Customer Reviews

Peace Is Possible: Conversations With Arab And Israeli Leaders from 1988 to the Present

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Plenty of books have been written about Israel's stormy relationships with its neighbors - but few hold the content and impact of PEACE IS POSSIBLE: CONVERSATIONS WITH ARAB AND ISRAELI LEADERS FROM 1988 TO PRESENT. Entrepreneur author Dan Abraham founded Slim-Fast Foods and utilized his resources from this to facilitate Mideast peace, making over sixty trips between 1988 and 2002 and meeting with major Arab leaders as well as Israeli prime ministers. His business background helped difficult negotiations, and his active role helped leaders understand the process of peace. Meeting transcripts, diary entries and his own notes make for a unique documentation of a personal contribution to the peace process.

Diane C. Donovan, Editor
California Bookwatch

Oh sure, this book has some material that is worth reading. Danny Abraham talked to all sorts of people in the Middle East about peace. And I'm giving his book three stars on that basis alone. On the other hand, meeting people is not really the same thing as accomplishing something positive. If the people my own parents had met with had decided not to start wars, the Second World War would not have occurred.

Is peace possible? Of course it is. The potential benefits of peace are enormous (not only to both sides but to society as a whole), and sooner or later, it is likely that people will take advantage of them. However, I think we need to avoid counterfeit offers of peace. I get plenty of Internet messages saying that I've won the Lottery, but I ignore them. And similarly, I would not want to take a peace offer seriously if it were made by a bunch of insincere, dishonest, and racist thugs who regarded their opponents as trash.

I think Dan Abraham should have made it clearer that there is a difference between a Moderate position in human relations (namely one in which one lives at lets live) and an Extremist position (one in which one feels a need to engage in genocide, or at least ethnic cleansing). Extremist positions tend to lead to war, and that's what we're seeing from many on the Arab side. And while Abraham does discuss some Arab misperceptions about reality, I feel he does not do justice to the severity of the problem of the barrage of anti-Zionist lies we see from the international community, academia, and the media.

The author does mention that one makes peace with one's enemies, not with one's friends. But that is misleading. Peace needs some sincerity, some truth, and some ability and desire to keep commitments to avoid fighting. I think Abraham overestimates how close peace is, and I think he overestimates the importance of Israel. At one point, he asks how good the 1966 borders would be for Israel. I think that in peacetime, they might be okay, but that isn't the point. The point is that there is no peace, and under these circumstances, the 1966 borders would be very bad for human society as a whole. Such borders would mean rewarding the crime of Arabs stealing land from land-poor Israel. And I think that crime is indeed bad for society, bad in the long run for the criminals, and not good for the victims. Even Israel's flight from Gaza (a region which is heavily Arab and in peacetime probably ought to be under Arab sovereignty) is, in my opinion, a bad precedent because it rewards crime.

There is an "Arab" perspective about the fight with Israel in which the Arabs are the victims. But I think we need to be reasonable here. We humans move folks around quite often to build new dams, bridges, freeways, sports stadiums, and so on. And plenty of politics are involved in deciding where to put such public structures. But it is ludicrous to claim that the Purpose of a new Sports Stadium is to inconvenience a few landowners! Similarly, those who accuse Israel of existing merely to inconvenience a few Arabs are liars. Such folks are useless as potential peacemakers. And those who add that Jews never had a connection to Jerusalem are simply making absurd taunts; they also ought to be disqualified as "peacemakers."

The author makes an interesting point, namely that many Arabs see it as a problem that Israel has no declared borders! Well, if Israel did declare borders, I bet these Arabs wouldn't like that either! I think the real problem is an Arab demand to obliterate Jewish rights in the region. And the complaint about undeclared borders is simply a demand to steal Jewish land. Fine. If the Arabs think Israel is a pushover, I can understand that. But if the Arabs truly fear Israel, as they say they do, I have only one thing to say about all this, namely: "if you truly fear the Israelis, stop tweaking their noses and stealing their land...show them some respect instead." It is as simple as that.

Meanwhile, I think that Abraham feels that the central Arab demand is for one more little Arab state. And I disagree. As I said, I think the issue is Jewish rights (not even Arab rights). The Jews are in favor of human rights for Jews, while many Arabs can't abide that.

On the issue of settlements, Abraham advises the Israelis not to indulge in expanding them even though such action is permitted. One shouldn't do stuff just because it is legal, it may be unwise or provocative! Hey, he ought to give some of the same advice to the Arabs! Both sides need real rights. And he ought to demand equal rights for everyone.