As someone who cares profoundly about events in Palestine / Israel and who feels he does not know nearly enough about the pain of either side, for me the place to start is in the real humans and their lives who live and lived there, died and die there.

I appreciate the excerpt and it takes some modicum of courage to bring together these two people and tell a story from no side and yet several sides.

Rather than peel the onion until there is no onion in Israel/Palestine, moving toward small victories for peace and justice is the only hope. This excerpt, and I hope this book, are part of that move and perhaps a victory of a sort.

For those who would sour and escalate the dispute rather than look for resolution, I must admit that the article on Jew-ish/apostate Jew Spinoza from Salon recently is a wonderful companion to this letters section and to the experiential and careful excerpt from this book.

How convenient to "forget," or willfully ignore, the fact that there would be no al-Nakba if Israel's Arab neighbors had not chosen to attack it, intending its utter destruction, upon its creation. How simple to airily dismiss the facts that the Arabs who chose to remain are now Israeli citizens, or that those Arab neighbors refuse to grant citizenship to the Arabs "displaced" by their own aggression. And wasn't the West Bank part of Jordan, not Palestine? How confusing. Ignore it; such things muddle the tender hagiography and blunt the attacks upon those who question it.

The character returning to his old home is visiting a place "abandoned freely by his family on the recommendation of the Arab governments," huh, No Name Given? Tell that to the people massacred at Deir Yassin. And do give us your name, instead of hiding behind anonymity.

It is not necessary to be anti-Jewish or even anti-Israel to recognize that the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948 was one of the tragedies of the 20th century. The history of the world we inhabit is made of such tragedies, and obviously they cannot be fully undone: Native Americans cannot entirely recover their lost lands, Indians and Pakistanis cannot 'go back' to their old homes on the other side of the border, and Palestinians cannot reclaim what they abandoned in 1948 without a radical and politically impossible restructuring of the Israeli state. What's done is done; the right of return, if it is ever acknowledged by the Israeli government, must necessarily be largely symbolic. But it takes an extraordinary moral stupidity and ignorance of history, comparable with Holocaust-denial, to deny the human cost of mass eviction, or to state that Palestinians "freely" abandoned their homes. It is further proof, as if any was needed, that Salon's 'open' letters policy has succeeded only in turning the magazine into a garbage dump.

"On a par with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion"

Tell that to Daniel Pearl, or the five Christian schoolgirls in Indonesia, or any number of the victims of Koran 8:12: "I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, smite ye above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them." I'm sure they'll be relieved to discover that their throats were cut by a hoax.

I always like your letters!:)

How do you feel about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Your banter sounds as zany and racist.

Nice one No Name Given:

whip out the Islamic ritual beheading knife?

On a par with jews use baby blood

Don't leave us in suspense! When does Bashir -- his sensitive eyes brimming with tears as he looks at his home, abandoned freely by his family on the recommendation of the Arab governments attempting to eradicate Israel and all Jews, now occupied by what his Prophet called the descendants of "apes and pigs" (Koran 2:62-65, 5:59-60, 7:166) -- when, oh when, does Bashir strap on a bomb or whip out the Islamic ritual beheading knife? Which coffee shop full of children will he choose to express his pain?

Eggy, many Palestinians are in refugee camps to this day. Not only that, but they have even had their water stolen from beneath their feet by having it diverted to Jewish settlements for their pools and gardens. And what about Israel's campaign to "De-Arabize" Arab Jews who lived in the middle east for thousands of years? You seem to forget that Jews aren't the only semitic people, Arabs are also semitic. Not only that but the Old Testament isn't exactly a great real estate guide.

Cheers

There's no troll like a "all comments not obsessively pro Israel is anti-semetic" troll.

Except maybe a gender troll on Broadsheet.

Yes, I'll definitely check the book out as well.

When talking about the arabs who left Israel, let us not forget the thousands of Jews who were thrown out of Middle East countries. These people had lived in these lands for hundreds of years. They left with nothing. All of them were welcomed in Israel. A country at war with its' neigbors. They only stayed in refugee camps for a short time. Israel and Jews all over the world helped them to assimilate in Israel. Is not this story as important as the Arab story? Of course it is.

I've read this book and I really enjoyed it. It's a great overview of the situation in Israel and how it got the way it is today, as well as a sensitive and well-told story of one Palestinian man and one Israeli woman who forge a tenuous friendship.

I strongly recommend reading it!

Sarah Peasley

Littleton, CO

I'm not suprised no one else has posted a letter about this excerpt. Those who find it refreshing to read the truth about the outright theft of the Palestinians homes by Israeli's are reluctant to write anything for fear of being called an anti-semite. Hurray for Sandy Tolan, I'm going to buy the book today.