Book review: Unravelling every wrongdoing

In the book, Fintan Drury eschews hyperbole and emotional outrage and speaks directly to the symptoms of Zionism and its catastrophic effects on the Palestinian people. File picture: Oliver McVeigh/ IRFU 

• Catastrophe: Nakba II 
• Fintan Drury 
• Merrion Press, €18.99

“The prevailing narrative is one thing. The truth is quite different.”

When the evidence of nefarious wrongdoing is so ubiquitous and overwhelming — as it is in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza — perhaps the greatest achievement for any writer is simply to be discerning.

Journalist, media entrepreneur, and migration activist Fintan Drury has handled the almost impossible task of framing the unframeable in his latest book, Catastrophe: Nakba II.

In the book, he eschews hyperbole and emotional outrage and speaks directly to the symptoms of Zionism and its catastrophic effects on the Palestinian people — from the original Nakba in 1948 until today. 

Written and impeccably researched in real time, the book provides a compelling and concise account of the contemporary history of the Middle East, the birth of an ethno-terror state, and Western complicity in its manifestation from violent philosophy to brutal protagonist.

An Israeli citizen, who relocated his family from Tel Aviv to Paris, said: 'Israel is a very different now to a decade or two ago; the IDF is different to when I did my three years mandatory service 20 years ago. Truth is a casualty.' File picture: AP

“Israel is a coloniser; aided by the West,” he writes. 

“It has been allowed not just to establish itself as a sovereign state with internationally accepted boundaries, but one that has methodically extended its territory in contravention of multiple UN resolutions and international law.”

Such straightforward opinions might otherwise seem subjective had Drury not backed them up with unimpeachable detail. 

Unable to travel to Gaza, he might well have stayed at home and still produced a book of considerable merit given the evidence remotely available.

Instead, he travelled to Lebanon, Jordan, the occupied West Bank, and Paris to include incredibly worthwhile testimony that — among other things — provides nuance to the oft-misunderstood complex relationship between Lebanon and Palestine.

Buried within another testimony from an Israeli citizen, who relocated his family from Tel Aviv to Paris, was a nugget of truth too jarring to ignore: 

“Israel is a very different now to a decade or two ago; the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is different to when I did my three years mandatory service 20 years ago. Truth is a casualty.”

Perhaps, but the “truth” Drury lays bare repeatedly confirms that the IDF — and the state it purports to defend — was no different 20 years ago than it is today. 

The only difference — as Drury explains — is that the restrictions and boundaries the international community once imposed upon it no longer exist. 

The Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, gave them the excuse to test that theory, and the results are now visible on the faces of emaciated Palestinian children.

What is perhaps most revealing is the carefully teased out confessionals from inside Israel, by Israelis. 

Not because they elicit sympathy, but because their indifference is so flagrant.

There is also insight into an inherently racist educational system that has contributed so much to the maturation of an apartheid state, especially as it seeks to punish any voice from within who questions government policy.

Parallels between the Troubles and the Palestinian cause have often proven lazy and reductive. Not so here. 

Few are better placed than Drury to carefully examine the strategy and consequences of internment. 

One Israeli non-governmental organisation quoted references the weaponisation of a scabies outbreak among Palestinian prisoners to impose even more hardship on detainees. 

It’s a horrific image, and one that is depressingly consistent with the tone and tenor of this book.

With excellent pacing and an admirable ability to make the complex comprehensible, Drury prosecutes the roles of the Israeli Knesset, international media, and UNRWA, as well as the ambivalence of modern society as they pertain to Palestine. 

Crucially, he neatly presents irrefutable facts regarding what Gaza and the occupied territories looked like on October 6 — the day before — as a method of framing every horror since.

Some will absurdly argue this book is antisemitic. Others may say Drury does not go far enough, that the reality unfolding on the ground in Gaza and elsewhere renders the objectivity he covets obsolete. 

To his immense credit, he lets the facts scream from the page.

This is an essential book. One that should be read and understood today, before the horror becomes history, and that history is repeated.