Monday, January 23, 2006

Dawn follows the Night

Oprah has chosen Elie Weisel's "Night" as a book selection.

Too bad.

"Dawn" is another very good book that could have benefited, especially as it deals with a theme of the Jewish underground resistance aginst the British Mandatory regime in then Palestine.

Here's an excerpt from a summary I found:

Takes place in Palestine. The narrator knows that he has to kill a man tomorrow. He doesn't know who it is but he knows what he has to do. The man that was going to die was an Englishman. The reason that he had to kill was because there is a war.

Night has a face and day does not. The face that appears is of a dead person. The night before the narrator does what he has to do, he looks into the night and sees his own face. There is going to be an execution at dawn. All of the executions happened at dawn. The Movement always kept their word.

A month earlier there was one of their fighters that had been on a terrorist operation. He was hauled in by the police and they found weapons on him. They hung the man. By law this is what they were supposed to do. This was the tenth death sentence by the mandatory power in Palestine. The Old Man decided that things had gone far enough and now he was not going to allow the English to rule any longer. The Old Man ordered that a military officer be kidnapped. They kidnapped Captain John Dawson who walked alone at night.

The High Commissioner of Palestine said that the whole country would be held responsible for the murder of the Captain, if he was in fact murdered. A few people got in touch with the Old Man and told him not to go too far. They wanted the man that was supposed to die, to live. If he died than the Captain would die. The mother of the Captain demanded that the English give up the young Jew so that she could have her son back. The men told her that "The Jews will never do it".

The narrator, Elisha, aged 18, asked Gad who was going to kill the Captain who was going to kill the Captain. He replied "You are." It was an order from the Old Man. To Gad it was not a big deal.

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