Sleeping on a Wire: Conversations with Palestinians in Israel

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

What sets this book apart from others about the Palestinians are the harsh questions Israeli journalist-novelist Grossman asks and the blunt answers he elicits. Reproducing his conversations with Israeli Arabs from all walks of life, he offers readers a rare opportunity to hear the voices of Palestinians criticizing their own society. Some of the issues addressed: Why is it that the Arabs in Israel have produced little of lasting cultural significance? Why has the Jewish state's attitude of rejection virtually paralyzed the Arab minority? To what extent are the Arabs themselves responsible for the state of affairs in the Arab-Jew interface? Grossman is sympathetic to the Arabs of Israel, to their exclusion from the mainstream and their daily hardships, particularly at the hands of the Israeli Defense Force. At the end of his thought-provoking work, Grossman The Yellow Wind warns that Israel, by its callous treatment of one-sixth of its population, is ``creating for itself the enemy it will run up against after its other enemies have made their peace with it.'' Feb.

Library Journal

Grossman, a noted Israeli Jewish writer, explores the complex pattern of life that the Arabs who did not flee Israel in 1948 have created for themselves over several generations. With interviews and vignettes, he gives human faces to a group that has been labeled ``the quietest minority in the world.'' Not only must these people navigate through a hostile Jewish society, but they must also contend with under the suspicions of their relatives, the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and those in diaspora. Grossman, as his title suggests, shows how these people have learned the difficult tasks of not only walking the tightrope but also of ``sleeping on the wire in midstep.'' This vivid, insightful account of the Israeli Arab community complements Grossman's earlier exploration of Palestinian life on the West Bank, The Yellow Wind LJ 5/15/88. But it also offers insight into the Israeli psyche, showing how easily an oppressed people can become the oppressor. Highly recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 8/92.-- James Rhodes, Luther Coll., De corah, Ia.

Library Journal

Considering current affairs in the Middle East, this 1993 title is more potent than ever as it gives Israeli Palestinians a chance to voice their thoughts on being citizens in a country hostile to them. A good choice for academic and public libraries alike. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Powerful and persuasive reporting by the author of The Yellow Wind (1988). There, Grossman, a journalist with Israeli radio and TV, offered an extraordinarily insightful analysis of the ambitions and frustrations of Arabs living on Israel's West Bank. Here, in a work of great sensitivity and clarity, he covers the political, economic, and social situations facing Arabs living in Israel proper, revealing in human terms the complex issues that divide and, ironically, also bind Israel's Jewish majority and Arab minority. Interviewing a broad spectrum of Jews and Arabs—activists and academics, patriarchs and professionals—Grossman, a Jewish resident of Jerusalem, focuses on the many inequities that exist within Israeli society. He exposes, for example, the plight of the so-called "present absentees," Palestinians whose lands were confiscated by the Jewish authorities in 1948 but who were not relocated. Today, these people exist in a kind of bureaucratic limbo without services and with few civil rights. In several instances, Grossman records the conversations of Jews and Arabs confronting one another with occasional heat and frequent humor but with surprisingly little bitterness. These transcripts are among the most effective pages here, with Chaim Watzman's translation capturing the distinct voices with immediacy and force. Among the topics discussed are Arab demands for personal autonomy within the Jewish state, and the ambiguities that exist within the varying Israeli definitions—political, ethnic, religious—of "Jewishness." While Grossman's sympathies clearly lie with the Arab minority, he balances his reportage with analyses of the psychological and policyshortcomings of Arab leaders and their adherents. An important and convincing human document, essential reading for those concerned with establishing a just and workable solution to a decades-old conflict.

From the Publisher

“No other Israeli writer so far has approached this touchy subject with such compassion, or looked at it with, so to speak, bifocal eyes, Israeli and Palestinian.” —The New York Review of Books

“Eloquent...gives voice to a community that rarely makes itself heard outside Israel and is largely ignored within that country...An old Yiddish saying maintains that it’s hard to be a Jew. Recent history has also taught us that it’s hard to be a Palestinian. But to be a Palestinian in a Jewish state seems the very definition of being caught between the rock and the hard place.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

“David Grossman is a brilliant and passionately honest young Israeli novelist whose clarity of vision and sensitivity to language inform his work as a political commentator.” —San Francisco Chronicle