Okay, I'll admit it. . .I planned to skim this article and go back to my life. Another fish-out-of-water-average-joe-thrust-into-greatness novel.

Well, yes it is.

But judging from these two excerpts? A fun ride well worth the price of admission.

Well - that was enough to get me hooked.

If I don't end up buying it from Amazon tonight, at the very least I'll add it to my wishlist and pick it up later either used or as an Amazon Kindle download. (I imagine myself one day owning an Amazon Kindle.)

Somebody editing here did a fantastic job gleaning two pages worth of content from the book that work as spectacular bait for trapping readers.

Well, now mum and dad have signed in and given this the thumbs up, how about pushing Pookie over to the keyboard...

"See! He's wagging his tail! Pookie's going to buy one copy for himself and ten for all his doggie friends..."

Given the extreme danger that exists in the middle east, young Levey's adventures sound a bit silly. Oy vey.

I've read a fair amount on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but I'm still confused about which side is in the right and which are the evil bastards. Could somebody please set me straight?

Can't answer that one for you, other than to say that anyone who says that one side is entirely right, and the other side are completely evil bastards, is wrong.

This excerpt barely even gets started. So a young guy got recruited to work in the government. Wowie zowie. I'm just wondering if Chapter 3 ends with Ariel Sharon unzipping his elasticized pants and gently but firmly pressing our neophyte's innocent little head down toward Sharon's kosher breadbox.

Look -- this is cute and all. But the excerpt is lame. When do we get to the part that provides real insight about politics?

And oh yeah: The first two posters in this comments sections are obvious shills. I'm glad you want to promote your buddy, but could you try to sound less like pill-popping infomercial androids?

I feel like the nice people at Salon got taken for a ride by the publisher's marketing department on this one. At least I hope so, as the other possibility is that there was some quid pro quo for publishing this.

I don't mind when Salon publishes some substantial excerpt from a book that makes a good article on its own. But this is a sad little teaser that I'd hope they'd never accept on its own, and it ends with a painfully obvious now-buy-my-book hook. Annoying.

that was the sentence that stuck its tongue out at me. it is, of course, diplomatic - what the real meaning is what the U.S. says, Israel does. you got a problem, folks? bring it up with the people that call the shots, the walker, not the chihuahua.

Wow. Ask Levey if he was also consulted regarding control of Israel's nukes. After all, if you keep half the bomb over here on this side of the hangar, and the rest over there on that side, each is just equipment (some of it slightly radioactive); there is no weapon! Perhaps policy on use of these -- er, pieces of equipment is made in much the same way as the voting described in his piece, from his book. Ouch.

I think of this space as a bastion of intelligence and rational thinking. This is why I am repeatedly saddened to read antisemitic letters like the above ones...

And coloring one's anti-semitic vile with anti-Israeli rhetoric does not make it less disgusting and sad...

I am not saying that legitimate discussion about policy matters is hate speech. I am glad to read and engage in those.

I always get a laugh out of people when they chant "He's a better ex president than president" which is a little like saying "Bone cancer is better than being eaten by a shark". Look the fact is that Carter didn't achieve anything. He speaks for no one but Hamas and the BBC. He's a gadlfy, always has been.

As that great American Benjamin Franklin once said, "Two wrongs don't make a right".

Attempting to justify Israeli atrocities by offering selective criticisms of "Arabs", "Palestinians", or "Muslims", is patently illogical. Human rights are not contingent on perfect behavior; if they were, no-one would have any. Current Israeli policies go well beyond legitimate self-defense. This is true even though antagonists of Israel are also obnoxious.

It is the height of ethnic stereotyping, and grossly dishonest, to imply that "Jews" uniformly support right wing Israeli policies. How ironic - Glenn Greenwald has specifically pointed this out, and demonstrated what polling data actually shows.

Occupying hostile territory is a foolhardy as well as immoral policy.

What has been goin' on since I've been gone for a while? Why were you suspended?

It's possible to think that Israel was justified in defending itself in 1948, '67, '73 and still be against their current wars in Lebanon, and some of Ariel Sharon's more blatant attacks as defense minister.

It's possible to be pro-Israel, and not like the settlements.

It's possible to not want to give all of Israel away to the Palestinians and still think that the conditions in the refugee camps desperately need to be improved.

It's possible to respect Israel's security and still think that some of their more, reprehensible policies toward Palestinians are reminiscient of mild concentration camps.

It's possible to want to negotiate with the Palestinians and still think Hamas is a terrorist organization.

It is possible to chart a middle course.

Cloudberry,

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is made to look complicated. At its essence, it is story of ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians by the Zionist movement of mostly European (and at later stages Middle Eastern) Jews. Throughout this process of ethnic cleansing - which is still ongoing today- Palestinians are made to look like the aggressor in one of the most successful PR spins in history. The ineffective involvement of corrupt (and largely pro-Western) Arab regimes is magnified by the Zionists to make themselves look like the victims. In the US, the Israel Lobby's influence on the media and on politicians has resulted in Middle Eastern media coverage that is devoid of context and in distorted policies leading to the Iraq war. You may want to read the landmark study on the Lobby by professors Walt of Harvard and Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago in the London Review of Books Unhttp://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html.

About the conflict itself, consider the following historical facts.

- Theodor Herzl, founder of political Zionism in the late 19th century, when Jews were less than 3% of the population of the holy land, wrote the following in his diary about the indigenous population of Palestine "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries whilst denying it any employment in our own country."

- During the establishment of the state of Israel, over 400 Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed by the Haganah, Irgun and other Jewish terrorist gangs. "There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."

[Moshe Dayan, in Haifa, quoted by Ha'aretz, April, 4 1969]. More than 750,000 Palestinians were made refugees as a result (now they and their descendants are in the millions). Israel will not allow them to return in spite of UN resolutions.

- In the ethnic cleansing that took place, Menachem Begin's Irgun gang was one of the most aggressive. The massacre in the village of Deir Yassin was particularly gruesome, as pregnant women and children were murdered to "throw terror in the heart of the Arabs" so that they will flee and make room for the Jews coming from Europe. Begin said later in his autobiography "if it wasnt for Deir Yassin, there would have been no Israel"

- Even Israeli historian Benny Morris, in his interviews with Haaretz following publication of his "Birth of the Refugee Problem Revisited." indicated that he now believes there was an official policy to sanction or at least acquiesce in ethnic cleansing.

- This ethnic cleansing is continuing with the building of the wall/fence in the West Bank which will separate thousands of Palestinian farmers from their fields (their fertile land will have been ethnically cleansed!), and the settlements in the West Bank which keep on expanding to eat up the agricultural land of the surrounding Palestinian villages.

As for racism, consider the fact that demography (in addition to shortening Israel's line of defense) was given as the main reason for the evacuation of Gaza - Ariel Sharon wanted to subtract 1.4 million Palestinians from the demographic equation! The same racist demographic argument is behind the fact that Israel will not agree to a bi-national state, although the extensive building of settlements in the West Bank has made this state almost all but inevitable, for fear of losing the "Jewish Majority".