Salim Tamari...

After reading the articles by Dr. Salim Tamari, I got a really got idea of his perspective of modern day Israel. I enjoyed it more than anything because he wasn't basing his writing off of anybody else's experience but his own. By chance, I ended up picking the first two articles: "Lepers, Lunatics, and Saints" and "Ishaq Shami and the Predicament of the Arab Jew in Palestine". His hand-on experience allowed me to see the situation from a different perspective. I am always so interested in reading other people's perspectives, even if they aren't ones that I agree with. No matter what, they have some kind of reason for their opinions and it's always interesting to see where others' are coming from.

Anyways, in the first article I read, "Lepers, Lunatics, and Saints," I found myself getting a little confused throughout the article; I wasn't confused because of what was being talked about, but because of the fact that I didn't know about a lot of the things that Tamari mentioned.

Prior to reading Tamari's article, I had heard of leprosy, but never really knew what it was. It was interesting to read about how it affected those people fighting for the same land at the same time. Leprosy has been around since biblical times, and the fact that it came back to the surface at such a crucial time is pretty fascinating yet paradoxical to me. I thought it was absolutely ridiculous that when this group of people came down with leprosy, they were still separated, as Jews and Palestinians. Even at this crucial time, they couldn't come together to try and cure their people. I wish that this had been a breaking point for the two groups of people in the way that they would have been able to set apart their differences and come to a common resolution--a resolution which would bring them together to try and cure this terrible disease that had spread to both of their "communities." That's all just wishful thinking though.

Growing up as a Jew, my opinion was that Jews all around the world had to be strong supporters of the Zionist movement, or else who would support them? We are the ones that should be the strongest supporters. Anwyways, it came as a really big surprise to me that there were Jews residing in Jerusalem/Israel who were not full supporters of the Zionist movement. It's a given that Palestinians would not be, but Jews?

Potential questions for Dr. Salim Tamari:
1) What is your opinion on how the United States portrays the conflict to the public? How different is it then the media coverage in the Middle East? What do you think makes this difference?
2)Has your opinion of the conflict changed over time? How do you see it progressing in the future?
3) Where do you stand politically?