My review draws on an review article by Harriet Sherwood (guardian.co.uk) - Sunday 15 August 2010

This is a deeply moving book, chronicling a devout Muslim's experience of almost unbearable suffering and his remarkable response to it. To summarize, One December day in Gaza, Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish took his eight children to the beach. Two months earlier, the children's mother had died from acute leukaemia, and Abuelaish was comforted to see his older daughters laughing and chatting as they wrote their names in the sand: Bessan, Maya, Aya.

But within five weeks the Abuelaishs were to suffer a second tragedy: those three girls, aged 13, 15 and 21, were killed, and another daughter, Noor, 17, seriously injured, when an Israeli shell was fired at the family home during the brief but bloody war in Gaza in 2008-9. One of Abuelaish's nieces also died; a fifth girl, another niece, suffered terrible injuries.

The title, "I Shall Not Hate" describes the book's message. "I'm against any violence," says Abuelaish. "Violence and the military approach proved its failings decades ago and that will never, ever change.As Palestinians and Israelis we have failed to change course. We just continue with the same approach which aggravates, escalates and widens the gap of hatred and bloodshed. It's easy to destroy life but very difficult to build it."

Faced with such violence, many would seek revenge. Abuelaish does not.""There is a difference between anger and hate. Anger is acute but transient; hate is a poison, a fire which burns you from the inside. We need to be angry, but direct it in a positive way."

I commend this book to persons of all faiths and none.