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Nathan Thrall, Pulitzer Prize Winning Author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
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2024
The Pulitzer Prize committee honored Nathan Thrall for his “finely reported and intimate account of life under Israeli occupation of the West Bank.”
Photo: Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times
“Nathan Thrall: ‘The scale and brutality of the Israeli response in Gaza hasn’t surprised me, no,’” an interview by Tim Adams in The Observer, the weekend edition of The Guardian.
The New Yorker Radio Hour host David Remnick speaks with Nathan Thrall and Raja Shehadeh on the occupation of the West Bank and A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, which Remnick calls “The best account I've read of how the occupation has made life for Palestinians oppressive, hopeless, and nearly unlivable.”
In The Book Club, the podcast of The Spectator, Nathan Thrall speaks with Spectator literary editor Sam Leith about A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.
In The American Prospect, co-editor Robert Kuttner writes: “If you need a primer on the daily humiliations inflicted on the Palestinian population, you owe it to yourself to read Nathan Thrall’s book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama. Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank meet any test of apartheid, and Israel is behaving precisely like a colonial power.”
The Seattle Times names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama one of its paperback picks for August.
On KQED Forum, Nathan Thrall speaks with host Mina Kim: “Nathan Thrall Lays Bare Everyday Reality of Life Under Occupation.”
Democracy Now! hosts Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh speak with Nathan Thrall from Germany: “Pulitzer Winner Nathan Thrall on Israel’s ‘System of Domination’ and Biden Pausing Bomb Shipment.”
“Nathan Thrall won the Pulitzer because he writes with ‘feelings, and not with ink,’” an interview with Nathan Thrall by The Forward’s editor-in-chief Jodi Rudoren.
On the Useful Idiots podcast, Katie Halper and Aaron Maté speak with Nathan Thrall.
For the release of the documentary film Where Olive Trees Weep, a panel discussion of Dehumanization and the Ongoing Nakba in Palestine with the filmmakers and Ussama Makdisi, Sherene Seikaly, and Nathan Thrall.
In VilaWeb, Mercè Ibarz reviews A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: “Això és Palestina, Nathan Thrall ho explica.”
In El Mundo, Gonzalo Suárez speaks with Nathan Thrall: “Cómo las 24 horas de un padre buscando a su hijo muerto explica el conflicto entre Israel y Palestina mejor que cualquier otra historia.”
In L’Espresso, Paola Caridi speaks with Nathan Thrall: “Il premio Pulitzer Nathan Thrall: «Ho visto i miei concittadini festeggiare per dei bambini morti: siamo al disumano».”
In The Journal, Nathan Thrall speaks with David MacRedmond: “Nathan Thrall on telling Palestinian stories, wary publishers and cancelled promotional events.”
On KALW public radio’s Your Call, Rose Aguilar speaks with Nathan Thrall: “Humanizing the Palestinian experience as the assault on Gaza continue.”
In EFE, Patricia Martínez Sastre speaks with Nathan Thrall: “Thrall, ganador del Pulitzer: ‘La ocupación israelí de Palestina es una catástrofe moral.’”
In La Stampa, Uski Audino speaks with Nathan Thrall: “L’Europa deve isolare Israele, palestinesi nei ghetti da 50 anni.”
On Dawn News English, Shahzeb Jillani speaks with Nathan Thrall.
On the World Socialist Web Site, James McDonald reviews A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: “Thrall effectively translates his meticulous journalistic research into novelistic form. The various threads he takes up collectively form a comprehensive picture, not only of an incident but of a tragically despotic nation. His prose is direct and crystal clear.”
In The Hindu, Stanly Johny reviews A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: “The ‘Oslo trap’, a number of wars and other challenges in the Israel-Palestine conflict.”
In the Hindustan Times, Majid Maqbool speaks with Nathan Thrall: “Stories have the power to move even the most closed minds.”
In Kathimerini, Xenia Kounalaki speaks with Nathan Thrall: “Νέιθαν Θραλ στην «Κ»: Κάθε μέρα που περνάει, χάνει το Ισραήλ.”
In Religion News Service, Yonat Shimron speaks to Nathan Thrall: “He won a Pulitzer for his book on the Israeli occupation. Then came the cancellations.”
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama receives the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. The Pulitzer Prize winners are covered in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and The Washington Post, which interviewed Thrall on the night of the announcement.
In Haaretz, David Green profiles Nathan Thrall: “What You Are Getting Wrong About Israel, According to Nathan Thrall.”
In La Repubblica, Francesca Caferri speaks with Nathan Thrall: “Gli israeliani, i palestinesi e un incidente stradale: cosa divide due popoli, in un libro.”
In The Saturday Paper, Geraldine Brooks states that “Nathan Thrall has written an amazing work of nonfiction that I devoured…a beautiful book that...is powerful and far reaching in its portrait of life in Israel and Palestine.”
On Lever Time with David Sirota, Pulitzer Prize winner Nathan Thrall details life in the Gaza Strip and West Bank since Oct. 7 and explores what’s motivating Benjamin Netanyahu.
On Radio New Zealand’s Saturday Morning, Nathan Thrall speaks about A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.
In the ABC News Documentary Program Four Corners, Nathan Thrall speaks with John Lyons about the war in Gaza: “Self-defence or genocide? Asking Israel’s powerful voices about Gaza.”
CNN’s Ivana Kottasová speaks with Nathan Thrall about the war in Gaza: “Six months into the war in Gaza, Israel has no exit strategy and no real plan for the future.”
In Le Grand Continent, a conversation between Shahin Vallée and Nathan Thrall. “Israel: Anatomy of a Tragedy: A Conversation with Pulitzer Prize Winner Nathan Thrall.”
On ABC’s Q+A, Nathan Thrall joins Katy Gallagher, Keith Wolahan, Jamal Rifi, and Sabine Wolff to discuss current events with host Patricia Karvelas and a live audience in Melbourne.
On Sense of Place, the Jonathan Green-hosted Saturday radio program of Australia’s national broadcaster ABC, journalist and author Nathan Thrall takes us to the city he calls the most divided in the world – his home city of Jerusalem.
On ABC’s Late Night Live, Nathan Thrall talks to host Phillip Adams about life in the West Bank.
In The Conversation, Ned Curthoys writes that A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is “a book that left me devastated, but full of appreciation for what it achieves...It is a must-read for anyone who wishes to understand the cruel realities of an everyday occupation.”
In NRC, Lucia Admiraal reviews A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: “Het busongeluk dat alles vertelt over leven onder Israëlische bezetting.”
In Inside Story, Sara Dowse calls A Day in the Life of Abed Salama “a brilliant work of non-fiction. ...For those whose hearts and minds are still open, this is the book.”
On Under the Tree, Nathan Thrall speaks with host Bill Ayers about the Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy.
On Boise Public Radio, Reader’s Corner host Bob Kustra speaks with Nathan Thrall about his new book.
In the Times Literary Supplement, Ahdaf Soueif writes of the reality of life under occupation: “In the book, [Thrall] brings the reader as close to this reality as can possibly be done with words. Through the painstaking accumulation of detail after detail he enables the reader who has never been to Palestine to experience life under Israeli occupation.”
