When books like Genius and Anxiety and Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor are treated as ideological offenses, something deeper than disagreement is breaking down in public life.

Today I received this message from a colleague working at our bookstore:

“OMG. Just been listening to a Palestinian raking me over the coals (quietly, with hand on heart) for having all pro-Jew sentiments in our store and nothing from the Palestinian point of view. Almost crying and bringing books to me to prove his point. Especially Genius and Anxiety and Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. I finally had to put up my hand the last time he said, ‘just let me finish,’ and tell him that I was not equipped to discuss this further. I gave him your email and said that you would be well equipped for an intellectual discussion. Aaaargh.”

There is something almost darkly absurd about the idea that books such as Genius and Anxiety or Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor are now, in some circles, treated as examples of audacious “pro-Jew propaganda.”

One is a meditation on the astonishing and precarious contribution of Jews to modern civilization after emancipation — a story inseparable from exile, fragility, brilliance, anxiety, persecution, and survival. The other is an explicit attempt by Yossi Klein Halevi to speak directly, emotionally, and honestly to Palestinian neighbors across a seemingly unbridgeable divide.

Neither book calls for domination. Neither book denies Palestinian suffering. Neither book advocates hatred. One can disagree with aspects of both books while still recognizing that they emerge from a profoundly human attempt to grapple with Jewish history and Jewish........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)