IN SEARCH OF FATIMA

30 June 2026 

I’ve just finished reading Ghada Karmi’s autobiographical story about her life as a Palestinian, In Search of Fatima. At the age of 9 in 1948 she and her family were forced out of Palestine during the Nakba. It’s an intimate and powerful novel with the story of the creation of Israel told from the side of those who lost their homes and their land. She grew up in England with a father awarded an MBE for his work on the BBC Arab service and his creation of Arab/English dictionaries and a mother who for 40 years, refused to learn English because of the role they had played in the loss of her home. Ghada describes her immersion in English culture, her friendship with Jewish kids growing up in Golders Green, her marriage to an Englishman and how it all started to fray as a result of the 6 Day War when most of Britain was on the side of “plucky little Israel” fighting off the “dirty” Arabs. She also talks about finally going back to Israel (only allowed as a tourist of course because there’s no “right to return” for Palestinians) and seeing the apartheid between Israeli Jews and Arabs at play. 

Now her voice (even at 87) is more strident although it’s hard to disagree with some of her points e.g. the erasure of the name Palestine from the historical records, the outrage of Gaza, the increasing violence by settlers in the West Bank (Anthony Lowenstein has written a similar article recently). But the most challenging of her recent Substack pieces is when she talks about the dismantling of Israeli. It was an artificial creation so therefore she says it could be taken apart. I don’t dare to the think of the psychic let alone physical pain that would ensure for the Jewish community - but then, she would claim, that’s what happened to her Palestinian community. In one article she asks why Israel is allowed to get away with genocide, apartheid, even having a detrimental effect on US international policy, and offers these reflections: 

 “Commonly stated answers to these questions include the following: enduring guilt over the holocaust in Europe; Israel’s valuable role as an agent of western imperialism in a resource-rich Middle East; the influence of powerful pro-Israel lobbies operating in western countries to protect Israel; and the part Christianity, especially among evangelicals in the US, plays in promoting Israel as the rightful place for Jews to which it is natural for them to ‘return’.” 

What she fails to mention is the underlying issue: for many Jews, it was the failure of the assimilation experience both in terms of Nazi Germany but all the other countries such as the USA and UK who refused to take Jewish refugees  and therefore the psychological desire for a safe haven. This underlies the ferocity of the Jewish lobby and reinforces the guilt of the West. 

But on reflection, should I even be writing this? Indigenous writer and historian Tony Birch gave an interesting speech at Melbourne’s Writers Festival: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/bigideas/tony-birch-michael-williams-melbourne-writers-festival/106811726 In it he reflected on whether those of us who aren’t Jewish and aren’t Palestinian should write about that part of the world at all. This isn’t to say we can’t take a stand on a matter of principle but his sensible proposal was to keep reading the works of both Jewish and Palestinian writers and that’s what I shall do.