Published: 3 December 2024
Last updated: 3 December 2024
Balcony over Jerusalem by John Lyons
When we were choosing books for the Summer Reading package for parliamentarians, how could we go past John Lyons? He is one of Australia’s most respected journalists, winner of four Walkley awards and many more accolades. Lyons is known for his attention to evidence and fact. At an event earlier this year where he was speaking, the audience was impressed by his refusal to state that Israel was targeting journalists because, as he said, although it might seem that was the case, he had not seen any actual evidence to support it.
Lyons first published Balcony over Jerusalem as a memoir of his six-year stint as The Australian’s foreign correspondent in Jerusalem, but it draws on his three decades of reporting on the Middle East, where he interviewed a huge number of important players as well as ordinary citizens caught up in conflict. This updated edition gives more context to the current situation in Israel and Palestine. Lyons is a journalist of principle and honesty, and for that reason as well as his writing skill, experience and reputation, his book deserved a place on our list.
Comments2
Ian Light3 December at 01:38 am
The Spanish nearly annihilated the indigenous population The British and Americans the Red Indians and the British and Australians the Aboriginal peoples .
In 1880 in Palestine there were 500,000 Arabs when the Jews started returning in greater numbers ,now in 2024 there are 12 million , five million in Israel and Palestine and many millions kilometres away in Islamic lands .
Since 1939 the World Jewish Population has not Increased .
Who are the annihilated.
ilmedico34@icloud.com3 December at 12:36 am
Few Jewish People could read these books without feeling anger and rage over the complete denial of the Islam Nationalist that despise the Jewish People , their immense spiritual and physical connection to the Land of Israel and even more the need for an safe sanctuary to escape from the Holocaust .
In an area of 1500 square kiliometres four million Jewish People would have been saved and no Palestine person
displaced .
A critical review of these books is the basic journalistic path .