In the Los Angeles Review of Books, David Myers writes: “The genius of Thrall’s book lies in its ability to unearth the lives, aspirations, and sentiments of his protagonists.”
On Occupied Thoughts, the podcast of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, a conversation between Dr. Yara Asi and Nathan Thrall: “Separation, Dehumanization, Theft of Time: A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.”
On LARB Radio Hour, Nathan Thrall joins Kate Wolf to talk about his recent book.
2023
The New Yorker names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama one of the 12 best nonfiction of 2023.
Time names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama one of the 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023: “Thrall tackles the subject with care and expertise, introducing the lives of several Israelis and Palestinians to illuminate their struggles and complex histories.”
The Economist names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama a best book of 2023.
The New Republic names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama a best book of 2023.
The Forward names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama a best book of 2023.
Mother Jones names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama a best book of 2023.
The Irish Times names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama a best book of 2023.
Booklist names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama a Best Book of 2023: “a heartbreaking exposé of how Israel’s occupation has long made ordinary life all but impossible for Palestinians.”
The New York Times Book Review names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama a New York Times Editors’ Choice.
NPR selects A Day in the Life of Abed Salama as its NPR Book of the Day.
In The New Yorker, Nathan Thrall speaks with Isaac Chotiner about how Hamas’s incursion may have changed Israeli politics, whether debates about a one-state solution versus a two-state solution are helpful, and America’s role in the conflict.
On CNN’s Amanpour, Bianna Golodryga speaks to Nathan Thrall about his new book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy: “‘A system of gross inequality’: Author on life in the occupied West Bank.”
In Out of It, Mary Gaitskill writes of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: “A true story that lays bare, in appalling detail, the cruelty that Palestinians have been subjected to on a daily basis for years.”
In Jewish Currents, Mari Cohen speaks with Nathan Thrall about his new book and the escalating repression of pro-Palestine speech.
In The New Yorker, Andrew Marantz calls A Day in the Life of Abed Salama “a searing yet understated account of one Palestinian family’s travails under occupation in the West Bank.”
On C-Span Book TV, Professor Barbara Ransby, Rabbin Brant Rosen, and Human Rights Watch’s Omar Shakir discuss A Day in the Life of Abed Salama with Nathan Thrall.
The Financial Times names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama one of the Best Books of 2023 - Literary Nonfiction. Carl Wilkinson writes: “This quietly heartbreaking work of non-fiction reads like a novel. At its centre is a tragic road accident outside Jerusalem in the West Bank from which Thrall, a Jewish American journalist, carefully traces the labyrinthine lives of those involved and the tangled web of politics, history and culture that ensnare them all.”
In Literary Hub, Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes: “Like J. Anthony Lukas’s Common Ground or Javier Cercas’s Anatomy of a Moment, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is digressive narrative nonfiction as a major piece of political art.”
In The Millions, Madeleine Schwartz writes that “Nathan Thrall’s A Day in the Life of Abed Salama reminded me that the best reporting brings human stories to inhuman systems. I hope many will read it.”
In Foreign Affairs, Lisa Anderson reviews A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: “Thrall’s powerful and moving portrayal of the quotidian frustrations of life under Israeli occupation is both a painful reminder of the costs of conflict and, in its insistence on the humanity of its protagonists, both Israeli and Palestinian, a glimmer of hope.”
On KCRW’s Press Play, Nathan Thrall speaks with Madeleine Brand about A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.
In Electric Lit, Shane Burley speaks to Nathan Thrall about “The Physical and Invisible Walls that Determine the Lives of Palestinians.”
On The Stacks podcast, Nathan Thrall speaks with Traci Thomas about A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.
In She Reads, Traci Thomas names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama a Best Book of 2023.
How to Be Books names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama a Best Book of 2023.
In The New York Times, Vimal Patel writes a piece about Nathan Thrall’s refusal to sign a pledge vowing not to boycott Israel or its settlements:
“At University of Arkansas, a State Law Stifles Pro-Palestinian Speakers.
To receive a modest speaker’s fee, academics and writers must sign a pledge that they will not participate in anti-Israel boycotts. The author Nathan Thrall said no thank you.”For the Vox podcast Today Explained, Nathan Thrall speaks to host Noel King about increasing settler and army attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.
The Financial Times names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama one of the Best Books of 2023 - Politcs. Gideon Rachman writes: “A compelling and detailed account of a small tragedy in the West Bank that illuminates the larger tragedy of Palestinians living under occupation. Thrall tells the story of a bus accident that killed six children and a teacher — and how their lives were shaped and constrained by Israeli policy, leading indirectly to their deaths.”
Time magazine names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama to its Best Books of 2023. Karl Vick writes: “Nathan Thrall not only recounts a father’s frantic search for his 5-year-old son after the crash; his deeply reported book also places the reader in the realm Palestinians navigate every day, a lesser world in which life and death may be decided by others.”
The New Statesman names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama one of the Best Books of 2023. Samuel Moyn writes: “Nathan Thrall’s A Day in the Life of Abed Salama chronicles the asymmetry in the occupied West Bank today that its main character cannot reverse. It is one of the most effective presentations of quotidian injustice I have read, precisely because the story Thrall narrates is not a matter of the gory violence that has become so prevalent in the region since.”
In The Guardian, Jonathan Freedland writes: “A book that is … by turns deeply affecting and, in its concluding chapters, as tense as a thriller.… Such storytelling is in itself a radical act, for it insists on humanising those who are so often discussed – especially at times of intense violence, like now – solely as constituent parts of a category: "Palestinians." … Thrall’s achievement is to make us see [the occupation]– and feel its injustice – afresh.”
In The Irish Times, Colum McCann writes: “Magnificent ... a piercingly forensic account ... The book does what all good stories should do―it unfolds both minutely and epically at the same time. It does not moralize, and yet it does not shirk its responsibility to knock our sense of comfortable balance all to hell.”
In the Financial Times, Boyd Tonkin writes: “A quietly heartbreaking chronicle.... At any time, this scrupulous, salutary work would strike readers hard. Just now, it arrives in a cultural landscape shredded by assumptions that sympathy and understanding run only down a single route.... Not a word of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama encourages one-eyed compassion or selective truth-telling.”
In The Observer, Alex Preston writes: “A book such as A Day in the Life of Abed Salama brims over with just the sort of compassion and understanding that is needed at a time like this. Like Colum McCann’s extraordinary novel Apeirogon, Thrall looks at the Israel/Palestine conflict with unflinching clarity and quiet anger, but above all, with nuance. At a time when facts have become weapons in this seemingly endless conflict, this is a book that speaks with deep and authentic truth of ordinary lives trapped in the jaws of history.”
In The New York Times, Michelle Goldberg writes “Nathan Thrall’s searing new book, ‘A Day in the Life of Abed Salama,’ struck me as important even before the obscene massacres and mass kidnappings committed by Hamas this month lit the Middle East on fire. Today, with people still struggling to understand the contours of this deeply complicated conflict, the book seems essential.”
