User:Roscelese/Ilana Hammerman

Ilana Hammerman (born September 15, 1944) is an Israeli author, editor, translator, and activist who, in violation of Israel's laws preventing Palestinian residents of the West Bank from entering the country, takes Palestinian women and girls on day trips to Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean Sea. Her writing has included two books about Israel Defense Forces soldiers' experiences and one about sex trafficking in Israel, while her translations have been recognized with the Tchernichovsky Prize.

Publishing
Since 1985, Hammerman has worked as a senior editor at Israeli publisher Am Oved.

Hammerman has written a number of nonfiction books about Israeli society. Soldiers in the Land of Ishma'el: Stories and Documents, co-written with Rolly Rosen in 1990, and From Beirut to Jenin: The Lebanon War 1982-2002, co-written with Irit Gal in 2002, collect the testimonies of Israel Defense Forces soldiers who served in the Palestinian territories during the First Intifada and in Lebanon during the 1982 War. These accounts contrast the violence and humiliation the soldiers committed with the public narrative of IDF morality, while the authors explore the connections between the conflicts and their ramifications in the present. The title of the latter book comes from the testimony of Lt. Col. Giora Ben-Dov, who says, "There is a connection to what is happening today...this thing began in the Lebanon War: a direct thread connects Beirut and Jenin." Other related documents, including court transcripts, official orders, Knesset minutes, and army pamphlets, are also included.

In Foreign Parts: Trafficking Women in Israel, published in 2004, discusses the problem of foreign women, generally Eastern European, being forced into prostitution in Israel. It encompasses individual women's stories of survival and identity, an analysis of the socioeconomic situations in their home countries that led them to emigrate, and an exposé of Israeli society and the way in which johns' treatment of prostitutes, and the government and media's failure to address trafficking, reflects deeper inequality between Israeli men and women. As in her previous books, Hammerman incorporates other texts: here, quotes and excerpts from the women's writings, from legal documents, and from police and traffickers' lawyers. One focus of the book is the gap between traditional discourse around the issue and reality: with regard to the subjects' interest in family in contrast to the idea of prostitution as destroying the family, to the surprisingly pervasive and mainstream nature of the sex trade, and and to the revelation that some of the women do not view themselves as having been forced and that others cooperate with the criminals, even while others are starved and locked up.

Hammerman translates works from German and French into Hebrew. Her 1994 translation of Louis-Ferdinand Céline's novel Journey to the End of the Night sparked controversy and debate due to the author's antisemitism. Among her other translations are Gustave Flaubert's Three Tales, Albert Camus's The First Man, a new translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, and Franz Kafka's letters to his father and to Felice Bauer. She won the Tchernichovsky Prize for lifetime achievement in translation in 2006.

Personal life
Hammerman was married to literary scholar and peace activist Jürgen Nieraad, who died of leukemia in December 2000. Hammerman and Nieraad wrote a book, Under the Sign of Cancer: A Journey Beyond Returning, documenting their experiences of Nieraad's final months. Their son, Jonathan Nieraad, is also a translator.

She formerly served on the board of human rights organizations B'Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, as well as on the council of the progressive political party Ratz.

Hammerman rides a bicycle.