My Enemy, My Self

Rating:
Summary: A Jew poses as a Palestinian and gives us a glimpse of life
Review: It's funny how some books, no matter how well written or well balanced, still get attacked for what they present us.

Yoram Binur is a Jew who speaks Arabic and can pass for a Palestinian. As a journalist he decides to enter into that world to see how the other half lives. What he sees and feels cannot be debated, negated, ignored or even criticized. It just is.

What Yoram experienced was an everyday existance of discrimination from the Jewish Isrealies he encountered. He wasn't brutally attacked or beaten or spit upon at every corner. No, his story is far more subtle. What he describes is a life of an outcast, of what it feels like to be someone who's viewed as "less than," as the "other."

The routine details of this life are in fact some of the most important in the current debate about the situation in Israel. What Binur experiences is essentially the seed that has helped bring about the larger forms of violence with each side upping the ante. It doesn't start with a bulldozer destroying a Palestinian home. And it doesn't start with a Palestinian bombing a sidewalk cafe and killing a dozen innocent civilians. It starts with everyday hatred - and that's what Binur so clearly gives us.

We already know that some (not all) Palestinians refuse Israel's right to exist. What we need, as Americans who have blindly supported Israel no matter what it does, is to see how some Israelis (not all) haves refused the Palestinians a right to their homeland - and their dignity. Binur's book is a step in the right direction in learning that lesson.

Rating:
Summary: A Jew poses as a Palestinian and gives us a glimpse of life
Review: It's funny how some books, no matter how well written or well balanced, still get attacked for what they present us.

Yoram Binur is a Jew who speaks Arabic and can pass for a Palestinian. As a journalist he decides to enter into that world to see how the other half lives. What he sees and feels cannot be debated, negated, ignored or even criticized. It just is.

What Yoram experienced was an everyday existance of discrimination from the Jewish Isrealies he encountered. He wasn't brutally attacked or beaten or spit upon at every corner. No, his story is far more subtle. What he describes is a life of an outcast, of what it feels like to be someone who's viewed as "less than," as the "other."

The routine details of this life are in fact some of the most important in the current debate about the situation in Israel. What Binur experiences is essentially the seed that has helped bring about the larger forms of violence with each side upping the ante. It doesn't start with a bulldozer destroying a Palestinian home. And it doesn't start with a Palestinian bombing a sidewalk cafe and killing a dozen innocent civilians. It starts with everyday hatred - and that's what Binur so clearly gives us.

We already know that some (not all) Palestinians refuse Israel's right to exist. What we need, as Americans who have blindly supported Israel no matter what it does, is to see how some Israelis (not all) haves refused the Palestinians a right to their homeland - and their dignity. Binur's book is a step in the right direction in learning that lesson.

Rating:
Summary: Yoram Binur - My Enemy My Self
Review: This is an incredible book. Yoram Binur provides an entirely new perspective to an old issue. The depth of maltreatment of Arab Palestinians in Israel has not been put into such a consise, unobstructed manner in the history of literature. Anyone who is interested in educating themselves about the Civil and Moral Rights violations which are taking place in Israel should definately read this book. Any advocate of justice, any person concerned with the fact that there are people being horribly mistreated anywhere in the world, and anyone looking for a cause to support or solidarity to offer those who are oppressed should start with this book.

Rating:
Summary: A Middle East "Black Like Me"
Review: Yoram Binur, an Israeli journalist fluent in Arabic from covering stories in the Arab areas of his country, decided to take on a fake identity as an Arab to get first-hand experience of the treatment Arabs receive from the Israeli police and society. He was convincing enough to be singled out for harassment and violence from the police, and he experienced subtle discrimination from everyday Israelis. He learned to really feel the terror Arabs in Israel feel every time an army vehicle approaches them, or even passes by their house at night, knowing they could legally be brutalized at any time for no reason. It was an eye-opening account from inside one of the most complex political situations on earth, and Binur always kept it personal and involving.