The Best of Enemies: The Memoirs of Bassam Abu-Sharif and Uzi Mahnaimi

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book written by two ex-sworn enemies
Review: I found the book extremely interesting and enriching. At the beginning the two writers were extremely divergent, and then became slowly close in thinking and outlook. I found very interesting the parts where Uzi writes about intelligence and Shin Bet tactics, and those where Bassam talks about the revolutionary years and Wadih Haddad. Bassam and Uzi are clearly very proactive, seeing and sensing things much before other people are able to. This book, written by an Israeli and a Palestinian, is a step forward towards concensus in the Middle Eastern quagmire. Such a book would have been unthinkable of only a few years ago. It takes a strong courage to write, because the mentality of the people involved is not yet mature enough to accept peace with all the concessions it entails. The life of these two authors and men of action must be anything but a smoothly flowing river.

Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: This is one book that any person professing to be open simply HAS to read, if they ever want to appreciate living in a multi racial society. It is rich as it is blunt, extreme as it is honest. Only if you have lived as one or the other, and wondered if you or anyone else ever were "the rightous ones", this is the way forward. It doesn't matter if you think your society is already well adapted or otherwise to differences. By exploring the extremes we consider the subtles, and this book works well to show how things we take for granted passing down to our children can only serve to reinforce long term prejudices, which will only serve to divide. READ IT!