Selected Product:
| When the Birds Stopped Singing: Life in Ramallah Under Siege
Paperback
Edition: Us
Author: Raja Shehadeh
Publisher: Steerforth
Release Date: 2003-08-10
ISBN-10: 1586420690
ISBN-13: 9781586420697
List Price: $12.95
Average Customer Rating:
  | |
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
ISBN-10: 1851685553
ISBN-13: 9781851685554
List Price:$14.95
Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape
ISBN-10: 1416569669
ISBN-13: 9781416569664
List Price:$15.00
Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine
ISBN-10: 0142002933
ISBN-13: 9780142002933
List Price:$15.00
Reporting from Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land (Semiotext(e) / Active Agents)
ISBN-10: 1584350199
ISBN-13: 9781584350194
List Price:$14.95
I Saw Ramallah
ISBN-10: 1400032660
ISBN-13: 9781400032662
List Price:$12.95
|
To use our price comparison to get the cheapest price, please click on the "Find the Cheapest Price" button located above for When the Birds Stopped Singing: Life in Ramallah Under Siege by Raja Shehadeh (ISBN-10: 1586420690, ISBN-13: 9781586420697).
At this time we have not yet written a review for When the Birds Stopped Singing: Life in Ramallah Under Siege by Raja Shehadeh (ISBN-10: 1586420690, ISBN-13: 9781586420697). Please continue to keep checking back to this page as we are constantly adding reviews.
Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
In April 2002, the Israeli army reoccupied Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority has its headquarters. A tank blocked Raja Shehadeh's road; Israeli soldiers seized his brother’s home and used him as a human shield during a search, as his frightened wife and children watched. When the Birds Stopped Singing reveals the rage and terror of daily life in these dire circumstances, showing how time passes for people imprisoned in their own homes, how they cope with being forbidden to cross the neighborhood to help a sick relative or dying friend. A chronicle of lives that somehow endure under impossible circumstances, Shehadeh's diary is a compelling and important document of a problem that seems increasingly beyond solution.
Very Powerful Account of Palestinian Ordinary Citizens
| Customer Rating: | This book should be read by all of the Western world to gain a perspective on the ordinary citizen living in the Occupied territory of Palestine. So often, I don't think we actually realize what "Occupation" means and how much power remains in Israel's hands even when there is not an actual occupation of a specific city. The author helped me understand the Oslo Accord and how it failed to bring justice to the region.
This account ( using a diary format) really brings home what curfew means to daily life and the fear which comes when soldiers invade without regard to human feelings. Although written in 2003, I'm sure this holds true in 2006, and certainly makes me more attentive to news coming out of their continued struggle. |
Outstanding and very powerful book
| Customer Rating: | This book left me horrified at what is going on in the Middle East. It is even worse than I thought - and I thought I knew a lot about the situation already. Raja's day to day account, written in the form of a diary, gives a first hand account of what it is like to live under Occupation.
This is hell on earth; and we in America are financing it all, with our 3 billion dollars a year that we send to Israel in military aid.
The greatest threat to World Peace lies here, and we are paying for it. |
Average
| Customer Rating:  | | (...)I purchased "When the Birds Stopped Singing" without hesitation as I looked forward to his unique human rights and legal perspective as an adult during the intifada. While his writing style is still engaging, the content is not as strong. This small book is simply a collection of short diary entries that depict his daily experiences during the difficult times. While the situation itself is heart breaking, the entries become redunant with several descriptions of outrageous Israeli soldier behavior, Palestinian subjugation and rebellion, and the difficulties of living some semblance of a normal life under such circumstances. I did not find anything new or compelling in this book, rather I felt I was perusing a random personal journal that was likely never meant to be published. Shehadeh's human rights and legal perspective never seemed to emerge in his entries which left this as an average book that will likely only appeal to those who have not heard many personal accounts of Palestinian life during the intifiada. |
life goes on
| Customer Rating: | | This book is about the siege of Ramallah and Shehadeh tells a heartbreaking story, with plenty of villians to go around. I expected that. To my surprise, what makes the book worth reading are the heroes. Not the Isreali soldiers. Not the PLO. Not Islamic Jihad or Hamas. The heroes of this book are the everyday people who actually try to live a normal life in the West Bank. |
|
