Thomas L. Friedman’s Beirut to Jerusalem graciously dons its readers with a comprehensive overview of the conflicts of the middle east with a focalization of Israel and Lebanon. From a first hand experience, Friedman deftly navigates the politics, religion, and local stories during a ten year time span (1979-1988). This time span covers much of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the civil war of Lebanon. Friedman spends his first five years living in Beirut, and the next five years living in Jerusalem. He takes from these times a multitude of personal and local short stories to give a comprehensive overview of the life of a common man. From these stories he weaves a unique equilibrium of violence, nefariousness, and heart. Friedman manages to maintain the novels’ material equally pertaining to Beirut and Jerusalem in an attempt to show two sides of the story. Friedman’s favoritism for human life and disdain of senseless brutality, government, and corruption is what gives this novel its vibe. Thomas L. Friedman’s Beirut to Jerusalem uses a opinionated historical biography to…
In his book My Promised Land(2013), Ari Shavit elucidates the history of Zionism and that it has allowed the Jewish people to create the nation of Israel. Shavit, being a descendant of one of the people involved heavily with the first members of Zionism, Herbert Bentwich, uses family history, and when needing more information, conducts interviews with many people involved in the modern history of Israel. Shavit uses interviews, personal anecdotes, quotations from figures in the past, and historical accounts of Jewish history. Ari Shavit deeply studies the history of Israel and the Jewish people in order to understand the present day conflict and hopefully attempt to solve some of the many problems. Shavit writes to a reader who is experienced…
The Treasure of Lemon Brown Your family is the greatest treasure. In the short story, The Treasure of Lemon Brown by Walter Dean Myers, a boy named Greg wants to play basketball, but his father says no and gives him a lecture about how he needs to improve his grades to play. Greg goes on a walk and meets an old jazz musician named Lemon Brown. Lemon Brown says that his family is his treasure and everyone should know that that’s their treasure too.…
Imagine the experience of living under the rule of a violent group of terrorists, with no freedom whatsoever. This is what it is like to Najmah in the book Under the Persimmon Tree, by Suzanne Fisher Staples. In this realistic setting, Najmah, the main character, loses most of her family due to the brutality and imposition of the Taliban. The novel depicted the Taliban as dangerous and strict, which is interchangeable for what the Taliban is like in reality. Staples used the Taliban conflict to deepen the reader's understanding of the impact of conflict on people's lives.…
The setting of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, is the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, NY between 1900-1918. In the exposition, 11-year-old Francie Nolan is introduced as the protagonist, of the coming of age novel. Her family lives in the poor areas of Brooklyn where she is raised and has a close connection to the “Tree of Heaven”. The text illustrates, “For Francie, Saturday started with a trip to the junkie. She and her brother, Neeley, like other Brooklyn kids, collected rags, paper, metal, rubber, and other junk and hoarded it in locked cellar bins or in boxes hidden under the bed…Paper wasn’t worth much. They got only a penny for ten pounds. Rags brought two cents a pound and iron, four. Copper was good—ten cents a pound” (Smith 7). This…
Like the character Lemon Brown in the story "The Treasure of Lemon Brown", I have a treasure. When most of think of treasure, they think of money or wealth, but my treasure is my family. I treasure my family so much because I couldn't live without them.…
The “relational paradigm” that Zachary Lockman also addresses in his introduction to his book “Comrades and Enemies,” is the historical framework that he chooses to use. This relational paradigm attempts to mend the inaccuracies that are found within the dual society paradigm. For this reason, the relational paradigm takes into consideration economic, political, social, and cultural interactions between the Arab and Jewish communities. It acknowledges the existence of both societies and attempts to recognize the influence that the groups had on each other. The employment of this paradigm is progress, because it establishes that the two communities indeed were mutually formative. There are however severe weakness in this theory. It does not,…
Throughout the 20th Century relations between Arabs and Israelis in Palestine have undergone immense tension, change and deterioration, with both parties facing many barriers to peace. Foreign intervention is often listed as one such barrier to this peace. While the importance of foreign intervention cannot be omitted, other factors can be argued to have been both equally and more detrimental to the peace process. These include the founding of the Haganah, the 1948 War after the declaration of the State of Israel, and the rise of political extremism. The aim of this essay is to identify which barrier among so many was most significant in the hundred year period from 1900 to 2000.…
This was a historic series of events. They shaped the future of Israel in this book. This book…
I have completed a full investigation of your organization, The Lemon Tree, regarding issues that have arisen which have caused dissonance with the equal employment opportunity laws. To begin with, there have been specific incidents that have been properly documented that have clearly violated the Title VII laws of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Two of your managers from different departments of your corporation have infringed upon certain rights of the Title VII Civil Rights Act.…
In this article, Ella Habiba Shohat, discusses the domination of European Jews, the Ashkenazim, over the voices of the Arab Jews, the Sephardim. The Zionist master narrative portrays the idea that “Zionism ‘saved’ the Sephardim from the harsh rule of their Arab ‘captors,’” while modernizing and integrating them into their own European culture. (270). The Ashkenazi Israeli equates the Sephardi to the Arab, as uneducated and primitive, yet blame and view them as the “obstacle to peace” because of their supposed hatred of the Arab, creating an attitude portraying a colonial parallel operative. Shohat correlates the history of Zionism with that of the Palestinians and Sephardi, stating, “An essential feature of colonialism is the distortion and…
Long ago, people used to live peacefully without any bothersome or uneasy feelings, but since the Taliban came, a large number have been pinned down on with the most arrogant threats. In the novel Under the Persimmon Tree, the treatment of characters presented by the author is so difficult to ponder sympathetically about, since it is beyond worse than imagined.…
Brownfeld, Allan. Anti-Semitism: Its Changing Meaning, Journal of Palestine Studies, Bol.16, No. 3 (Spring, 1987), pp. 53-67. Published by University of California Press on behalf of the Institute for Palestine Studies Article DOI: 10:2307/2536789 Article Stable URL:http://www.jstor.org//stable/2536789…
It is 1948, and England is recovering from a war. But at 21 Nevern street, London, the conflict has only just begun .The post-World War II era oversaw a frenzy of changing events. Seeing to the mass immigration trend, Andrea Levy’s parents packed up for England. Andrea levy’s parents arrived from Jamaica to Britain in 1948 on the ‘empire Windrush’. Her father, Mr. Winston, was among the first wave of Immigrants who had their families hauled on a boat of 492 backpackers. They all wanted to taste the widely heard ‘Better Opportunity’. Andrea’s mother was a teacher by profession, and London was a harsh place for her to set her feet. Andrea Levy’s life was full of hitches. She was born in highbury, north London. Levy was the youngest of four siblings.…
Cited: -"The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in a Nutshell." Mideastweb N.p., 2007. Web. 9 Dec. 2009. .…