It’s so tempting to start this article with something like “with everything going on in the Middle East right now…” but truthfully, if you’re at all familiar with the Israel/Palestine conflict, that sentence could be referring to many, many times over the last 50+ years.
However, at the time of this publication, February of 2024, we may be seeing what is the absolute worst of this long and embittered dispute, and there also seems to be a sense that this may be the finality of it…and not in a good way.
When I am asked “what types of books do you like to read?” which is a question that comes up often when you make book related content, I hardly know what to say. I’m not a genre reader. I don’t necessarily have a favorite author, in fact it’s quite rare that I read many books from any single author.
I read both fiction and nonfiction. Some of my favorite books are memoirs, but I would be hesitant to name that as a genre I prefer. I’ve enjoyed books from magical realism, speculative fiction, sci-fi, who-done-it, history, historical fiction, biography, and so much more. But the more I think about it, the more I think the types of books I like are “serious” books. Books that challenge us and our beliefs. Books that force us to stare at some horror either within ourselves or in others.
With that in mind, it’s no surprise that much of my reading has been about the world’s greatest tragedies: the plight of Native Americans, the Armenian genocide, World War I, The Rape of Nanking, WWII, the Holocaust, the Forgotten War, Vietnam, and so on.
But one conflict I’ve somehow been able to remain relatively ignorant of is that of Israel and Palestine. People whom I consider much smarter than me would often say that it’s “a complicated situation” and in some respects it is, and for whatever reason, my reading simply never took me in that direction.
But with Israel’s response to the October 7th incident, it felt like this time it wasn’t just a blip in the news and the world would be on to something else the next week. Instead, more and more grotesque and brutal images began to fill my news feed, wherever I went on the web.
I finally decided it was time for to start asking questions, and in order to ask smart questions, you need a foundation. And to have a foundation, you must start at the beginning.
Lawrence in Arabia
The first book I landed on was Scott Anderson’s 2013 release, Lawrence in Arabia. Not to be confused with the film, Lawrence of Arabia, this book is a quasi-biography of one of histories most controversial and puzzling figures. However, it’s also a deep dive into the political maneuverings of all of the major players of WWI, from the Brits, to the French, The Germans, the Ottomons, and even the Arabs and the Zionists.
Anderson’s book does an excellent job of demonstrating how all of these parties played major roles in the forming of the modern Middle East. For most people when it comes to the discussion of Israel and Palestine, they want to discuss 1948, or sometimes even later like 1967. Both of those dates hold significant meaning for anyone up to speed on the the Israel/Palestine conflict, however there was so much more that happened prior to even the start of WWI that played a significant role in the way things panned out.
I felt like Lawrence in Arabia was a good start to my self-education, although I probably could have gone even further back to the start of the Ottomon Empire or before to truly get a sense of what the region has been through.
But after I concluded that book (which I did on audiobook), I had a hard time understanding the justification for so much violence against the Palestinian people. Despite whether or not you believe that Zionists are entitled to the land is up for debate. I can see some good reasoning for and against.
But what was not up for debate was that the Palestinians, though lacking a strong sense of nationality at the time, had been living under Ottoman rule for roughly the last 500 years, and had been promised their sovereignty by the British government during WWI.
When that sovereignty was finally gifted to them in 1948, it came with a large caveat…more than half your current land will be made into a Jewish state. To me this issue seemed black and white, but instinctually I understand that nothing ever really is, so I wanted a view from the other side.
What do Israelis think of the Palestinians? That question led me to my next book.
A Land Without Borders
I can’t recall where I heard about Baram’s 2016 release, but it seemed like the next logical step in my education on the Middle East. After all Baram was born and raised in Israel, he attended Tel Aviv University, and both his father and grandfather are Israeli politicians. Not only this, but Baram has had a respectable career as a writer, so I felt like if anyone was properly positioned to give a good perspective on the Israeli point of view, it would be Baram.
A Land Without Borders is memoir of sorts as Baram travels around the West Bank to see for himself how many of the occupied Palestinians live their lives, as he himself admits, living in Tel Aviv you are often not exposed to what’s actually happening in the conflict between these two nations and peoples.
If you aren’t familiar with the West Bank, it is a landlocked territory of predominantly Palestinian people, that has been under Israeli occupation since 1967.
During his travels, Baram interviews both Israelis and Palestinians. It’s important to note that those two terms don’t fully encompass the people that live under those banners. For example there are secular and religious Israelis, there are Israeli Arabs, there are Palestinian Jews, Palestinian Christians, and so on…
The interviews printed in the book range from people running for prominent political offices and former leaders of extremist groups to small children, which I think probably gives a more accurate representation of how people actually feel. Kids are typically too young to have a well working filter, and often haven’t been fully conditioned yet to give politically correct responses.
