From 1992 to 2014, writers Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon were hesitant to get involved in the question of Israel/Palestine. “We didn’t want to write or even think, in any kind of sustained way, about Israel and Palestine, about the nature and meaning of occupation,” they write in the introduction to their 2017 collection of essays, “Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation.” Everything changed for them in 2014. Waldman, who was born in Jerusalem, visited Israel in 2014 for the first time in 22 years. She went to Hebron on that trip, and her experience made her feel that she bore some responsibility for what Israel was doing in her name. After the 2014 visit, she and Chabon did think about it; they wrote about it, too, and invited others to, as well. “Storytelling itself–bearing witness, in vivid and clear language, to things personally seen and incidents encountered,” they write, “has the power to engage the attention of people who, like us, have long since given up paying attention.”
