LETTERS FROM TEL MOND PRISON: An Israeli Settler Defends His Act of Terror [Hardcover]

Era Rapaport (Author), William B. Helmreich (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 6, 1996

In poignant and revelatory letters written to his friends from Israel's Tel Mond prison, the author describes his painful transformation from a West Bank settler who initially attempts friendly coexistence with his Arab neighbors to one who finally believed the only solution available was to plant a bomb under the car of a PLO official. This is a riveting portrait of a rational man driven to an act of violent desperation. photos.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Winner of a National Jewish Book Award, these impassioned, self-righteous letters offer an unsettling look into the mind of a terrorist. Raised as an Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn, Rapaport was a civil rights worker, graduated from Yeshiva University, became a social worker, studied in Israel in 1966 and worked as a medic in the Six-Day War. In 1971 he married a native-born Zionist and they moved to the West Bank with the aim of establishing the first permanent Jewish settlement in Samaria in nearly 2000 years. In 1980 Rapaport helped plant car bombs targeting Arab mayors; one of them blew off the legs of Bassam Shaka, mayor of Nablus, described here as a PLO terrorist who openly encouraged massacres of Jews and secretly organized the stoning and firebombing of Jews' cars. After five years as a fugitive in the U.S., Rapaport was arrested, and in these letters, mostly written from prison, he writes lovingly to his wife and six children, and spars with his critics, staunchly defending his violent deeds even as he wrestles with his conscience and God?which makes this document all the more disturbing. Now mayor of the settlement town of Shilo, Rapaport also includes letters from early 1996 expressing his deep skepticism about the Israeli-Arab peace agreement. Helmreich, professor of sociology and Judaic studies at City College of New York, sympathetically views Rapaport's act as part of a cycle of escalating terrorism fueled by a combustible mix of protest, religion and nationalistic ideology.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

American-born West Bank settler Rapaport has compiled a set of letters he wrote to his family and friends from January 1987 to February 1996 while jailed in Tel Mond Prison. His incarceration resulted from a planned act of terrorism: in 1982, Rapaport was instrumental in bombing the car of Bassam Shaka, a PLO supporter and mayor of the Arab town of Nablus, which blew off Shaka's legs. Rapaport subsequently fled to the United States, where he remained for five years before returning to Israel and arrest. An ultranationalist and fervently religious man, he was an intellectual follower of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook and later an activist and leader in an underground movement of Jewish settlers opposed to the Israeli government's attempt to remove them in favor of a politically motivated agreement with neighboring Arab states. The author shows no remorse for his act of violence and justifies his behavior on religious grounds. While Rapaport's book serves as a companion to Haggai Segal's Dear Brothers (Beit-Shamai, 1988), his politics is explained best by Ehud Sprinzak's The Ascendance of Israel's Radical Right (Oxford Univ., 1991). Recommended for those interested in understanding communal violence.?Sanford R. Silverburg, Catawba Coll., Salisbury, N.C.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; First edition. edition (November 6, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684831805
• ISBN-13: 978-0684831800
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #704,344 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Powerful interpersonal portrayal of Arab-Israeli conflict, June 5, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: LETTERS FROM TEL MOND PRISON: An Israeli Settler Defends His Act of Terror (Hardcover)

I note that some other reviewers have tended to ignore the content of Rapaport's book for the barbed cliches they read in newspaper articles about the incident. In choosing to dismiss him as a fanatic, they avoid the necessity of dealing with the very complex and subtle issues this book raises, and they also attempt to convince the reader that he has no commonality with Rapaport and therefore nothing to gain. The reality is that nothing could be further from the truth. Rapaport represents the typical civilized Western man: he marched for civil rights with blacks in the 60's, earned a living as a social worker, fervently believed in negotiation and cooperation as the key to problem-solving.

And the reality that he quickly learned was that Western culture could not, still cannot, come to grips with the culture of the Middle East. Rapaport learns, through conversations with Arab friends and neighbors, that in the Arab world, negotiation is a sign of weakness: only the power of the hand brings respect.

That is the first aspect of Rapaport's story: the tale of an individual committed to Western ideaology who finds that all attempts to hold fast to that culture leave him naive and defenseless in his new environment. The book follows Rapaport as he first argues with his neighbors and colleagues against the use of any violence whatsoever, painfully learns the futility of negotiations and polite requests, learns - with disbelief and dissappointment - that retaliation brings periods of quiet, and finally, resorts to the only methods which he can be sure will protect the family for whom he so poignantly expresses his love page after page.

The second story in these pages is the story of the Arab-Israeli conflict; not painted in broad strokes and generalizations, not conveyed in communiques and press releases about the desires of the Arab people or the will of all Israelis, not in bold, macrocosmic words like occupation and nationalism, but told in the simple desires and thoughts of an Israeli fa! mily man, of the Arab farmer who is his neighbor. It depicts a reality that is less about seething hatred or religious fundamentalism than it is about deep personal attachments to this valley or that stream, emotional bonds with grandparents, Arabs and Jews, who tilled rocky soil, sowing heritage and history along with the grain.

There is also a sub-text, and the sub-text carries perhaps the most important message of all. We find, before and even after his act of violence, that Era has warm, open relationships with many of his Arab neighbors. They are guests in his house, he attends their family affairs. And one suddenly understands that Arabs and Jews can, indeed have, lived together in tranquility, not only co-existing but cooperating and sharing in the rewards of the ongoing development of the land and its infrastructure.

If you want to understand the realities of one of the Middle East's many conflicts with a level of insight you will never cull from the pages of the New York Times or 30-minute special reports on CNN, this book is an absolute must-read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful honest portrayal of life in Israel, August 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: LETTERS FROM TEL MOND PRISON: An Israeli Settler Defends His Act of Terror (Hardcover)

Mr. Rapaport's book is one of the few honest accounts of life in Israel today. Unlike reporters who have very little understanding of the complexities of life in Israel, Mr. Rapaport lives in the heart of Israel, and has a great understanding of the problems his country encounters daily. You can't go wrong reading this book.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars inredible book, May 11, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: LETTERS FROM TEL MOND PRISON: An Israeli Settler Defends His Act of Terror (Hardcover)

this book is intriging. it makes you wonder about the other side of the media. letters from tel mond prison is a book written by a man who lives his life with such pupose, meaning and honesty you wonder some times who you feel bad for - the "terrorist" or the "victim"