A Land With A People: Palestinians and Jews Confront Zionism

A collection of personal stories,
history, poetry, and art

2022 WINNER, MIDDLE EAST BOOK AWARD, given by the Middle East Outreach Council (MEOC) in honor of Lisa Adelia

Eloquently framed with a foreword by the dynamic Palestinian legal scholar and activist, Noura Erakat, A Land With A People began as a storytelling project of Jewish Voice for Peace-New York City and subsequently transformed into a theater project performed throughout the New York City area.

A Land With A People elevates rarely heard Palestinian and Jewish voices and visions. It brings us the narratives of secular, Muslim, Christian, and LGBTQ Palestinians who endure the particular brand of settler colonialism known as Zionism. It relays the transformational journeys of Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, Palestinian and LGBTQ Jews who have come to reject the received Zionist narrative. Unflinching in their confrontation of the power dynamics that underlie their transformation process, these writers find the courage to face what has happened to historic Palestine, and to their own families as a result.

Stories touch hearts, open minds, and transform our understanding of the “other”—as well as comprehension of our own roles and responsibilities. A Land With A People emerges from this reckoning.

Contextualized by a detailed historical introduction and timeline charting 150 years of Palestinian and Jewish resistance to Zionism, this collection will stir emotions, provoke fresh thinking, and point to a more hopeful, loving future—one in which Palestine/Israel is seen for what it is in its entirety, as well as for what it can be.

Esther Farmer is a Palestinian Jew and native Brooklynite passionate about using theater as a tool for community development. She is former Ombudsman and Manager for the New York City Housing Authority, former United Nations representative for the International Association for Community Development and was an original founder of Teamsters for a Democratic Union. As part of her activism in the Alliance for Puerto Rican Education and Empowerment, she helped produce the film, Making the Impossible Possible. She is also a JVP-National artist involved with producing storytelling workshops around the country, and the author of several articles published by Routledge and Taylor and Francis, on theater, performance, and social change. She is a Jewish Voice for Peace-NYC chapter leader and the director and playwright of “Wrestling with Zionism.”

Rosalind Pollack Petchesky (she/her) is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Political Science at City University of New York, and a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and, more recently the Charles A. McCoy Career Achievement Award. Dr. Petchesky’s first book, Abortion and Woman’s Choice, cited by both the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts, won the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize of the American Historical Association. She is the author of many published books and articles, translated into numerous languages, on gender, sexual, and reproductive justice; transnational feminisms; and the politics of the body. Professor Petchesky travels frequently to visit her beloved grandchildren in Texas, but lives in New York City, where she is Jewish Voice for Peace-NYC chapter leader, a classical pianist, and a kickboxer.

Sarah Sills is a life-long artist-activist, graphic designer, organizer, and event producer. Over the years she co-led a Teamsters trade union delegation to China, organized clerical workers at Columbia University, raised money for Salvadoran women’s cooperatives during the war, and worked at a pro-Aristide Haitian newspaper. In addition to being a JVP-NYC chapter leader, she is currently involved with producing storytelling workshops and the Wrestling with Zionism Readers Theater.

For excerpts and a discussion of the book, head here