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Horovitz describes Yussuf as "strik-
ingly self-aware and unmistakably
smart" and they trade competing nar-
ratives. The mutual friend who intro-
duces them says that under other cir-
cumstances Yussuf might have been an
academic, but as Horovitz writes, "His
real life got in the way."
Yussuf was arrested during the first
intifada, (he says he was "in the wrong
place at the wrong time") and has
since found work whenever he could
— working one month out of the 13
prior to their meeting — supporting
his wife and four kids, parents and a
brother and his family.
Horovitz writes that their conversa-
tion goes in circles, "The Israeli and
the Arab, the Jew and the Muslim,
two protagonists professing modera-
tion and desire for reconciliation, each
convinced that his own leadership was
trying to achieve it and that it was the
other side that failed. It is a dialogue
of the mutually disillusioned."
Say Horovitz, "I think he's com-
pletely wrong, but boy did he have a
good argument."
The story of Yoni Jesner, a 19-year
old from Scotland studying at an Israeli
yeshiva before beginning medical school
in London who was killed in a 2002
suicide bombing, brackets the book.
His dream had been to move to Israel
and work as a doctor and save lives.
Instead, he is buried in Jerusalem, and
one of his kidneys was transplanted
into the body of a 7-year-old Arab girl.
Yoni's story resonates for Horovitz,
who had moved to Israel from England
20 years ago, at about the same age,
with similar energy and idealism.
Horovitz interviews Yoni's brother, Ari
Jesner, and he also seeks out the family
of Yasmin Abu Ramila, the kidney
recipient, to complete a kind of circle.
Ari Jesner, a lawyer in London,
explains that his family, although they
live abroad, considers Israel their
home, and that donating his brother's
organs was "the most fitting tribute to
him to help someone." He blames nei-
ther God, nor fate, nor Islam, but the
murderous human beings who assem-
bled the device and dispatched an
emissary to blow himself up.
Horovitz also visits with Yasmin's
grandfather, who lives in Kafr Akab,
beyond the Kalandiya roadblock, at
once close and far to Horovitz's home
in Jerusalem. In response to the jour-
nalist's questions, the grandfather,
whose own grandfather was born in
Hebron, expresses huge gratitude and
speaks of the possibility of peace.
When Horovitz meets Yasmin, who
is doing well, he tries to press her
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mother Dina — who, as the grandfa-
ther cautions Horovitz, has had a
fourth-grade education and a very
hard life — to answer his wide-rang-
ing questions about violence and peace
and her dreams for her children. He
elicits only shrugs and the briefest of
answers, and a gentle chide from the
grandfather for asking such questions.
The scene isn't the kind of closed
circle that Horovitz had in mind, but
he succeeds in presenting real people
with empathy in this case of death and
life at the heart of the conflict.
Horovitz is critical of the interna-
tional media for misrepresenting
Israelis, and he also thinks the Israeli
government should be doing a much
better job in dealing with the press
and international public opinion.
While he points out that Israel has
made many mistakes, he levels most
criticism at Yasser Arafat for the failure
of the peace talks, for promoting vio-
lence and misleading his people.
He muses about how things might
have been different were Israelis and
Palestinians blessed with a Nelson
Mandela rather than Arafat. "I refuse to
believe that Palestinian mothers are
essentially different from Jewish and
Christian mothers. I refuse to believe that
their faith obliges them to regard murder
and bloody, premature death as the finest
ambition for their child," he writes.
'After 9/11 and month and month of
bomber after bomber, I didn't know that
to be as true as surely as I once did. Yet I
have to believe that it is true, because
otherwise we Jews have no future in this
bitter, vicious Middle East without
killing and being killed, forever through
the ages. And few good people elsewhere
have much to look forward to, either."
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a
Est
❑
See Editor's Notebook on page 5.
3/26
2004
59