cover image Walking to Jerusalem: Endurance and Hope on a Pilgrimage from London to the Holy Land

Walking to Jerusalem: Endurance and Hope on a Pilgrimage from London to the Holy Land

Justin Butcher. Pegasus, $27.95 (320p) ISBN 978-1-64313-211-2

As this rambling memoir recounts, after witnessing the aftermath of Israeli demolition of a Palestinian home near Bethlehem, writer, director, producer, actor, and musician Butcher led a group pilgrimage from Britain to Jerusalem “in penance and solidarity” with the Palestinian people. In June 2017, he gathered a “crowd of forty-odd adventurers, all ages from 18 to 80, from every walk of life and every nation” in Trafalgar Square to begin their march. Only 10 ended up making the entire journey, but even the diehards don’t emerge as distinct or memorable personalities. Butcher’s description of the pilgrimage is both incongruously self-focused—graphic descriptions of the toll the walking took on his feet are mingled with offhand references to the death of a relative—and at odds with his stated goals: given the sympathy he hopes to engender for Palestinians living in squalid conditions, details of the fancy food consumed en route may rub readers the wrong way. Butcher also assumes a level of knowledge about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that not every reader will have, and glosses over salient information about Iranian-Israeli relations, the First Intifada, and the opposition within American and Israeli Jewry to the continued occupation of the West Bank. The end result is more travelogue than a serious attempt to focus world attention on a neglected human rights issue. (Sept.)