Dear Jeffrey,
Reading and discussing your fantastic new book, Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide, is a real pleasure, as it kindled memories and hopes that were long forgotten. It also invoked many fears that no thinking Israeli can evade: Can we survive the hostility and the ignorance and the strategic realities of the Middle East and the world?
But let’s start with one of the more complex tasks I’m charged with in this dialogue—that is, describing your book to Slate’s readers. This will be neither an easy undertaking nor a fulfilling one, since the book is so personal and so rich in detail that only reading it in full can do it justice. However, assuming that some of our readers will run to the nearest book store only after they read our exchange—and not, as they should, right now—I must give some hint of the things we are about to discuss. So, here goes.
Prisoners is the story of a redheaded Jewish boy from America—Jeffrey—who becomes a staunch Zionist, immigrates to Israel, lives on a kibbutz, and joins the Israeli armed forces, where the book really begins. Jeffrey serves as a military policeman and is charged with the unfulfilling duty of guarding Palestinian prisoners in the Ketziot prison during the first intifada, the Palestinian uprising of the late ‘80s.
In Ketziot, he befriends Rafiq Hijazi, a Muslim from the Jebalya refugee camp. The friendship between these two men and the many obstacles and barriers that both of them must overcome in the next 15 years or so—the years of the Oslo peace process and the years of the second, more bloody, Palestinian uprising—are the core of the book. It takes the reader to Jerusalem, Gaza, Jericho, Pakistan, Africa, Washington, Abu Dhabi, and many other places. It deals with the fundamental dichotomy of two men who like each other personally but belong to two rival tribes.
Boiling down the book this way raises the basic question: Can a Palestinian Muslim and a Zionist Jew be friends? In this first note, I want to focus on something at the end of the book—the positive, optimistic answer it gives to this question: “[I]f Rafiq and I could allow friendship to triumph over anger, then it wasn’t impossible to believe that the rest of Isaac’s children, and the rest of Ishmael’s children, could stop their long and dismal war.”
It is heartwarming to recognize that you and Rafiq managed to maintain your wonderful friendship and to triumph over the many hurdles and suspicions. As you’re a fellow journalist (though evidently much more accomplished and talented than me), you must know that for a profession so accustomed to cynicism and sarcasm, this is no small thing to admit. However, I still feel skeptical. Let me explain it in the most cautious way I can.
Visiting with Rafiq in Washington, D.C.—he came to America to study, you went back to America to become a correspondent for The New Yorker—you talk about the issues that trouble you both:
It seemed to me he was praying more than usual, and I said so. This irked him. “I always pray five times a day,” he said. “You know that.”For some reason, I said: “You know that I’m still a Zionist, don’t you?”“Really?””Absolutely.”Rafiq asked me why.”It’s still the answer.”The answer for what?”The answer for the Jews.”
This strikes me as one of the most genuine exchanges in the book—but also a highly revealing one. Why did you feel the need to explicitly tell Rafiq that you’re still a Zionist? I think it’s possibly because the visible signs weren’t there anymore. You left Israel and your personal Zionist dream, and went back to being an American. Still a Zionist—no doubt about that—but an American Zionist. And an American journalist. An American citizen. You married an American woman, and your children live safely in America. That’s why you managed to travel to places no Israeli can visit and talk to leaders no Israeli can interview.
And the same can be said about Rafiq. At heart, I’m sure he is still a Palestinian, but in practice, he has also changed his place of work and residence. He studied in the United States, then went to be a teacher in Abu Dhabi. Both of you—and I’m not, in any way, expressing any criticism here—no longer share the daily anxieties of Palestinians and Israelis who choose to stay in the region or have no choice but to stay.
A couple of months ago, I traveled to Oklahoma City with a group of Arab journalists to attend a convention at the Gaylord College of Journalism. There were many of “them” and one Israeli—me—but we had a great time together. So much so, that we almost missed our flight back to Washington because we were sitting in an airport cafe chatting ourselves into a state of forgetfulness.
I remained in close contact with some of them, and would happily describe them as friends. As a matter of fact, I find it much easier to befriend a Palestinian or a Lebanese than an American. We share the same straightforward mentality and the self-deprecating humor of the desperate. So, it’s much easier to connect—that is, when we live and work as journalists in Washington.
Which brings me back to the skepticism I expressed earlier: Is a friendship between a Jew and an Arab that is maintained outside the Middle East in any way an indication of what might be possible within that war-torn region?
Regrettably, I suspect that it isn’t.
But this is where I need you to enter and prove me wrong.
All the best,
Rosner
