In a week's time I'll be heading off on an 11-hour flight to Tel Aviv for just over a week in Israel. This is a trip organized by Massey College. In preparation for the trip, I've tried to 'bone up' on the region.
As you might imagine, there have been plenty of books written on the area. The two I looked into were the Mark Twain travelogue, "The Innocents Abroad"; and Bernard Lewis, "Islam and the West". The latter is more of a collection of essays, but it's pretty interesting reading. I really was looking for some fictional stories that used Jerusalem/Tel Aviv etc. as the landscape/setting, but I haven't tracked anything down (maybe an Agatha Christie book?). I did read the latest Jack Whyte book on the Knights Templar. It is set in First Crusade-era Jerusalem, which was neat, but he doesn't do a great job recreating the landscape; his focus is more on the (frankly boring) history of the Christian religion.
My brother recommended the movie "Route 181", but I haven't had any luck finding it anywhere.
Our itinerary is pretty exciting. We land in Tel Aviv, then spend a few days in Jerusalem (this part of Israel is pretty small, so there isn't much driving involved - here's a good map.). After that, we head off to the North to the Golan Heights, then Tiberias, and then back to Tel Aviv. At some point we head to the Dead Sea for some floating around too. My intention in this series of posts is to capture some of my immediate impressions (whether blogged that day or just written in my notebook, it's too soon to tell).
2 comments:
I'll look forward to composing a few 'smart' comments during your travels. Turnabout is fair play after all.
I was planning to nail you on your title caption - but then realized it was Mark Twain after all! Too bad Route 181 is so difficult to find - I wonder if I could even order it on Amazon or Ebay?
Have a great trip, mate! You should be excited, sounds like a diverse group you are with. And you get to meet the Tannenbaum's.
For further reading may I recommend:
http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pub-affairs.html
http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/journals/israel/iss6-1.html (**highly recommended!!!!!!!!!!)
http://www.ilanpappe.org/ (He is a revisionist Israeli - highly controversial, but inspiring!!)
And in Israel, the Haeratz (daily newspaper I think) is the most neutral one.
If you want a biased perspective - i guess one could always read Alan Dershowitz from Harvard. though I thought AD was more than put in his place by Norman Finkelstein. NF's book countered and exposed many holes in AD's argument. The book was entitled, "The Elders of the Protocol of Zion" - wow, just read the highlights - not the whole thing, but it is fascinating.
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