Yehoshua and Kanafani's Writings: The Need to Fight for Freedom

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Compare and Contrast Readings
Both Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun and A. B. Yehoshua’s Facing the Forests explore weighty subjects. Kanafani explores the plight of the Palestinians while demonstrating his position on the matter as a political activist, journalist, and novelist. Having been a victim of violence and mayhem in Palestine and also the challenges experienced in the “years as an exile”, Kanafani writes as an insider to the issue. Similarly, Yehoshua’s, a Peace Movement activist, uses the novel to demonstrate his position on the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Having been born December 9, 1936, to a fifth-generation Jerusalem family, Yehoshua has seen the conflict unfold. In his quest for a solution to the problem, Yehoshua is not shy to demonstrate how the conflict has adverse effects on both sides of the divide. Both writers use allegory extensively and demonstrate the need for both Israelis and Palestinians to fight the status quo while disagreeing on the role of silence in the ongoing conflict.
Both pieces demonstrate the need for both sides to overcome the barriers instituted by the status quo. In Facing the Forests, the unnamed protagonist is part of the intellectual elite that is expected to expand on the national narrative and maintain it as it is. In this case, the elites are supposed to support the effort of Zionists in their quest to maintain the occupancy of land, currently occupied by Palestinians. While the protagonist is expected to remain vocal, “Solitude is what he needs” (Yehoshua 225). The protagonist’s encounter with the “old and dumb” Arab, whose “tongue was cut out during the war” causes him to change his perspective on the Israeli’s aggression against the Palestinians (Yehoshua 231). He soon learns out that contrary to what he was told to believe, a destroyed Arab village remains buried beneath the forest he is now protecting. Eventually while “The Arab is setting the forest on fire at its four corners,” the protagonist does nothing (Yehoshua 244). Similarly, Kanafani calls Palestinians to raise against their oppressors. He demonstrates that the Palestinians’ silence has led to their atrocities. Their silence on the ongoing conflict is ending up in futility for them. The more the Palestinians keep quiet on the atrocities committed against them by the Israelis and the Palestinian leadership, the more they continue to suffer and die. The last statement, “Why didn’t you bang the sides of the tank? Why? Why? Why?” shows the need for Palestinians to wake up and do something different (Kanafani 56).
Additionally, both texts use allegory extensively to deliver their message. In the case of Facing the Forests, Yehoshua allegorically demonstrates the dilemma facing the post-independent Israel. The forest symbolically represents the Israeli’s charged political atmosphere, whose silence needs to be broken. The Israelis are excited to work in their new country since “it’s something new. A dream of a job, a plum” (Yehoshua 226). The manager represents the first generation of Israelis, who went to war in the name of sacred words. Th...