When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words, and Wounds of Palestine

“I am writing these words at a strange moment in my life: I have just been sanctioned by the United States.... for the absurd ‘crime’ of allegedly working with the International Criminal Court,” begins this incisive, heart-wrenching account from UN special rapporteur Albanese (Palestinian Refugees in International Law). The author spotlights the “unspeakable suffering” of the Palestinians and examines fraught questions around the Israeli occupation through close looks at 10 individuals who have shaped her thinking. They include slain five-year-old Hind Rajab; trauma expert Gabor Maté; Abu Hassan, a Palestinian acquaintance who took Albanese on an “alternative tour” of Jerusalem, including areas where “children had to crawl through sewage pipes to go to school because of the obstacles put in place by the Israelis”; and the author’s own husband, who used to accompany West Bank Palestinians in their daily activities in order to shield them from settler violence. Along the way, Albanese delves into complicated debates surrounding Israel-Palestine, such as whether to call the system of government apartheid; incorporates her own observations from living in Jerusalem, including a distressing encounter when an Israeli man told a Palestinian friend, “You don’t exist”; and draws on harrowing remote interviews she conducted with Gazan children in 2022. It’s an indispensable, at times deeply sickening, overview of the situation on the ground in Palestine. (Apr.)