Nathan Thrall
“After more than seven decades of fragmentation, the Palestinian people are still one. Why do they have less right to live as one people than Israeli Jews do?”
Nathan Thrall
Read
WATCH
“It is hard to think of another book that gives such a poignant, deeply human face to the ongoing tragedy of Palestine. Thrall’s evocation of both a terrible crisis and the daily humiliations of life under occupation is nothing short of heartbreaking.”
“It’s a heart-wrenching portrait of an unequal society.”
“Nathan Thrall does a brilliant job ...his argument is smart and hard to dispute.”
“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, is true to form.... His argument is a compelling one, and Thrall expertly marshals historical evidence to demonstrate his thesis that both sides respond to sticks rather than carrots.”
“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 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.”
“Nathan Thrall’s commentary on the most intractable dispute of our time is something shocking: it is fair. Into a debate consumed by ferocious passions he enters dispassionately, except that he has a passion for peace. For this reason he is uncommonly trustworthy. His familiarity with the infamous complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian tangle is remarkable, as is his mental composure. This learned and candid book is a genuine contribution to our understanding of an increasingly frightening conflict.”
Nathan Thrall is the author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, published by Metropolitan Books on October 3, just 4 days before the Israel/Hamas war began. The book has been widely praised; André Aciman called it “luminous…transformative” and writing in the Washington Post, Ilana Masad wrote that it is a “vital, important book.”
Thrall is also the author of the critically acclaimed essay collection The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine (Metropolitan, 2017). His reported features, analyses, and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, the London Review of Books, and The New York Review of Books and have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Thrall’s writing has been cited in the United Nations Security Council, General Assembly, and Human Rights Council, as well as in reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. He has been described as “one of the best-informed and most trenchant observers of the conflict” (Financial Times), “an American analyst with a severe allergy to conventional wisdom” (Time), and the author of a series of articles “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” (The New York Review of Books).
Thrall has received grants, fellowships, and awards from the Open Society Foundations, Middlebury College Language Schools, The Writers’ Institute, and Longreads. His commentary is often featured in print and broadcast media, including the Associated Press, BBC, CNN, Democracy Now!, The Economist, Financial Times, The Guardian, The New York Times, PRI, Reuters, Time, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.
Asked in an interview with Jacobin whether he senses a shift in opinion in favor of the Palestinian struggle, Thrall responded, “There’s no denying that opinions about Israel are shifting in the United States and the rest of the world. It was unimaginable a short while ago to have the French foreign minister say that the status quo is leading to apartheid, as he did on Sunday. It was unimaginable to have the foreign minister of Luxembourg speak of Israeli apartheid, as he did several days ago. It was unimaginable to have not just prominent members of Congress but some of the most popular politicians in America say of Israel, ‘Apartheid states aren’t democracies.’ These statements shouldn’t be controversial.”
Thrall spent a decade at the International Crisis Group, where he was director of the Arab-Israeli Project, and has taught at Bard College. Originally from California, he lives in Jerusalem.
IMAGE GALLERY
Open and right-click to download
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama (October, 2023)
Book Jacket
The Only Language They Understand
Book Jacket
