advice on managing conflict resolution.