Customer Reviews

The Other Side of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish/Arab Divide

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This book is an incredible look at how non Jews live inside Israel. Even though they are full citizens of Israel, the non Jewish population is treated as second class citizens. Without a constitution, there are no guaranteed civil rights for all citizens.

The author grew up with the story of how Israel was a land without people for a people without land, but after becoming a citizen of Israel through the Law of Return, she has seen how the Zionist movement created their own facts and stories about the creation of Israel. The author decides to move into an Arab village in Northern Israel. The Arab- Israelis believe that she could be a spy and the Jewish-Israelis believe that she has become the enemy.

The most enlightened part of this book is how the author describes the left side of politics within Israel. The lack of freedom of interaction between Jewish-Israelis and Arab-Israelis, even within organizations that were created to foster open interactions, where the Arab-Israelis do not feel that they can truly let their experiences be known because the Jewish-Israelis will not stay and listen and the ever present threat of reprisals. While there are many political movements and human rights groups within Israel, the majority stop just shy of actually doing anything that would make a difference in the treatment and/or status of non-Jewish Israelis.

This book should be read by anyone who wants to understand the inner workings of Israel. This book is about the forgotten Palestinians, the ones who stayed during the wars in 1948 and in 1967.

Susan Nathan does a great job at simply reaching out to the Palestinian population of Israel and lending an ear. Most of the book is not actually her story, but the retelling of the surreal stories of her palestinian neighbors. This book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the conflict on a sociological level. The Palestinians have a lot to say, and it's about time they were voiced.
In response to the reviewer who gave this book one star, I think you're completely missing the point of what she's trying to say about suicide bombers. Ethics aside, people don't blow themselves up unless it's the best option they've got. If the Palestinians were happy with the way they were treated inside Israel, then I doubt suicide bombing would be a problem at all. What Nathan is saying is that non-arabs look at suicide bombings as the act of crazies, without understanding what drives someone to do such a thing. The Jews in Israel have put the palenstinians on a subordinate level, and so they can easily shrug such violence off as the normal actions of the palestinians. But what would it take for you to strap a bomb to your chest and blow yourself up? How bad would your life have to be for that to be the best option? Palenstinians see suicide bombings as the great equalizer, in the same way that minorities in the Inner-cities in the US choose guns and gangs. Because the Palestinians are constantly being screwed by the system, they feel helpless, and they become irrational. Just notice how suicide bombings get the attention and strike fear in the hearts of Jews. That's what they want, to deliver unto the Jews the same pain that they've been feeling at the hands of the Jews for too long.
The answer isn't to call them crazy, or to accept suicide bombings as normal. The answer is to find out why they feel suicide bombing is an effective solution to their problem, and then fix that problem so there is no need for it. That's what Nathan is trying to say, to look at the bigger picture, because it's all relative. Her last sentences speak to exactly that; we're all the same people, and we all have a sense of rationality, and nobody wants to die. Let's find a way to live in Peace, and then the "crazy" suicide bombers will be out of the job. This isn't a case of one race against another, it's a case of subordinates wanting equality, and the dominants not wanting to give up their power.

This is an excellent book that provides a dramatic and an inside look into the plight of Palestinians. For all the anti-Palestinians out there, this book cannot possibly be considered anti-semitic because it was written by a Jewish immigrant who had her eyes opened to the cruelty of the Israeli occupation.

A must read for anyone who still has any doubt that Palestinians suffer for no reason other than the fact that the racist Zionist regime believes that Palestinians are sub-human and should be pressured through force and inhumane treatment out of their home land.

This book by Susan Nathan, a Jewess who lives amongst Palestinians in Tamrah in northern Galilee, is a must read for any person interested in the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian divide. And a divide there certainly is, but one that could so easily be straddled if there were more people such as Ms Nathan in this world.

Whilst there may be many who might disagree with her, Ms Nathan's grasp of the Israeli socio-political nettle is honest, courageous,hard-hitting and thought-provoking. A person cannot read this book without being unmoved by the tragedy of the Palestinian-Israeli divide whether Jewish, Muslim,Christian or any faith.

The fact that Ms Nathan is a voice from within the divide is highly significant. From her birthplace in Britain, to the sunny shores of South Africa and to the beautiful hills of Galilee, The "Other Side of Israel" is undoubtedly a seminal work of personal conscience.

An important and very readable book that starts with the author's personal story as a Jew who moved to Israel, believing in the Zionist dream, but fairly soon moved to live with Palestinians (who in Israel are relabelled Israeli Arabs), where she learnt more and more about the oppression of Palestinians within Israel itself - being confined to some parts of the land only and often living in third-world conditions in 'unrecognised villages' next to the westernised cities and kibbutzim. The book moves on to explore the version of history taught by Israel to its children, the parallels with South African apartheid and the various approaches of the Israeli left. A powerful call to face the real history. It is no good, Nathan says, to plant gardens to disguise the ruins of villages razed in 1948 and lament the wrongs only of the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. For a real solution to the problems, there needs to be a call for equality of citzenship in Israel itself, and honesty about the systematic dispossession of the Palestinians since 1948.

