Published: 22 January 2025
Last updated: 9 May 2025
The Holy and the Broken: A cry for Israeli-Palestinian peace from a land that must be shared
By Ittay Flescher (HarperCollins)
Reviewed by James Button
Two days after the October 7 massacre, a Jewish father phoned Ittay Flescher, who is education director of the Israeli organisation, Kids4Peace, which seeks to build friendship and trust between Jewish Israeli and Palestinian teenagers. The man said that his 16-year-old daughter planned to leave Kids4Peace after some of her Arab friends posted messages celebrating the massacre. “It is like a punch in the gut to find out that K4P is an illusion,” he told Flescher.
The next day Flescher saw that a Palestinian acquaintance from a different peacebuilding organisation had changed his WhatsApp profile picture to an image of a paraglider. His heart racing, Flescher called the man to say he was shocked and hurt by the post. The man replied that he had family in Gaza and that people could be kept in a cage only for so long. Why then, Flescher asked, did the man still work in peacebuilding? “I do this because it’s a job, but really it’s all bullshit,” the man said. Yet the following day, Flescher noticed that the man had changed his profile picture.
Flescher was now a man groping his way through no-man’s land, flanked by two peoples fixed in mutual incomprehension and hatred, and locked into their own despair. He went to a synagogue, and was overwhelmed by the levels of grief in the room. He fielded hard, anxious questions from his 11-year-old son. Perhaps for the first time he wondered: was his life’s work an illusion?
Flescher’s way of wrestling with events on and after October 7 feels real and raw
Comments3
Ian Light23 January at 08:53 pm
The Palestinians fear annexation and Israeli Security Control .
The Jews and humane Arabs and other Gentiles fear massacres with atrocious barbarism .
There will always be war cruel and criminal but Israeli Power will allow Humanitarian Ceasefires.
David Jackson23 January at 07:06 am
Thanks James, I know Ittay as a former teacher and have read about his laudible efforts in Kids4 Peace, your review makes me wonder how the 2 peoples can ever trust each other again and lay down arms.
This is so incredibly naive22 January at 07:57 pm
Not for a moment do you talk about Islam and Judaism which are two religions that lay claim to a single piece of land. In the Jewish faith the Land of Israel is promised by the Lord to the patriarchs. For Islam there is the idea of Muslim conquest as placing lands in the House of Islam. The belief is that such land must never be ceded to non-muslims.