Reply #150: Fine, I emailed and we'll see how that goes... [View All]

The terrain in the story reminds me of western legend, the mountains of the Spanish civil war. The Spanish Republicans' resistance to Franco's nationalists in the '30s is heroic. Think of the movie Pan's Labyrinth or the Hemingway novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. In Hemingway's novel, the brave peasant guerrillas make raids on soldiers on the road. There is no question whose side we're on; though yes, Hemingway lets us know how questionable violence is in Pilar's beautiful monologue about the civilian massacre in her village. All the fascists the republicans could get their hands on were mercilessly slaughtered, pushed off a cliff.

A modern Hemingway could never write For Whom the Bell Tolls about the Silwad sniper who made the mistake of opening his mouth. And Guillermo del Toro could never direct a Pan's Labyrinth about Palestinian resistance. Because mainstream western culture has so far only humanized one side in this struggle: the Israeli victims of the second intifadah--most of them civilians-- whose government is colonizing Palestinian land.

If you wrote an article or novel about the Silwad sniper who made the mistake of opening his mouth, a mainstream editor would demand that you humanize his victims, and tell their story too.