{"id":1228,"date":"2015-09-10T11:49:27","date_gmt":"2015-09-10T18:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/?p=1228"},"modified":"2015-09-15T13:02:51","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T20:02:51","slug":"tolans-children-of-the-stone-paints-an-honest-devastating-portrait-of-life-under-occupation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/?p=1228","title":{"rendered":"Tolan\u2019s \u2018Children of the Stone\u2019 paints an honest devastating portrait of life under occupation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/mondoweiss.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1115 alignleft\" alt=\"mondoweiss\" src=\"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/mondoweiss-300x69.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"69\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/mondoweiss-300x69.png 300w, https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/mondoweiss.png 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>by Pamela Olson<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-986 alignleft\" style=\"border: 0px; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;\" alt=\"CScover\" src=\"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/CScover-197x300.jpg\" width=\"197\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/CScover-197x300.jpg 197w, https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/CScover.jpg 632w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 197px) 100vw, 197px\" \/>You have to hand it to journalist Sandy Tolan, author of\u00a0<i>The Lemon Tree<\/i>. In his new book\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Children-Stone-Power-Music-Hard\/dp\/1608198138\"><i>Children of the Stone<\/i><\/a>,\u00a0he doesn\u2019t pussy-foot around. There\u2019s no attempt at false \u201cbalance,\u201d no endeavor to spend equal time on the Israeli side or make their situation seem as bad as\u2014or worse than\u2014the Palestinian reality in order to get the \u201cnon-biased\u201d stamp of approval. In today\u2019s language, poisoned by politics, \u201cnon-biased\u201d means distorting facts to fit a mainstream narrative that amounts to a near-total inversion of reality.\u00a0Tolan has none of it.<br \/>\nInstead he dares to tell a sweeping Palestinian story, from a predominantly Palestinian perspective, of passion and loss, hard work and violence, perseverance and corruption, focusing on the life of Ramzi Aburedwan, a boy from a Palestinian refugee camp who grows up to found Al Kamandjati, a gorgeous music school and a pride of Ramallah.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mondoweiss.net\/2015\/09\/children-devastating-occupation\" target=\"_blank\">Click here <\/a>to read the full review. <a title=\"Praise for \u2018Children of the Stone\u2019 in Huffington Post Books, the Seattle Times &amp; St. Louis Dispatch\" href=\"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/?p=1109\">Click here<\/a> to read what others are saying about <em>Children of the Stone<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Pamela Olson You have to hand it to journalist Sandy Tolan, author of\u00a0The Lemon Tree. In his new book\u00a0Children of the Stone,\u00a0he doesn\u2019t pussy-foot around. There\u2019s no attempt at false \u201cbalance,\u201d no endeavor to spend equal time on the Israeli side or make their situation seem as bad as\u2014or worse than\u2014the Palestinian reality in <a href=\"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/?p=1228#more-'\" class=\"more-link\">more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,26],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1228"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1238,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions\/1238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}