Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor

Given our circumstances, ?neighbor? may be too casual a word to describe our relationship. We are intruders into each other's dreams, violators of each other's sense of home. We are living incarnations of each other's worst historical nightmares. Neighbors?

Lyrical and evocative, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor is one Israeli's powerful attempt to reach beyond the wall that separates Israelis and Palestinians. In a series of letters, Yossi Klein Halevi explains what motivated him to leave his native New York in his twenties and move to Israel to participate in the drama of the renewal of a Jewish homeland and help ensure that it succeeds as a morally responsible, democratic state in the Middle East.

In this taut and provocative book, Halevi endeavors to untangle the ideological and emotional knot that has defined the conflict for nearly a century. Using history and personal experience as his guides, he unravels the complex strands of faith, pride, anger, and anguish he feels as a Jew living in Israel.

Halevi's letters speak not only to his anonymous Palestinian neighbor but to all concerned global citizens, helping us understand the painful choices confronting Israelis and Palestinians that will ultimately help determine the fate of the region.

Auteur

Yossi Klein Halevi is an American-born writer who has lived in Jerusalem since 1982. He is a senior fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and the author of At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land and Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation, which won the Jewish Book Council's Everett Family Book of the Year Award for Best Jewish Book in 2013. Together with Imam Abdullah Antelpi of Duke University, he co-directs the Hartman Institute's Muslim Leadership Initiative. He and his wife, Sarah, have three children.

Résumé
New York Times bestseller Now with a new Epilogue, containing letters of response from Palestinian readers.&quote;A profound and original book, the work of a gifted thinker.&quote;--Daphne Merkin, The Wall Street JournalAttempting to break the agonizing impasse between Israelis and Palestinians, the Israeli commentator and award-winning author ofLike Dreamersdirectly addresses his Palestinian neighbors in this taut and provocative book, empathizing with Palestinian suffering and longing for reconciliation as he explores how the conflict looks through Israeli eyes.I call you &quote;neighbor&quote; because I dont know your name, or anything personal about you. Given our circumstances, &quote;neighbor&quote; might be too casual a word to describe our relationship. We are intruders into each others dream, violators of each others sense of home. We are incarnations of each others worst historical nightmares. Neighbors?Letters to My Palestinian Neighboris one Israelis powerful attempt to reach beyond the wall that separates Israelis and Palestinians and into the hearts of &quote;the enemy.&quote; In a series of letters, Yossi Klein Halevi explains what motivated him to leave his native New York in his twenties and move to Israel to participate in the drama of the renewal of a Jewish homeland, which he is committed to see succeed as a morally responsible, democratic state in the Middle East.This is the first attempt by an Israeli author to directly address his Palestinian neighbors and describe how the conflict appears through Israeli eyes. Halevi untangles the ideological and emotional knot that has defined the conflict for nearly a century. In lyrical, evocative language, he unravels the complex strands of faith, pride, anger and anguish he feels as a Jew living in Israel, using history and personal experience as his guide.Halevis letters speak not only to his Palestinian neighbor, but to all concerned global citizens, helping us understand the painful choices confronting Israelis and Palestinians that will ultimately help determine the fate of the region.