Published: 14 May 2025
Last updated: 15 May 2025
Reading Forgotten: Searching for Palestine’s Hidden Places and Lost Memorials by Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson is like walking through a cemetery without headstones: the absence of memory is as loud as what’s remembered. It is a book of quiet Palestinian rebellion, of resisting erasure not through confrontation, but through careful attention: to place, to story, and to what lies just beneath the surface.
The authors guide us across through pre-1948 Palestine — what is now Israel, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza — not to lecture, but to notice. They trace the contours of a land shaped by grief, love, and, above all, complexity. They visit abandoned shrines, razed villages, forgotten tombs. In each, they ask: What do we remember? And what do we choose to forget?
In Chapter 5, they search for the tomb of Nabi Ukkasha, a 7th-century companion of the prophet Mohammed whose grave is believed to lie in the heart of West Jerusalem, not far from Jaffa road on Rehov Haneviim, and just a stone’s throw from Aroma café and light rail tracks.
I, too, went looking for this site, after reading the book, and what I found startled me. Like the authors, I saw a minaret, a mosque and an ancient domed mausoleum with a similar design to that of Rachel’s tomb in Bethlehem. Yet since they wrote the book two years ago, something had changed. Not only was there no acknowledgement of Nabi Ukkasha, now there are Hebrew signs proclaiming the “Tomb of Benjamin,” surrounded by Hebrew prayer books, , menorahs, and tzedakah boxes. The Islamic identity of the tomb had been replaced with a single narrative asserting itself over another.
How did this happen?
Comments5
Mandy25 January at 10:31 pm
Thank you for your sensitive review of this interesting little book, and your ability to empathize with “the other”. I’m really glad I stopped by your publication, it has given me some hope. Keep up the good work Jewish Independent!
Simon Krite20 May at 04:03 am
David – Not shooting the messenger, just pointing out that when the “messenger” consistently frames events through a revisionist, anti-Zionist lens, it’s worth questioning the message. Support for Israel doesn’t require delusion, but it also shouldn’t require swallowing narratives that erase context, downplay terrorism, or undermine Jewish self-determination. Truth deserves scrutiny too. Did you see Itai’s interview with Eylon?
David Milston18 May at 11:52 pm
Simon Krite seems to believe in shooting the messenger because he is unable to refute the truth that Itai Flescher has described. Support for Israel should not require deluding ourselves.
Vivienne Aarons15 May at 07:27 pm
Walking in Jerusalem today 15th May with a certified Israeli guide, this particular grave was discussed. His story was that the graves belonged to a Jerusalem Islamic family, later altered to be that of a companion of Mohommad, and then later “taken over” as the grave of Benjamin. Plenty of co-opting by everyone, and none of it good. However it pales into insignificance compared with the Palestinian narrative that there were never 2 Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount. That is truly erasing a people’s history.
Simon Krite15 May at 08:37 am
Another “rediscovery” of buried Palestinian history — this time guided by Ittay Flescher, who’s made a comfortable career out of the multi-faith peace industry, only to watch that carefully curated dream go up in flames post–October 7.
Let’s be clear: no one is disputing that the land carries layers of memory for all its peoples. But when Flescher throws his weight behind a book like Forgotten, by Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson — both known for their long-standing affiliations with anti-Zionist causes — what we’re really getting is not “history,” but a politically filtered narrative designed to undermine the legitimacy of Israel’s existence, piece by piece (or, shall we say, “site by site”).
This isn’t Flescher’s first rodeo in historical rebranding. His articles in Haaretz, ABC Religion & Ethics, and Crikey follow the same pattern — morally equating Israeli statehood with Palestinian victimhood, presenting occupation as the only lens, and carefully omitting context like the endless waves of terrorism or repeated refusals of statehood.
And let’s not forget The Holy and the Broken, his earlier work, which attempted to fuse Leonard Cohen lyrics with moral relativism. Beautiful prose, dangerous message: all trauma is equal, therefore all blame is shared. But after October 7, that balancing act falls flat. There’s no symmetry between rape, child slaughter, and hostage-taking — and a state trying to stop it.
Yes, Ittay’s a polished storyteller. Yes, his interfaith work once had value. But this piece — like the book he’s promoting — feels less like honest reflection and more like another page from the revisionist playbook: undermine Zionism gently, one poetic phrase at a time.
And one more thing — did anyone catch Flescher’s meltdown with Eylon Levy? If not, I strongly suggest you look it up and start asking the right questions. It’s telling.
Because in the end, the real threat isn’t loud propaganda — it’s the softly spoken, academically framed revisionism that rewrites the story of a people’s survival as someone else’s erasure.