The Financial Times names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama one of “The best books to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”: “A deeply immersive portrait of daily life in Israel and the West Bank arranged around the story of a Palestinian child and a school trip that ends in tragedy following a traffic accident. Weaving together the ordinary and interwoven lives of Jewish and Palestinian inhabitants, Thrall, a Jerusalem-based author and journalist, illuminates the complex realities of one of the world’s most contested regions.”
In The Observer, Rachel Cooke speaks with Nathan Thrall about A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: “It’s lonely being a Jewish critic of Israel’ – Nathan Thrall on his book about a Palestinian father’s tragedy.”
Nathan Thrall speaks with Adam Conover for the podcast Factually!
On BBC Weekend, Nathan Thrall speaks with host Paul Henley about the war in Gaza and A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.
On MSNBC’s The Beat with Ari Melber, Nathan Thrall discusses the war in Gaza and A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.
In Current Affairs, Nathan Robinson interviews Nathan Thrall: “How The Occupation of Palestine Shapes Everyday Life—And What Happens Now.”
Foreign Policy names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama to “The Best Books for Understanding the Israel-Hamas War.”
On BBC Radio 5 Live with Nihal Arthanayake, Nathan Thrall discusses A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.
For NPR, Traci Thomas recommends A Day in the Life of Abed Salama in her list of books to understand Israel/Palestine.
On Sky News, Nathan Thrall discusses A Day in the Life of Abed Salama with Politics Hub host Sophy Ridge.
In The New York Review of Books, David Shulman reviews A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: “A penetrating, wide-ranging, heart-wrenching exploration of life in Palestine under Israeli occupation. I know of no other writing on Israel and Palestine that reaches this depth of perception and understanding.”
For NPR Morning Edition, Nathan Thrall and Abed Salama speak to Leila Fadel: “Book tells the story of a bus crash that embodies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
For Apple News In Conversation, Nathan Thrall speaks with host Shumita Basu about A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.
On BBC Start the Week, Nathan Thrall speaks with host Tom Sutcliffe about A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.
On DW News, Nathan Thrall discusses the war in Gaza and the curtailment of speech in Israel and the west.
In Mondoweiss, James North reviews A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: “a masterpiece ... an extraordinary achievement ... a challenge to ... anyone who does not understand how awful Israel’s occupation truly is. If they read it, and if they are honest, they will change.”
For PRI’s The World, Orla Barry interviews Nathan Thrall.
Caroline Moorehead reviews A Day in the Life of Abed Salama in Literary Review: “His calm and thoughtful account is a reminder of the value of clear-headed analysis in times of crisis.”
For NPR’s The Middle With Jeremy Hobson, Nathan Thrall speaks about Gaza, Israel, and A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.
On KALW in San Francisco, Nathan Thrall speaks about the war in Gaza and A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.
In The Guardian, Chris McGreal writes about the Israeli government’s attempt to cancel a course taught by Nathan Thrall at Bard College: “Israeli diplomat pressured US college to drop course on ‘apartheid’ debate.”
In The Observer, Nathan Thrall joins other experts to recommend films, books, and articles to help understand Israel-Palestine.
The University of Arkansas invited Nathan Thrall to speak about A Day in the Life of Abed Salama on condition that he sign a pledge vowing not to boycott Israel or its settlements, as dictated by Arkansas state law. Thrall refused, and the event did not take place. Nell Gluckman covers the controversy in The Chronicle of Higher Education: “To Speak at This University, You Must Agree Not to Boycott Israel.”
In The Los Angeles Times, Nathan Thrall and other experts recommend books to understand Israel-Palestine.
On CBC Radio, Nathan Thrall discusses A Day in the Life of Abed Salama with The Current host Matt Galloway.
The Monocle podcast interviews Nathan Thrall.
After the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 and the war in Gaza, events for A Day in the Life of Abed Salama were cancelled in five cities and ads for the book were pulled from national radio in the US. Coverage in a reported piece by Marc Tracy in The New York Times, by Sophia Nguyen in The Washington Post, by Chris McGreal in The Guardian, by Beth Harpaz in The Forward, by Michelle Goldberg in a column for The New York Times.
New York Magazine publishes an excerpt of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: “What a School-bus Crash in Jerusalem Reveals About Life in Occupied Palestine.”
For the Pod Saves the World podcast, Nathan Thrall speaks with Ben Rhodes about A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, Palestinian life under occupation, the deep roots of the current bloodshed, and what the US gets wrong about Israel/Palestine.
Literary Hub publishes an edited transcript of the discussion between Masha Gessen and Nathan Thrall at the launch event for A Day in the Life of Abed Salama at the Center for Brooklyn History: “Masha Gessen and Nathan Thrall on The Whole Story of Israel and Palestine.”
Nathan Thrall speaks to The Economist podcast Checks and Balance. “Will the war in Gaza change how America thinks about free speech?”
In Reaction, John Freeman reviews A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, calling it “a study of Palestine in miniature” and “a deeply poignant account.”
For Breaking Points, Nathan Thrall discusses A Day in the Life of Abed Salama with host Krystal Ball.
The New Yorker names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama one of the best books out now, calling it “a powerful evocation of a two-tiered society.”
Abed Salama and Nathan Thrall speak with Oli Dugmore for Politics Joe.
In The Atlantic, Gal Beckerman recommends A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: “At one level, this is a granular look at the bureaucracy Salama must deal with under occupation, but Thrall takes a much wider view, speaking with all of the Israelis and Palestinians who intersect with this unbearably sad story.”
The New York Times reviews A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: “Thrall is one of the few writers who can combine vivid storytelling with in-depth analysis of the occupation... his expertise allows him to shuttle nimbly between the viewpoints of frantic families and Palestinian leaders as well as Israeli officials and nearby settlers.”
Ahead of Nathan Thrall’s talk at Harvard with Kenneth Roth, The Boston Globe’s Elena Giardina interviews him about A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.
On MSNBC, Nathan Thrall speaks with the host of Alex Wagner Tonight.
For Times Radio, Nathan Thrall discusses the war in Gaza and A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.
Trump lawyer Michael Cohen interviews Nathan Thrall for Mea Culpa.
In The Los Angeles Times, Boris Kachka speaks with Nathan Thrall: “The Israel-based chronicler of a West Bank tragedy reflects on a ‘dehumanizing’ week.”
In The New Yorker, Isaac Chotiner interviews Nathan Thrall hours after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
The Week names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama Book of the Week.
In Women in Judaism, Elaine Margolin calls A Day in the Life of Abed Salama “a masterful exploration...Thrall is a wonderful storyteller...An unforgettably engrossing narrative that forces the reader to confront uncomfortable truths.”
The Economist writes: “Thrall captures both the universality and the specificity of the experiences of Palestinians living under Israeli Occupation... the book builds a relentless case that this crash and the ensuing trauma must be remembered. It was all so predictable—and could easily happen again.”
The Washington Post reviews A Day in the Life of Abed Salama. The reviewer, Ilana Masad, calls it “a vital, important book.”
