The back cover copy (translated into English by Noelle Canin and Erella Dunayevsky) from Dunayevsky’s Standing Voiceless and other Stories of Resilience.
“We parted. Jaber accompanied us. As we picked our way through the piles of earth resulting from the demolition on the mountainside, on our way to our car we’d parked on the main dirt road, Jabar suddenly stopped, bent down and pointed to the tiniest green plant forging its way through the collapse of stones and earth, saying: ‘This is a Za’atar sprout, it’s determined to live.’”
The collection of sketches in this book describe a journey of long-standing, intimate encounters with people who live under the unbearable reality of ongoing occupation. These are encounters that evoke humility at the mental strength enabling these people, who experience violence and oppression, destruction, dispossession and loss – yet persist, like the Za’atar sprout, in living their lives, in their homes and on their land, not because the land belongs to them but because they belong to the land.
The author of this collection – Erella Dunayevsky nee Shub – was born and raised in Haifa. In the mid-sixties she came to Kibbutz Shoval in the Negev as part of an army group, where she remains to this day… As a teacher at the end of the eighties, Erella created and directed the project Children Teaching Children where Jewish and Arab children experienced a unique process whereby they taught each other their languages. In the second half of the nineties, Erella was one of the initiators of workshops for Israelis and Palestinians in Nablus and Gaza in which they dealt with the transformation of personal, conflict-related suffering into an inner, constructive and rehabilitative strength. Erella has also brought her wealth of experience to a small unconventional group she helped establish and with whom she’s worked for more than twenty years. The members of the group frequently and consistently visit families in Palestinian villages in the south Hebron hills and in Salem Village near Nablus.
At the heart of an ongoing reality of conflict, an a-symmetrical reality, which is violent and bloody, a reality of oppression and humiliation, Erella chooses to weave ongoing, deep personal relationships, relationships of dignity, mutual trust and love.