The story of Palestine’s stonemasons and the building of Israel 10
Andrew Ross is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. He is a contributor to The Nation, the Village Voice, New York Times, and Artforum, and the author of many books, including Bird on Fire.
Meet 'Michelangelo of Beit Fajjar' and the other Palestinian
stone-masons whose superb craft has fashioned Israel's famous
'white cities.' Their hidden labor is the starting point for Ross's
brilliantly original exploration of how dispossession and
exploitation continue to define the relationship of Israeli and
Palestinian societies. This is radical journalism at its best - and
I mean Pulitzer-Prize-quality best.
*Mike Davis*
When a writer as original and committed as Andrew Ross turns his
attention to Palestine, we know we are up for a unique set of
observations. Ross uses the stone quarries of palestine to weave a
story that brings together geology, politics, military occupation,
water, and environment. It is a story that is at once specific in
its attention to details of matter and place and expansive as it
takes us across the tragic history of this late manifestation of
colonial domination.
*Eyal Weizman*
Andrew Ross sheds a brilliant light on what he calls the 'sweat
equity' of Palestinian laborers who were deprived by Israel's
system of occupation and apartheid of their land and livelihood and
pushed as a result to build Israeli housing and infrastructure to
survive and to resist ethnic cleansing.
Ross enriches us not just with a meticulously-researched dose of
history and a logical argument for a post-colonial reality of
ethical co-existence in historic Palestine. He takes us on a
perspicacious journey of human stories, ethical arguments and
socioeconomic realities, consciously refraining from speaking on
behalf of Palestinians or depicting us as pitiful victims, as many
well-meaning white academics still do, and thus contributing to
understanding what justice in this land truly means and
entails.
*Omar Barghouti*
Just when you thought that there was no other way to amplify the
atrocity of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, along comes Andrew
Ross with Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel. Here is a
refreshingly clear picture of the labour that it takes to produce
and reproduce Israeli society and the Israeli occupation. Ordinary
Palestinians who break and lay the stones tell Andrew Ross their
stories, and he offers them to us as a gift of their resilience
*Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations*
"Poignant, poetic, and illuminating, this book exposes a chief
paradox of Israeli settler colonialism: that skilled Palestinian
laborers built modern Israel-its homes, offices, shopping malls,
prisons, border walls-while their own homes were demolished or
seized. This is history, sensitive and somber, written in
stone."
*Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams*
Cultural differences, labor relations, religious certainty, a
knotted history of violence, political dominance, and cruel
economic policies-all figure prominently in this account of the
stone and building industries in Israel. Ross (Social and Cultural
Analysis/New York Univ.; Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's
Least Sustainable City, 2011, etc.), a contributor to the Nation,
the New York Times, and Artforum, delivers a deeply researched,
passionate, pro-proletariat view of his topic. Based on interviews
with businessmen, laborers, Palestinians, Israelis, and others, the
text rehearses the long history of stonework in the region. The
author exposes what he sees as the exploitation of Palestinian
stoneworkers and points out the difficulties of those workers
(getting through checkpoints each day takes hours) and how many of
them are torn by the necessity to make money by building the homes
of those whom they view as occupiers. He notes, as well, the lack
of civil rights for the workers-and for any other benefits besides
a salary, which is, as he describes, often barely adequate to
sustain life. From the beginning, Ross pulls no punches, decrying
the Israeli employers' "discrimination, degradation, and
exploitation." Repeatedly, he shines light on the dark side of
economic power: the deals, the political connections, the
anti-union efforts. The author visited many building sites and
talked with hundreds of workers, often standing in line with them
at clogged checkpoints. He reports that many told him "they no
longer had any dreams or hopes." Ross also offers details about the
stone deposits in the area (and a map-Bethlehem is one important
site), talks about the recent "Separation Wall" (with a nod to the
issues regarding a border wall in the United States), and does not
see much hope. A sturdy and depressing study in which the author's
pro-worker sympathies and empathies are clear-as are his
condemnations of Israel's (and employers') policies.
*Kirkus*
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