Book Talk : Stone Men - The Palestinians Who Built Israel

Abstract: Andrew Ross’s latest book recounts the history, and present-day livelihoods, of the Palestinian stone and construction workers who have built most of the dwellings, towns, cities and infrastructure of Israel/Palestine. Drawing on a rich artisanal legacy and from some of the best limestone deposits in the world, their labor has been sidelined by the focus on land theft and military rule in the region.

How should almost a century of their sweat equity be recognized and how might it affect the growing debate about a single state in the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean?

She is the author of numerous journal articles published on topics ranging from the history of archaeology in Palestine to the question of race and genomics today. Abu El-Haj has published two books: Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (2001), which won the Albert Hourani Annual Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association in 2002, and The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology (2012). While Abu El-Haj’s two books to date have focused on historical sciences (archaeology, and genetic history), her third book, Caring for Militarism: Soldier Trauma, The Obligations of Citizenship, and the Forever Wars, examines the field of (military) psychiatry, and explores the complex ethical and political implications of shifting psychiatric and public understandings of the trauma of soldiers.