And if I’m being honest, despite being Israeli, Nir Baram does not paint a favorable picture of his own country.
Israeli Elitism
I would say if there is one recurring theme in the book, it’s that of Israeli elitism. This isn’t necessarily something that is pointed out to the reader, but is easily spotted simply from the interviews themselves, and frankly it is quite reminiscent of the elitism we have here in the United States.
In fact at one point an Israeli teen tells Baram that “The Israeli military is the most moral military in the world” a truly frightening sentiment, and one that likely many of my fellow Americans believe about the US military as well.
Later, Baram interviews another Israeli settler, a young woman born in France, who’s family (headed by a mother who is a PhD in biology and who’s father works in IT) lived in San Fransisco for a time before finally settling in Israel. Politically active in the West Bank community, Baram asks her what she thinks of the Palestinians, and she replies “I’m focused on the Jewish community and our right to the land.” Earlier she had remarked that when they first arrived she felt “connected to the land” and that “this land is mine.”
Imagine coming from a family wealthy enough to move countries and land in one of the most expensive cities in the world (San Francisco), only to them move to the home of one of the longest and bloodiest conflicts of modern times and proclaim it as “yours”.
And if you are a teenager, or a child, or even a young adult, with these views, there is nothing inherent about you that predisposes you to feel that way. You’ve been conditioned by your family or your community to feel that way. If you believe in the oxymoron of a “moral military”, that’s because someone told you that was the case.
But it still it shocks to see it on the page, that even from incredibly young ages, children are instilled with the belief that they are the superiors of their neighbors, even if that conditioning presents itself as willful ignorance.
An Unbiased View?
Reading critiques of A Land Without Borders, many stated that the people interviewed in the book do not reflect the overarching opinions of Israeli citizens. Of course, it’s impossible to pin a whole nation’s beliefs on a small group of people. It is also entirely possible that Baram interviewed Israelis with staunchly different views, and he simply chose to omit those, or perhaps he somehow was able to avoid conducting interviews with those people in the first place.
But generally speaking the criticism is that Baram published the worst of the worst in terms of Israeli eltism, and Palestinian victimization. For an example of the latter, Baram interviews a Palestinian olive tree farmer who isn’t allowed on to his own land, with the official reasoning given by the government flip-flopping between a necessity to protect Palestinians from Israeli settlers nearby, or to protect Israeli settlers from Palestinian locals.
What’s interesting to me about this critiques is that they are effectively strawman arguments. Nothing I read seemed to outright deny the elitist air that many of the Israeli interviewees seemed to posses, or address the fact that there are people living in Israel who feel that way. Instead it was the tired old “not all [insert group]…” that we so often hear in America when we talk about issues of misogyny, domestic abuse and Police brutality.
And let’s say people who feel this way are an extreme minority, it then begs the question, why would Baram go so far out of his way to track down and interview people that felt that way? After all, he himself is Israeli. Even if he set out with the belief that his country is deeply flawed, wouldn’t he have been relieved to find that not to be the case?
My Issues with the Book
Overall I enjoyed A Land Without Borders, Baram’s writing style is easy to follow and engaging, however I felt at times there were too many assumptions about the reader’s knowledge base in regards to references to certain events, places or people. Perhaps the book was written for Israelis first and foremost, but as an American reader, I frequently had to stop and look up certain information for what I was reading to make sense.
In that regard, while I think you can still get a lot out of reading A Land Without Borders when it comes to getting a sense of what people are thinking and feeling on the ground, it’s probably not the best book to really give you any sort of idea of what is happening, or has happened in this part of the world. Baram certainly doesn’t make the claim that he set out to give the reader a history lesson, however I feel like much more context could have beneficial to the reader in certain points.
Throughout the interview process, Baram repeatedly asks his interviewees if they support a one or two state solution. Those unfamiliar with Middle Eastern history will not fully understand the impact of the responses given without a primer on what those terms really mean and would look like if put in to practice.
However even being ignorant to these concepts, you can still feel the weight of some of the responses. From the Palestinian side the question is often brushed off as irrelevant in the way a starving person may respond if you asked them if they’d prefer their steak well done or rare, and no one will be getting any food until we figure it out.
On the Israeli side, having someone admit that the first step should be to give the Palestinians civil rights is both shocking and informative.
So my search for a more Pro-Israel book continues. I would love to hear someone put forth some arguments without apologetics for the Israeli state’s actions regarding the Palestinians, particularly the 50 year occupation of the West Bank, and to see if those arguments hold up.
If you have a recommendation, drop it in the comments!