Walking to Jerusalem

Starred review from July 15, 2019
A pilgrimage to Palestine brings a message of compassion and understanding. Actor, director, and musician Butcher makes an impressive literary debut with a vibrant, moving chronicle of a five-month, 3,300-kilometer journey from London to Jerusalem to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the 50th anniversary of Israel's military occupation of Palestine, and the 10th anniversary of Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. Sponsored by Amos Trust, a London-based human rights organization, "A Just Walk to Jerusalem" began in June 2017 with the goal of expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people and to counter Theresa May's public endorsement of the Balfour Declaration, which, Amos Trust asserts, "precipitated a century of dispossession, conflict and suffering." The walk attracted some 40 participants of all ages, religious backgrounds, and nationalities, all eager to make the historic pilgrimage to protest injustice and stand for equal rights. For much of the book, Butcher recounts, in lyrical, radiant prose, sights and sounds, triumphs and discomforts as the group slogged on, blistered and sweaty, across France, Switzerland, Italy, Albania, Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, and finally into Palestine. Here, for example, he conveys the thrill of witnessing a lightning storm from the deck of a ferry in Ancona: "Brilliant glimmers fleeting across the sky, now and then concentrated with intense radiance in soiling forks, now diffused in yellow splashes spilling behind, along and through the clouds." On the moors in Greece, he records "a magical potpourri of sounds--tinkling goat bells and dogs woofing, bees buzzing, cicadas trilling and the silvery sliver of wrens and thrushes singing." The author's purpose, though, is far more consequential than to create a travel narrative: "A Just Walk" bore witness to a century of oppression. Welcomed warmly in Palestine, Butcher talked with residents whose lives had been cruelly circumscribed by Israeli settlements, who lost their homes, who were cut off from water and medicine, whose children were shot by Israeli soldiers--and who still harbored hope for peace and goodwill. An urgent and impassioned plea for justice in the Middle East.

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September 2, 2019
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.