In The Markaz Review, Dalia Hatuqa reviews A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: “Thrall doesn’t mince words. He writes openly, eloquently, clearly, and directly, providing a detailed account of life under colonization. ...A Day in the Life of Abed Salama grips you from start to finish. …The book succeeds in laying bare the cruel reality of Palestinian life under Israeli military rule.”
The New York Times includes A Day in the Life of Abed Salama in its list of books to read in October, declaring that Thrall weaves a “wrenching human saga with a history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Time names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama a best book of October.
The Los Angeles Times names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama one of the 10 books to read in October: “Thrall humanizes the consequences of systemic decay.”
In The Forward, Irene Katz Connelly interviews Nathan Thrall: “He wanted to tell the story of ordinary Palestinians living under occupation — will anyone want to listen now?”
In The Los Angeles Times, Stuart Miller interviews Nathan Thrall: “How a California-born writer unveiled the tragedy of Palestine through one grieving father.”
Vanity Fair names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama one of its 13 New Books to Read This Month.
In Middle East Report, Joost Hiltermann writes: “Thrall's writing is suffused with an unshakeable humanity ... Thrall uses this intimately recalled tale of tragedy and loss to expose the devastating impact on Palestinian lives of the vast infrastructural changes Israel has wrought in and around Jerusalem ... a story of great political import.”
On Democracy Now, Abed Salama and Nathan Thrall speak with Amy Goodman about A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.
Longreads highlights a Guardian excerpt of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: “In 2005, Huda Dahbour watched helplessly as Israeli soldiers arrived in the middle of the night to arrest her son Hadi, age 15, for writing graffiti and throwing stones. What’s more, Huda’s husband Ismail—Hadi’s father—refused to pay for a lawyer, blaming Huda and Hadi for the arrest. In this excerpt of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A Palestine Story, Nathan Thrall follows Huda as she advocates for her son during the 19 months he spent in prison.”
The Guardian publishes an excerpt of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama—“‘A hidden universe of suffering’: the Palestinian children sent to jail.” Writing in The Guardian, Imogen Dewey called it “gut-wrenching.” Read the excerpt here.
Jewish Currents invites you to a Book Launch: A Day In The Life of Abed Salama with Nathan Thrall and Masha Gessen. “In A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, a new book by essayist and journalist Nathan Thrall, the struggle over Israel/Palestine is rendered at the human scale by way of the heart-wrenching story of an accident that killed Abed Salama’s five-year-old son.” Co-presented by the Center for Brooklyn History, BPL Presents, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and The New York Review of Books.
The Baillie Gifford Prize interviews Nathan Thrall.
The Baillie Gifford Prize, the UK’s leading award for nonfiction, selected A Day in the Life of Abed Salama for its longlist. The judges called the book a “harrowing and intimate portrait of life in Palestine.”
The New York Times names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama one of 33 Nonfiction Books to Read This Fall: “A Palestinian father desperately looks for his 5-year-old son after his school bus crashes outside of Jerusalem. As his search is slowed down by bureaucratic hurdles and a scattered emergency response, Thrall depicts the agony of losing a child and how it’s intensified by the discrimination Palestinians face under Israeli rule.”
Booklist gives a starred review to A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: “Thrall’s taut, journalistic account of Abed Salama’s daylong search to discover what has become of his son is an agonizing, infuriating, heartbreaking indictment of Israel’s occupation. …An unforgettable and devastating symphony of pain and outrage and a demand for responsibility.”
Publishers Weekly gives a starred review to A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: “Captivating…a heart-wrenching portrait of an unequal society.”
Library Journal gives a starred review to A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: “Riveting...an eye-opening and empathetic analysis of a profoundly personal tragedy.”
Publishers Weekly names A Day in the Life of Abed Salama a top ten title of fall 2023.
On October 3, 2023, Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt in the US and Allen Lane/Penguin Press in the UK will publish A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy.
From "one of the best-informed and most trenchant observers of the conflict” (Financial Times), the intimate true story of a deadly accident outside Jerusalem that unravels a tangle of lives, loves, enmities, and histories over the course of one revealing, heartbreaking day.
Five-year-old Milad Salama is excited for the school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem. On the way, his bus collides with a semitrailer in a horrific accident. His father, Abed, gets word of the crash and rushes to the site. The scene is chaos—the children have been taken to different hospitals in Jerusalem and the West Bank; some are missing, others cannot be identified. Abed sets off on an odyssey to learn Milad’s fate. It is every parent’s worst nightmare, but for Abed it is compounded by the maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must navigate because he is Palestinian. He is on the wrong side of the separation wall, holds the wrong ID to pass the military checkpoints, and has the wrong papers to enter the city of Jerusalem.
Abed’s quest to find Milad is interwoven with the stories of a cast of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and histories unexpectedly converge: a kindergarten teacher and a mechanic who rescue children from the burning bus; an Israeli army commander and a Palestinian official who confront the aftermath at the scene of the crash; a settler paramedic; ultra-Orthodox emergency service workers; and two mothers who each hope to claim one severely injured boy.
Immersive and gripping, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is an indelibly human portrait of the Jewish-Palestinian struggle that offers a new understanding of the tragic history and reality of one of the most contested places on earth.
Pre-order at Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and Target.
UK Paperback
2017-2022
Longreads names Nathan Thrall’s A Day in the Life of Abed Salama a Best Feature of 2021. In her citation, Seyward Darby writes, “This isn’t just the best feature I read this year. It’s one of the best I’ve ever read, period. Nathan Thrall situates one father’s desperate journey to find out what happened to his son after the boy’s school bus collided with a tractor trailer within the vast, ugly context of Israel’s decades-long effort to make Palestinian lives all but unlivable. In search of basic answers — is his son hurt? is he even alive? — Abed Salama must grapple with the devastatingly mundane consequences of “fragmentation,” Israel’s policy of keeping “Palestinian communities isolated from one another and surrounded by fences, walls, checkpoints, closed gates, roadblocks, trenches, and bypass roads.” Expertly researched and brilliantly told, Thrall’s feature is a masterpiece.”
In “The Endless Occupation, a New Understanding,” an interview of Nathan Thrall in The New York Review of Books, Matt Seaton writes that Thrall “has published a series of articles over recent years—notably in The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, and the London Review of Books—that have defined the new intellectual and political parameters for what is increasingly recognized as Israel-Palestine’s one-state (or post-two-state) reality.”
At the United Nations, portions of Thrall’s “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama” were reproduced and cited in a Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, presented to the 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council.
Democracy Now! airs a two-part segment with Nathan Thrall.
Part 1: Nathan Thrall on the Historic Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Control from the River to the Sea.
