Most books about the Israeli/​Palestinian con­flict today pick sides. Rather than treat the sub­ject with the nuance it deserves, and rather than see all those involved in their full human­i­ty, the authors argue their cor­ner, hop­ing to per­suade their read­ers. Not so with Ittay Flescher’s newest work, The Holy and the Bro­ken. On near­ly every page, Ittay walks patient­ly with his read­ers, intro­duc­ing them to the sto­ries, peo­ple, and nar­ra­tives that make up the con­flict. In doing so, he leaves read­ers with a bet­ter appre­ci­a­tion of what is tru­ly at stake when vio­lence breaks out in Israel or Gaza. 

Flesch­er is at heart an edu­ca­tor. He has worked at Kids4Peace in Jerusalem, build­ing bridges between chil­dren and teens of dif­fer­ent faiths. This work gave Flesch­er two skills that resound in the book. First, he has learned to cut to the heart of an issue, explain­ing it suc­cinct­ly and in a way that his read­ers will under­stand. The book con­veys com­plex ideas sim­ply with­out sac­ri­fic­ing detail and nuance. Sec­ond, when Flesch­er, a Jew, talks about Pales­tini­ans, they are not abstract. He knows them, cares for them, and has even com­fort­ed them. As such, when he speaks about their hard­ships, it is not conjecture. 

Anoth­er thing that makes Flescher’s voice unique is that he is a proud Aus­tralian. Like Amer­i­cans in the US, Aus­tralians have had to reck­on with the forced dis­place­ment of the native pop­u­la­tion. Yet, where­as most Amer­i­cans have nev­er dia­logued with Native Amer­i­cans, Flesch­er has spent time with Australia’s abo­rig­i­nals. This helps him feel for the Pales­tini­ans, even as he is care­ful not to make overt analo­gies, know­ing that West­ern colo­nial­ism is some­thing entire­ly dif­fer­ent from the his­to­ry of Zion­ism. Yet, Flesch­er believes, just because they don’t per­fect­ly over­lap doesn’t mean they don’t have some­thing to teach.

Like­wise, the sec­tar­i­an vio­lence in Israel does not per­fect­ly par­al­lel that of North­ern Ire­land or South Africa, but both exam­ples are brought forth to show what the hard work of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, sac­ri­fice, and peace­mak­ing can do for a nation. Flesch­er yearns for peace and looks to past exam­ples both as mod­els and as plat­forms for his own hopes. 

The Holy and the Bro­ken is a post-Octo­ber 7th book. Flesch­er does not pull his punch­es when talk­ing about the evils of Hamas. At the same time, Flesch­er is hon­est about the need­less suf­fer­ing of many Pales­tin­ian civil­ians dur­ing the cur­rent war. In his view, Israel can­not make peace unless they under­go a moral reck­on­ing with what has hap­pened in their name. 

But Flesch­er has hope. While his answer to the con­flict may not speak to all read­ers— he advo­cates for a con­fed­er­a­cy where peo­ple can live in Pales­tine or Israel but vote with their respec­tive reli­gions — his path to get there will. Flesch­er speaks pas­sion­ate­ly about the need for wom­en’s voic­es in the peace con­ver­sa­tion, about chang­ing the nar­ra­tives in our text­books, and about jour­nal­ists pay­ing much more atten­tion to the lan­guage they use to frame the con­flict (war vs. con­flict, West Bank vs. Judea and Samaria, occu­pied vs. dis­put­ed territories). 

The book crescen­dos with two imag­ined let­ters, one to an Israeli child and one to a Pales­tin­ian. The let­ters echo with love and care. They also con­vey the spir­it of the pre­vi­ous two hun­dred-plus pages. Flesch­er believes in peace because he believes in peo­ple. His work at Kids4Peace has shown him that we can change, we can lis­ten, and we can grow. His wish now is to see what he saw in micro­cosm at Kids4Peace for his beloved nation as a whole.