In recent years I have read so many books on the so-called "Israel-Palestine conflict" that such reading has become a form of drudgery, occasionally illuminated by a few bright spots. Susan Nathan's book is one of the bright spots. It stands out from the textual landscape by virtue of its sincerity, its passion, its impatience with the dogmas of either side, and the vividness of its narrative and its descriptions.
Ms Nathan is Jewish and was brought up to believe in the infallibility of the Zionist narrative. However, her background also included links to the South African anti-apartheid struggle. Once she had belatedly emigrated to Israel, the former influence rapidly gave way to the latter as she witnessed the realities of Zionism on the ground, the inequalities and cruelties that were and are an inevitable corollary of the attempt to construct a colonial ethnic state on another people's territory.
Obviously those who hold to Zionist ideology will see things differently, and for them this book will constitute an act of treason. But for those who believe in equality, justice and human rights, it would have been treason for Ms Nathan to write any other kind of book.
"The Other Side of Israel" is wholly engrossing, wholly powerful. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

I had visited Israel/Palestine several times before reading this book. Through knowing several non-Zionist Israeli Jews, I had been able to make contact with some Palestinian citizens of Israel and see for myself how they endure a sophisticated system of apartheid -- a system which avoids the South African mistake of 'petty apartheid' (such as separate park benches, etc.) but which is even more vicious when it comes to 'grand apartheid' -- the control of resources like land. A prime example, which Susan Nathan covers very well in this book, is that of the Palestinian villagers of "temporary" Ayn Hawd, who were expelled from their original village (now known as Ein Hod) -- a place which is now a grotesquely twee "artists' colony" where the village mosque has been converted into a bar. Remembering the eeriness of this place where the truth of ethnic cleansing is covered in a veneer of cuteness, I used it as a test for Susan Nathan's treatment of Israeli apartheid -- a test which she passed with flying colours.

Buy several copies of this book and pass them to any of your well-intentioned friends who are still fooled by the propaganda about nice Zionists who just wanted to build kibbutzim and live in harmony with the original inhabitants of Palestine. Susan Nathan tells the unvarnished truth. Her writing is fluent and accessible; the book is a real page-turner. One of my American friends, whose wife is Jewish, read it from cover to cover in a couple of sittings when he visited me in Ireland this past Summer. I hope that he bought his wife a copy when he got home.

Susan Nathan's riveting book gives a voice to that, which for many, cannot or will not be spoken. She speaks with honesty and suggests a number of solutions to the Jewish/Palestinian question. She makes comparison's between today's Israel and South Africa's earlier policies on apartheid. It is controversial and at times disturbing but its purpose is not to shock but to awaken.

With such an issue, any opinion is always weighed in terms of credibility. Palestinian voices are usually considered suspect. Non-Jews with similar thoughts would automatically be branded as anti-semites. So finally, a woman raised by her own account as a Zionist, sheds light on an issue that focuses on the human rights issues of Palestinians who still live in Israel and have lost claim to their history, heritage, land, culture and future.

A must read for anyone who already feels that they understand what is going on in Israel. If Susan Nathan has the courage to live and then write about what she lives, then we should honour that by ensuring that we read and try to understand it better.

Susan Nathan, a British-born Jew started as an ardent zionist who toook up the 'Law of Return' to move to Israel. Living in Israel, she begins to question the status quo and try to look at things from a different perspective than the official version. This results in great disillusion with the politics of the state of Israel or 'Death of a Love Affair' as she calls it.Her extraordinary decision to go and live among the local Arabs in the Arab town of Tamra, near Haifa gives her an inside perspective of witnessing the Arab-Israeli divide permeating the state of Israel today. She tries to make sense of the feeling of gross injustice, frustration and hapless anger which the non-Jews resident in Israel feel as second-class citizens living among ominous echoes of apartheid. She makes a clear distinction between Jews in Israel and elsewhere as ordinary human beings trying to live normal lives and Jews involved in the state machinery.Still proudly retaining her Jewish identity and not intent on becoming an Arab or converting to Islam, the author tries to paint the historical backdrop which have led to the portentuous deadlock of hatred, violence, repression and senseless death.
She tries to show that modern Israel is a traumatized society with not much leftist politics to challenge the politics of a hawkish government.

Has David become Goliath? Susan Nathan tries to answer this rhetorical question by saying that the Jewish-Arab divide is an illusion in reality as it is only a mindset. The similarities are too much and the stakes too high to continue not talking without hate on either side.

Very compelling read as the writer has firmly commited herself to the issue and she is a mature woman in her late fifties with experience of living in different cultures.

This is the story of a Jewish woman from London who made 'Aliya' to Israel (migrated to Israel) out of a strong belief in Zionism and what Israel represented. After arriving in Israel Nathan begins to ask difficult questions about the way the Israeli Arabs (Palestinians who are citizens of Israel) are being treated. First she notices how invisible they are, and later she becomes aware of the deep anti-Arab racism that exists even among so-called left-wing Israelis. Filled with disillusionment Nathan makes an unusual decision and moves from her comfortable apartment in Tel-Aviv to the town of Tamra in the Galilee. Although still within Israel, Nathan discovers that for a Jew to move into an Arab town in the context of contemporary Israeli society is not only unheard of and outrageous, it is also like moving to an entirely different world. (The only other Jewish citizen of Israel living among Arabs in Israel is Dr Uri Davis who lives in Sachnin). In Tamra, among displaced Palestinians Nathan begins to grasp more fully the way Israeli apartheid works.

This is a powerful and compelling book, an up-to-date dossier of evidence that completely refutes the claim that Israel is 'the only democracy in the Middle East'. It is also the story of a courageous woman who stands by her convictions and does the right thing despite the cost.

This is a must read for anyone who wants to know what Israel is really like, or who is still puzzled by the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.