Nathan Thrall is an American journalist who has been based in Jerusalem for 20 years. His book A Day in the Life of Abed Salama tells the story of a 2012 school bus crash in which six Palestinian children died – including the five-year-old son of Abed Salama. Thrall’s story unravelled how the Israeli government’s policies, the infrastructure of “apartheid roads” and the everyday bureaucratic humiliations of Palestinian communities created and exacerbated the tragedy. The book, which was awarded this year’s Pulitzer prize for general nonfiction, was published in the week of the horrific 7 October Hamas attacks that triggered the Gaza war.
I was reading an interview you did with the Observer immediately after 7 October, when publicity events for your book had been cancelled in London. You were saying nobody wanted to hear context and nuance about those horrors. Has that changed since then?
I think it has changed. But it’s been a bifurcated response. You have an older generation who, if anything, have moved to the right since 7 October and don’t want to hear. And then there is, of course, this awakening among young people who may not have had much knowledge of Israel and Palestine prior to then.
