Writing a novel about the Israeli society is a very touchy subject for an Egyptian writer; yet Sherif Shaaban went on to that quest with a steady hand and enough knowledge to get the reader attracted to the story, the characters he created and the events that most Middle Eastern people followed and remembered in his novel 'Zion’s Daughter'.

 

The novel starts with the arrival of a famous professor of Political History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  John McClain is a renowned name in his field; he has been under surveillance by the security apparatus ever since his arrival to Tel Aviv and up until the end of the novel.

The novel’s beginning reminds the reader of Dan Brown's most famous novel 'The Da Vinci code', a professor with status and importance gets introduced to the scene, the mysterious ambiences of secret societies and security people are also involved in the academic world. The writer prepares the reader for exciting discoveries regarding the Zionist entity.

 

The title is provocative for the Arabic reader; the novel reveals that it is the code word for “Kach” a secret society membership. An organisation that is ultranationalist and believes in “pure” Israel where no Arabs exist. It touches on the rebuilding of the Solomon temple after obtaining a pure red cow, one that they had their scientists produce genetically. The cow’s birth is among the signs of the Jewish state's triumph. Kach was established in 1971 and declared a terrorist organisation in 1994; hence it became a secret society recruiting its members carefully. Shaaban invented characters belonging to that organisation, explained their rituals and beliefs as well as showed how racist and dangerous they are. According to the novel, its members exist everywhere, which gives clear parallels to the Muslim Brotherhood, its counterpart in the Arab world.

 

The novel showed how the Israeli society thinks in regards to the security of their citizens and their right in the Palestinian land. It also presented nearly all the factions existing in the political spectrum; from those who want to have peace with the Palestinians to those who want to kick them out and exterminate them completely. Finally, he portrays the Palestinians themselves with their heroes and traitors.

 

The first two thirds of the novel show a neutral writer presenting the Jewish point of view in the non-ending struggle of the Middle East; simply explaining how it functions, how they think and the continuous brutality that they deal with in their conflict with the Palestinians. He also showed the kind Israelis who fight for peace and coexistence with the real owners of the land.

 

Shabaan invented an impossible love story between Mariam a Jewish girl and Mustafa a Muslim boy, both students at Hebrew University, but come from two completely different worlds.

 

One raised in a Kibbutz supported and protected by the Israeli state, while the other one born and raised in Hebron under the Israeli occupation, coming from a family who has been fighting for their land for generations. Eventually, they had to disagree on the rights of both parties, they both saw it as a struggle of existence; they broke up. Mariam became a drug addict after losing the love of her life meanwhile, Mustafa got more involved in the resistance movement and was imprisoned after organising a daring operation against the Israeli army. He ends up dead after being tortured at the Israeli prison.

 

The importance of professor McClain in the novel is clear, the Hebrew university invited him to teach for a year in Jerusalem to concretise the Israeli right in the land through his work, research, lectures and studies. The writer shed light on his academic history, McClain supported Israeli rights in Palestine, then went into the occupied territories and saw how the Palestinians were being treated and how they lived under oppressive authority. It was an eye-opener for him. He changed his views and was punished for it.

 

The novel describes the operation of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 2004 from the Israeli operation room.

 

The importance of the old crippled Sheikh was described by the Israeli officers and it was shown that his words formed an imminent danger to the Jewish state. In order to balance the scene one of the pilots refused to participate in the assassination, he simply saw him as an old blind man on a wheel chair who cannot defend himself let alone form a threat to mighty Israel. That pilot happened to be Moshe, Mariam’s brother. His career in the air force was that of discrimination against Eastern Jews by the Western ones; through Moshe’s story the writer clarified that discrimination in Israel can be institutional not just by ethnicity.

 

Zion’s Daughter is a deceiving novel; it starts by explaining Israel in an unbiased light and even justifying its existence and the way it operates through patriotic men defending their country and ends up exposing a monster of a state that kills and punishes everyone that disagrees or exposes its violent nature against everyone else.