Part 2: Nathan Thrall on “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama” & Reality of Palestinian Life Under Israeli Rule.In the United States Congress, Representative Ro Khanna sent a “Dear Colleague” letter about Thrall’s New York Review of Books piece, “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama,” to the nearly 100 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, urging his fellow congresspersons to read the “extraordinary article,” which “deepens and enriches our understanding of Israel-Palestine today.” Attached to the Congressional letter were endorsements of the piece from Nobel Prize in literature winner J.M. Coetzee, Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, New York Times columnist Michelle Alexander, President Obama’s special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations Frank Lowenstein, former advisor to six secretaries of state Aaron David Miller, Israel-prize recipient David Shulman, former speaker of the Israeli parliament Avraham Burg, board president of the New Israel Fund Professor David Myers, former director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry Alon Liel, former Israeli ambassador to South Africa Ilan Baruch, former Palestinian negotiator Hanan Ashrawi, and the heads of the top Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations.
In an article in Haaretz, “J Street Conference Marks ‘A New Day in Washington’ for U.S.-Israel Relations,” Washington correspondent Ben Samuels writes: “Rep. Ro Khanna, for example, cited a recent article published by Nathan Thrall in the New York Review of Books, which was praised by former U.S., Israeli and Palestinian officials alike. The article details how a Palestinian’s search for his son reveals the impact of decades of Israeli occupation on the West Bank. Haaretz obtained a letter Khanna sent his Congressional colleagues encouraging them to read Thrall’s ‘extraordinary article,’ noting that it ‘deepens and enriches our understanding of Israel-Palestine today. It deserves our attention.’”
Jacobin publishes “We Can’t Expect Joe Biden to Stop Supporting Apartheid: An Interview with Nathan Thrall,” by Branko Marcetic. “What growing numbers of progressives in the United States are now beginning to realize is that a conflict that had been mischaracterized as essentially an interstate conflict is in fact an intrastate conflict. The Biden administration and most members of Congress still falsely characterize the struggle over Israel-Palestine as primarily over the occupation of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the rest of the West Bank that began in June 1967. If the conflict is over occupation, then undoing occupation should end the conflict. But this conflict did not begin with the occupation of 1967. It is a conflict over Zionism. It is a conflict over the transformation of Palestine, which was 97 percent Palestinian at the dawn of Zionism, into the Land of Israel, against the will of the native majority.”
On the inaugural episode of the International Crisis Group podcast, Hold Your Fire, hosted by Crisis Group president Rob Malley and Harvard law professor Naz Modirzadeh, the hosts welcome Crisis Group’s former Arab-Israeli project director, Nathan Thrall, to discuss the Israel-UAE agreement, what it means for Palestinians, and whether he believes there can be a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Listen in your browser or on iTunes or Spotify.
In The Washington Post, Ishaan Tharoor writes: “‘Ask any Palestinian and they will tell you the same thing,’ Abed Salama, a Palestinian man whose personal ordeal at the whim of Israeli systems of control was the subject of a lengthy recent essay in the New York Review of Books, told Jerusalem-based author Nathan Thrall. ‘Israel annexed everything already.’”
The Guardian releases a new audio introduction by Nathan Thrall of his 2018 piece, “BDS: how a controversial non-violent movement has transformed the Israeli-Palestinian debate”: “We are raiding the Audio Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2018: Israel sees the international boycott campaign as an existential threat to the Jewish state. Palestinians regard it as their last resort. By Nathan Thrall.”
On the “Occupied Thoughts” podcast, produced by the Foundation for Middle East Peace, “Peter Beinart interviews Nathan Thrall about Thrall’s new essay in The New York Review of Books, “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.” The essay describes a Palestinian father’s search for his son following a bus accident, detailing layers of neglect, danger, and abuse faced by Palestinians living under Israeli control, whether in the Jerusalem, the West Bank, or inside the Green Line.” Listen on iTunes | Soundcloud | Spotify or watch on YouTube.
The French journal Le Grand Continent publishes an interview with Nathan Thrall, “‘Why Now?’ On the Origins of the 11 Day War” (« Pourquoi maintenant ? » : sur les origines de la guerre des onze jours), by Shahin Vallée. An English-language version of the interview is published by DGAP, the German Council on Foreign Relations.
In Haaretz, the journalist Arkadi Mazin writes: “What could possibly become the shock factor that brings the occupation to the forefront of the media discourse? Another Palestinian thrown out of their home? Another child losing an eye after being hit by a sponge-tipped bullet? Another victim of settlers’ violence? All this does not usually cut it for the supposedly 'anti-Israel' Western media. The pain threshold is set too high for the everyday Palestinian woes to cross it and grab the public’s attention. One of the welcome exceptions is the phenomenal essay ‘A Day in the Life of Abed Salama’ by Nathan Thrall, published in The New York Review of Books, where Thrall masterfully uses a personal tragedy of a Palestinian father who lost his son to talk at length about the appalling reality of the occupation.”
Longreads selects Nathan Thrall’s “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama” as its top read of the week. In a separate article about the piece, “What Happened to Milad? A Palestinian Father Searches for His Son,” Seyward Darby, Editor in Chief of The Atavist Magazine, writes: “Abed didn’t have the right information, the right papers, the right ethnicity. He is Palestinian, and in his world, as writer Nathan Thrall details in an astonishing feat of reporting for the New York Review of Books, every parent’s worst nightmare is compounded by Israel’s decades-long efforts to make Palestinian lives all but unlivable.”
In the 18 March 2021 issue of the London Review of Books, Mouin Rabbani writes, “As Nathan Thrall demonstrated in the LRB of 21 January, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories are in effect governed by a single political regime: Israel is responsible for the residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, just as South Africa’s white minority regime was for the inhabitants of Transkei, Venda and the other Bantustans.”
In Foreign Policy, Stephen Walt writes, “To be sure, cracks in the special relationship are beginning to show. It is easier to talk about this topic than it used to be (assuming you aren’t hoping for a job in the State or Defense Department), and courageous individuals like Peter Beinart and Nathan Thrall have helped pierce the veil of ignorance that has long surrounded these issues.”
In an article for Haaretz entitled “Not ‘Apartheid in the West Bank.’ Apartheid,” Gideon Levy writes, “A few days earlier, the American writer Nathan Thrall, who lives in Jerusalem, published an eye-opening and mind-expanding piece in the London Review of Books entitled ‘The Separate Regimes Delusion.’ Thrall doesn’t hesitate to criticize the supposedly liberal-Zionist and leftist organizations, from Meretz and Peace Now to Yesh Din and Haaretz. All of them believe that Israel is a democracy and oppose annexation because it could undermine their false belief that the occupation is happening somewhere else, outside of Israel, and is only temporary. The separation between the occupation and Israel is still valid in their eyes, so they’re leading people astray.” Levy concludes, “It’s impossible to separate the ‘good’ Israel and the ‘bad’ occupation, as Thrall states.
On the London Review of Books podcast, “Mouin Rabbani and Nathan Thrall talk to Adam Shatz about Israel’s vaccination programme, the system of apartheid that now effectively exists between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, the legacy of Trump’s policies, and how the Biden administration may or may not exert its influence.”
