Rating: 
Summary: Occupied voices
Review: While I believe it is always important to document the voices of people in conflict, I found the claims by the author and publisher to be disturbingly misleading. The interviewed voices purportedly express moderation, allegedly show no animosity towards Jews, and are characterized as idealistic patriots something akin to the Israelis who reclaimed the deserts, etc.I don't know how Wendy Pearlman characterizes "moderate," but I read these interviews and all I got were a lot of "hate-hate, kill-kill" rants. Out of about 30 interviews, I'd say 1-1/2 were perhaps moderate. Did the author actually bother to listen to these people? They were filled with hatred of Jews and Israelis. In fact, their implacable, unrelenting hatreds made me despair that there would ever be peace in the Mid East. No one accepted a two-state solution. Only one person accepted, bitterly, that the refugee crisis could be solved symbolically; the rest interviewed absolutely and unequivocally stated that all Palestinians have unlimited rights to return or immigrate to Israel. The only criticism of Arafat was that he wasn't extreme enough--no one objected to his corruption, cronyism, or suppression of political rivals. One man said Jews were alright with him as long as they lived in Baghdad, not Jerusalem. Is he delusional? Is he expecting the Jews in Israel to return to the Arab lands that expelled them? The political views throughout were simplistic; their world was seen in black-white terms. There's a lot to criticize the Israelis for, but these Palestinians refused to even slightly recognize their own faults. It's even more depressing when you consider that many of these people are the educated, professional classes. I suspect the author made up her mind what she was going to hear before she ever even interviewed these people, and superimposed the grid of her preconceived notions on the interviews. But I'm going to pay these folks the one compliment that she, in her self-righteous smugness, never did--I'm going to believe that these people said what they meant. Again, they have a right to express their views and their anger. But the situation in the Mid East is difficult enough. Lies will not help anybody. The ploy of a nice young Jewish girl going to the West Bank and finding only voices of moderation was sheer marketing hype, a marketing hook she obviously thought up before she even arrived. I don't mind the book nearly as much as I mind the dishonesty and misrepresentation behind the marketing of it.
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