In a conversation hosted by The University of Exeter, Noam Chomsky discusses The New York Review of Books, “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama,” and how discussion of Israel-Palestine has shifted: “I used to write for The New York Review regularly. But not after I became involved publicly in Israel-Palestine issues. After that, anathema—couldn’t possibly. It has changed in the last year or two. Strikingly. So if you read the journal now, you can read highly critical articles of Israeli policy… A strong article by Nathan Thrall—a very, very strong article—appeared in a recent issue. All of this reflects changes in public opinion in the United States.”
In The American Prospect, Eric Alterman writes, “read this incredibly depressing (and incredibly long) piece by Nathan Thrall on Israel/Palestine.”
In The Forward, Peter Beinart writes: “During the cold war, as Nathan Thrall details in his indispensable book, The Only Language They Understand, presidents we now routinely think of as pro-Israel routinely used American aid to influence Israeli policy.”
In an article for Mondoweiss entitled “Why liberal Zionists cringe at Thrall’s byline,” James North writes, “Liberal Zionists wince when they see Nathan Thrall’s byline. So do the professional Peace Processors, those U.S. diplomats who have made long careers by predicting that coddling Israel’s government could produce a comprehensive peace agreement.” Elsewhere on the site, Jonathan Ofir writes of “what Nathan Thrall calls the ‘separate regimes delusion’ in his masterful recent essay in the London Review of Books,” and, in an article entitled “Nathan Thrall calls out J Street and other liberal Zionists for enabling apartheid,” Philip Weiss describes “a brilliant analysis by Nathan Thrall in the London Review of Books, titled ‘The Separate Regimes Delusion.’” In a separate piece devoted to “Nathan Thrall’s monumental piece in The New York Review of Books,” Philip Weiss writes: “Thrall narrates his tale with detachment and precision, reminiscent of Hersey’s Hiroshima.”
In a weekly selection of articles and books recommended by Jewish Currents, Simon Zimmerman writes, “I implore you to spend a few hours with Thrall as he takes you on a dizzying, gut-wrenching journey with Abed Salama, a Palestinian father whose village is located in an area hemmed in on three sides by Israel’s separation barrier and on the fourth side by the apartheid road. Thrall weaves together an unbelievably rich tapestry of history and context behind an accident that seems disconnected from the occupation but is of course inextricably connected to it. He forces those of us who obsessively debate abstract ideas about Israel's future to feel intimately what the policies carried out in the name of Zionism actually mean for the human beings most directly trampled upon by them. I don’t want to spoil anything else, so I will just say that this article is a true gift to anyone seeking deeper understanding about these issues as well as a fresh perspective on the challenges ahead. Please sit with Abed’s story for a few hours. It’s worth it.”
NRC, the leading newspaper in the Netherlands, publishes a lengthy interview with Nathan Thrall about Western complicity in apartheid, the way the debate over solutions to the conflict is used to distract from the more pressing concern of everyday oppression, and Thrall’s piece, “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.” “Anyone who keeps talking about a solution is part of the problem,” Thrall tells NRC correspondent Jannie Schipper.
On Jadaliyya’s podcast, “Connections: Israel-Palestine: A Turning Point?,” Jadaliyya co-editor Mouin Rabbani interviews Nathan Thrall “about recent developments in Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the broader Israeli-Palestinian relationship. This episode of Connections Podcast asks whether we have now reached a turning point and what this would mean for the future.”
In Haaretz, Anders Persson writes, “The biggest challenge, however, for rebranding Israel as a liberal democracy is the continued occupation of the Palestinian territories, which is rapidly being redefined by leading human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem from a conflict between two parties to a permanent situation of occupation, oppression, human rights abuses and even apartheid. The argument from leading voices of this narrative, such as Nathan Thrall, is that apartheid states cannot be democracies.”
In an article for Time entitled “Saeb Erekat’s Dream of a Palestinian State Died Long Before He Did,” Karl Vick writes: “‘For over a quarter century Saeb Erekat tested the proposition that a conquered, oppressed people can win its freedom through appeals to reason and international law. It was a hopeful idea, but, alas, not a realistic one,’ said Nathan Thrall, author of The Only Language They Understand, which puts the conflict in the terms—coercion and force—dominated by Israel.”
In The National Interest, Paul Pillar writes, In January, Nathan Thrall, an American journalist residing in Jerusalem and author of The Only Language They Understand, detailed in an article in the London Review of Books the many ways in which Israel has erased almost all legal and practical distinctions between its citizens who live in the West Bank and those who live within the pre-1967 borders of Israel.”
On 21 January, the Foundation for Middle East Peace hosted a webinar entitled, “Calling the Thing by its Proper Name: ‘Apartheid’ Between the Jordan River & the Mediterranean Sea.” It was hosted by the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Lara Friedman, and featured Hagai El-Ad (Executive Director of B’Tselem), Nathan Thrall (Author, journalist), and Sawsan Zaher (Deputy General Director of Adalah, the Legal Center for Minority Rights in Israel).
In Truthout, Rabbi Brian Walt, the founder of Congregation Mishkan Shalom and founding executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights – North America, writes: “B’Tselem’s report on apartheid challenges what analyst Nathan Thrall terms the “separate regimes delusion” — the idea that Israel within the Green Line is a democracy that is somehow fundamentally different from its “temporary” military occupation of the Occupied Territories that has existed for more than 50 years.”
In Jacobin, Richard Silverstein writes, “As Nathan Thrall writes in his new essay in the London Review of Books, liberal Zionists, though marginal in political strength, offer a fig leaf to the Israeli regime.”
In Middle East Monitor, Nasim Ahmed writes, “B'Tselem's groundbreaking paper and an equally compelling article a few days earlier in the London Review of Books by the American writer Nathan Thrall, exposed the lie at the heart of what is in any case meant to be a "working definition.”
In Tikkun, Mark Braverman begins his piece: “In January, 2021, Jerusalem-based journalist and analyst Nathan Thrall called out the Zionist left for promoting the fiction that as long as Israel refrains from annexing occupied Palestinian land, it does not cross the line into apartheid (“The Separate Regimes Delusion: Nathan Thrall on Israel’s Apartheid,” London Review of Books January 21, 2021).”
In an article for Jacobin entitled “Ocasio-Cortez, the Left, and the Future of Palestine,” Corey Robin writes, “There is the human rights vernacular that Ocasio-Cortez herself alludes to [and] … there is the language of realpolitik, which people like Nathan Thrall have pushed.”
In Time, Karl Vick writes: “Life is short, and writings about Israel and the Palestinians can be very, very long. So it’s a good thing there’s Nathan Thrall. An American analyst with a severe allergy to conventional wisdom, Thrall has lived in Jerusalem since 2011, writing dense but rich reports for the International Crisis Group, and now The Only Language They Understand.”
In The New York Review of Books, David Shulman writes: “By far the most cogent of the new books, however, is Nathan Thrall’s The Only Language They Understand, which surveys the last five decades and comes to a remarkable conclusion: the only way to produce some kind of movement toward resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is to apply significant coercive force to the parties involved, and in particular to Israel.”
In The New York Times Book Review, Gal Beckerman writes of The Only Language They Understand: “Nathan Thrall does a brilliant job ...his argument is smart and hard to dispute.”
In Haaretz, Gideon Levy writes: “In a brilliant essay by the American intellectual Nathan Thrall that ... is excerpted from Thrall’s new book “The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine,” the author puts his finger on the root of all of the reasons that there is no peace.”
In Foreign Affairs, Michael Koplow writes: “Thrall has consistently been one of the sharpest observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the United States’ role in trying to end it, and his most recent contribution, The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine, is true to form. ...The argument is a compelling one, and Thrall expertly marshals historical evidence to demonstrate his thesis that both sides respond to sticks rather than carrots. ...In focusing on the ways in which pressure has forced compromise, Thrall not only uses the historical record to great effect but also appeals to basic common sense. ...one cannot read The Only Language They Understand without acknowledging the power of his argument that force does indeed matter.”
In Slate, Isaac Chotiner speaks to Nathan Thrall about The Only Language They Understand.
The Jewish Book Council published a review by Bob Goldfarb: “Readers of the New York Review of Books and other intellectual publications know Nathan Thrall to be one of the best-informed, most insightful, and least polemical analysts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The book’s title announces his bold conclusion: that the status quo will remain in place indefinitely unless the two sides are forced to change it—and no one is prepared to exert such force. ...The Only Language They Understand brings unparalleled clarity to the dynamics of Israeli-Palestinian relations, and is an essential guide to the history, personalities, and ideas behind the conflict.”
In the Financial Times, John Reed writes: “Thrall, an analyst for the International Crisis Group who is one of the best-informed and most trenchant observers of the conflict, argues that in the past only coercion or outright force have been enough to move either side towards peace: ‘Faced with the threat of real losses-- whether human, economic, or political — Israelis and Palestinians have made dramatic concessions to avert them.’”
In The Independent, Donald Macintyre writes: “An important new book by Nathan Thrall, The Only Language They Understand, eloquently expresses what has long been clear: that there is no hope of a breakthrough unless the international community forces it on the parties.”
On the 50th anniversary of the 1967 war, the Council on Foreign Relations invited Nathan Thrall and four other scholars to discuss how Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the Arab world were remade.
In Foreign Policy, Stephen M. Walt writes: “The idea that Saudi Arabia and other, moderate Arabs can convince the Palestinians to abandon their national aspirations and make peace with Israel is one of those perennial illusions that have hamstrung U.S. diplomacy for decades. As Nathan Thrall makes clear in his brilliant new book.”
In The Washington Post, Ishaan Tharoor speaks to Nathan Thrall about his new book, the sustainability of Israel’s occupation, whether Netanyahu is an ideologue, the possibility of renewed violence, and how Trump’s approach to Israel-Palestine could differ from Obama’s.
Named one of the Best Books of 2018 by Mosaic Magazine: “A knowledgeable and bold retelling of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that forces readers to take a serious and fresh look at their assumptions. Throughout its counterintuitive retelling of this history, it offers an unusually provocative and sometimes startling contribution to the genre.”
On “The Political Scene” podcast of The New Yorker, the magazine’s Executive Editor, Dorothy Wickenden, hosts a discussion between the magazine’s editor, David Remnick, and Nathan Thrall. “Currently there is no hope for further Israeli withdrawals and no hope for Palestinian statehood,” Thrall says, “because the status quo doesn’t cost Israel and the Israeli voter very much. And until the alternative is worse, you’re not going to have Palestinian statehood.”
In the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, Robbie Sabel writes: “The premise of this book is one to which most of us would ascribe, namely, that Israeli and Palestinian leaders will not make difficult decisions or painful compromises unless they feel that the alternative stalemate is untenable. The author, political analyst Nathan Thrall, postulates this bluntly: ‘Forcing Israel to make larger, conflict-ending concessions would require making its fallback option so unappealing that Israel would view a peace agreement as an escape from something worse’ (p. 71). He bolsters this thesis with meticulous scholarship. Thrall writes very knowledgeably about internal Palestinian affairs. The chapters dealing with the relations between Hamas and Fatah are a model of informative scholarship.”
In the Journal of Peace Research, Jørgen Jensehaugen writes: “Thrall’s book is rich with well researched, well argued, and often provocative analyses... [A]n in memoriam to a failed and delusional peace process, a scathing critique against political leaders who have lost touch with their own people and a j’accuse against well-meaning liberals who, despite their best intentions, fail to understand that the occupation and Israel cannot be treated as separate entities.”
Survival writes: “While much effort has been expended to bring about a solution to the Israel–Palestine conflict in ways that reduce the friction between the two, Thrall believes that such efforts have merely served to entrench the conflict. The avoidance of pain is a more motivating goal than achieving peace.”
In Philosophy Football, Mark Perryman makes a selection of the books he’ll be depending on in 2019’s battle of ideas, writing: “What a relief therefore to read Nathan Thrall’s The Only Language they Understand an unashamed search for a principled compromise, that won’t satisfy entirely either side but will most.”
In Politique étrangère, Samy Cohen writes: “C’est d’un livre engagé qu’il s’agitici.”
In Middle East Eye, Avi Shlaim writes: “Informed by a deep understanding of US, Israeli and Palestinian politics. It is packed with new ideas and insights, and it poses a serious challenge to the conventional wisdom on the subject.”
In The Irish Times, Ruadhán Mac Cormaic writes: Nathan Thrall, author of the recently-published The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine, argues that Israel has consciously opted for stalemate rather than the costly concessions any peace agreement would require it to make.
In Middle East Journal, Ian Lustick writes: “Thanks to considerable prepublication buzz, Thrall’s argument in the first chapter is familiar to many Israel-Palestine watchers. ...[Israel] has only made concessions and will only make concessions (for peace or anything else) when it is presented with threats of loss that exceed the value of the concessions demanded. The other chapters are engaging, deeply informative, and even brilliant in their close evaluation of the delicate state of play among Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans. In the process, Thrall surfaces a great deal of information that will be new to most readers and some that will be startling even to close followers of the Israeli-Palestinian saga.”
In the Journal of Palestine Studies, Nubar Hovsepian writes: “Most welcome… A cogent and lucid reconstruction of the obstacles that prevent an acceptable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
In +972 Magazine, Noam Sheizaf writes: “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and even more so the peace process that accompanies it, is immersed in narratives and jargon that are completely divorced from reality on the ground. At the top of the list is the illusion that there are two sovereign entities — an Israeli one and a Palestinian one — in a complicated conflict over borders. In reality, the only sovereign is Israel — the Palestinian Authority is merely charged with managing on its behalf it a population without any rights living within its borders. The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine, a new book by Nathan Thrall, is one of the more important documents bridging that mythology and reality. Thrall is one of two International Crisis Group analysts in Israel and has lived in Jerusalem with his family since 2011, which means that in addition to closely tracking political elites he also has the intimate and intuitive familiarity of someone who is on the ground, and who is attentive to various social dynamics. (In other words, he knows what it feels like to send your kids to school during an “escalation” in Jerusalem.) His writing is practical and flush with details, manages to escape the self-righteous or preachy tone that characterizes so many analysts, and doesn’t seek to create false equivalencies between the two sides for the sake of political correctness. Thrall examines things from from a realist perspective, which places far greater importance on individuals’ and groups’ actions than their rhetoric or ideological declarations. That, too, is refreshing and overdue....The book is important, interesting, an easy read, and it serves as a crucial resource for the most significant core issues that occupy the news cycle — from Jerusalem to Gaza. It also gives original and instructive answers to the failure of the peace process that go beyond simply casting blame on one side or another.”
In The National Interest, Paul Pillar, a senior fellow at Georgetown University and 28-year veteran of the CIA, writes: “The political and diplomatic positions of both sides have changed significantly over these seven decades. Whatever movement there has been in a direction that would appear to make resolution of the conflict more possible has come in response to some form of force or pressure. This has been true on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. A detailed accounting of such changes, and of the circumstances that have led to them, can be found in the excellent book by Nathan Thrall, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, published this year under the title The Only Language They Understand.”
In the Swedish magazine Utrikes Magasinet, Johan Schaar, former deputy chief of Sweden’s Consulate General in Jerusalem, writes that Nathan Thrall “makes a concise, convincing and well-underlined analysis of why the conflict and occupation continues.”
In The New York Times, Nathan Thrall and Robert Blecher explain the root causes of the previous war in Gaza and how to avoid another one.
In the New Left Review, the historian Perry Anderson writes that Thrall has written “the most acute analysis of American policy towards Israel, from Clinton to Obama...In their combination of clear-eyed criticism and level-headed realism, Thrall’s reports from and on Israel have consistently been outstanding.”
In the Danish magazine Eftertryk, Lasse Winther Jensen writes: “Nathan Thrall’s first book...is a rain of salvation in a severe draught. The book is written in a balanced, objective and fair register...The way Thrall describes the conflict is almost in itself enough to make the book an event, and it is no surprise that the book has already been the subject of much praise and attention. It is quite telling that the cover of Thrall’s book is adorned with enthusiastic blurbs from seemingly incompatible names such as the Palestinian-American professor Rashid Khalidi and former security adviser to George W. Bush, Elliott Abrams. However, The Only Language They Understand is to be commended for far more than Thrall’s balanced linguistic approach; the book’s theses and analyses are so great that any reader will have to take them seriously. ...one of the year’s most interesting, sober, original and thought-provoking contribution to the extensive literature on the Israel-Palestine conflict. ...impossible to ignore.”
In an address to the UN Security Council on the 50th anniversary of the 1967 war, Lakhdar Brahimi quoted extensively from a recent essay by Nathan Thrall in The New York Times.
In The Weekly Standard, Lee Smith talks to Nathan Thrall about his book, the use of force, and Trump, Abbas, and Netanyahu.
In Le Figaro, Cyrille Louis speaks to Nathan Thrall about his book.
In The Times of Israel, Dan Rothem writes, “Nathan Thrall shows how embracing Israel does not ensure the coveted Israeli endorsement of parameters that are acceptable to the Palestinians. Rather, American leaders brought about Israeli-Arab agreements only through toughness and coercion. Kerry, in the best tradition of modern American negotiators, was too immersed in the Washington truism that Thrall eloquently debunks.”
In The Jerusalem Post, Glenn C. Altschuler writes: “Even the most ardent defenders of Israeli policies...should acknowledge Thrall’s mastery to facts on the ground, historical context and diplomatic tactics and strategies on all sides. ... Everyone interested in peace between Israelis and Palestinians will learn something and find something to ponder in this counter-intuitive, controversial and...compelling book.”
At the UN General Assembly, Professor Noam Chomsky quoted the work of “Nathan Thrall, a leading Middle East analyst.”
TLV1 co-hosts Dahlia Scheindlin and Gilad Halpern interview Nathan Thrall about his new book. Scheindlin writes: “One of the finest analysts around, Nathan Thrall, makes a tough argument.”
In Middle East Eye, Richard Silverstein writes: “In his new book, The Only Language They Understand, Nathan Thrall suggests a different approach: instead of blaming Israelis or Palestinians for the decades-long impasse, we in the West must look ourselves in the mirror.”
In Mondoweiss, Philip Weiss interviews Nathan Thrall about his “important new book.”
The Guardian’s “Long Read” section published an excerpt of the book. Read it here.
In Mediterranean Politics, Harvard University’s Alexei Abrahams writes: “With intimate knowledge of the conflict’s history, Thrall leads his readers through a remarkably even-handed tour of each diplomatic juncture since the 1950s to the end of 2016, showing convincingly that both Israelis and Palestinians have repeatedly compromised only in the face of credible threats ...Thrall masterfully synthesizes all of these facts and analyses into one consistent, compelling argument that coercion, not clever diplomatic maneuvers, drove all of the concessions on both sides. ...His analysis of Fayyadism’s collapse, the PA’s subsequent leadership paralysis, and the Obama administration’s failed diplomatic efforts is the best available for readers.”
Tablet Magazine’s reviewer, Joseph Dana, calls The Only Language They Understand “excellent” and writes: “Nathan Thrall, an analyst with the International Crisis Group and consummate observer of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, adds substantially to our understand of the status quo in his perfectly timed new volume ...Thrall argues that compromise has only come about when the sides are forced, often through violent means.”
The Dutch newspaper Volkskrant published a two-page interview with Nathan Thrall on Gaza in its weekend edition.
Library Journal gives The Only Language They Understand a starred review: “Highly recommended for readers familiar with the headlines on this issue who want a deeper and more detailed understanding.”
The Foundation for Middle East Peace recommends Vice Magazine’s review of The Only Language They Understand.
Vice Magazine’s reviewer, Noah Kulwin, calls The Only Language They Understand “excellent” and Vice names it one of the best books of the month: “Thrall makes a persuasive case that instead of leaving the Israelis and Palestinians alone or limply warning of the peril facing Israeli democracy if a two-state solution isn’t achieved, the only weapon in the US arsenal that has ever produced meaningful gains on the issue is force—diplomatic, economic, or otherwise.”
Palestine Square, published by the Institute for Palestine Studies, names The Only Language They Understand one of five books to read this spring. Khelil Bouarrouj writes: “Thrall’s mastery of detail and brevity makes him one of the most astute commentators on the subject. ...Thrall smashes one ... orthodoxy after another with lucid precision and logic.”
Kirkus Reviews calls The Only Language They Understand “a troubling and truculent history of the still-stalemated search for peace in the Middle East. ...An assiduous assault on the management of the apparently defunct peace process that has eluded Israel and Palestine.”
At Goodreads, two early reviews give The Only Language They Understand five of five stars.
Kirkus calls The Only Language They Understand “An assiduous assault on the management of the apparently defunct peace process that has eluded Israel and Palestine," and "a troubling and truculent history of the still-stalemated search for peace in the Middle East.”
In a preview of upcoming nonfiction, Library Journal writes: “Change has come not through negotiation and state-building but upheaval, from boycotts and civil disobedience to outsider-imposed resolutions and, alas, violence. Where does that leave us? Perhaps with a model for moving forward.”