General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine - Softcover

Peled, Miko

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1682570029 ISBN 13: 9781682570029

Verlag: Just World Books, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

A powerful account, by Israeli peace activist Miko Peled, of his transformation from a young man who’d grown up in the heart of Israel’s elite and served proudly in its military into a fearless advocate of nonviolent struggle and equal rights for all Palestinians and Israelis. His journey is mirrored in many ways the transformation his father, a much-decorated Israeli general, had undergone three decades earlier. Alice Walker contributed a foreword to the first edition in which she wrote, “There are few books on the Israel/Palestine issue that seem as hopeful to me as this one.” In the new Epilogue he takes readers to South Africa, East Asia, many European countries, and the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel itself.

The 10th Anniversary Edition includes a new preface in which he reflects on the growth of the Palestinian-rights movement since the original publication of this work in 2012.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Miko Peled is an Israeli peace activist who spends his time between Jerusalem and San Diego. Born into a strongly Zionist family in Jerusalem, as a young man Peled witnessed the transformation of his father, General Matti Peled, from a well-known leader in Israel’s military to a strong peace activist. The General’s Son has been translated into numerous other languages and Peled, a gripping public speaker, has lectured around the world in his campaign to promote justice, democracy, and equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis.

Alice Walker is an activist and a Pulitzer Prize winning author. She has written more than thirty books, including The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart.

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The General's Son

Journey of an Israeli in Palestine

By Miko Peled

Just World Publishing, LLC

Copyright © 2016 Miko Peled
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-68257-002-9

Contents

Foreword by Alice Walker, 
Introduction, 
Part 1: The Early Years, 
1. Roots, 
2. My Father Was Matti Peled, 
3. Against the Current: Academia and Activism, 
Part 2: A Long Way From Home, 
4. The Red Beret, 
5. Karate, 
6. Black September, 
Part 3: The Road to Palestine, 
7. A Journey Begins, 
8. Two Flags, 
9. The Fear Virus, 
10. The Commanding General's Order, 
11. Who Will Speak for Gaza?, 
12. Abu Ansar, 
13. Defiance, 
Part 4: Hope for Peace, 
14. The Next Generation, 
15. Abu Ali Shahin, 
16. One State, Two States, Three States, 
Epilogue, 
Acknowledgments, 
Map, 

CHAPTER 1

Roots

When I was a child, I would sit with my grandmother in her cold apartment on 18 Rashba Street in Jerusalem's Rehavia neighborhood. The apartment was on the first floor of a simple two-story house. Behind the house, there was a small yard with a grapefruit tree in the center. The neighborhood was modest and quiet, but respectable. Most of the residents were professors who worked at the nearby Hebrew University.

Savta Sima would pull out old photos and talk about her life as the wife of an ambassador.

"Avrami," she would say. I was named after my grandfather, but she was the only one to ever call me by that name. "This is your grandfather Avram with King Gustav the Sixth, king of Sweden, and here he is with the Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia."

Dr. Avraham Katznelson or Saba Abba, as he was fondly called, died before I was born, but my mother and grandmother spoke of him and his life all the time. He was a spokesman for the Zionist movement in the early 1920s — traveling to Jewish communities around the world and urging them to return to their historical homeland in Palestine — and then among the signers of Israel's declaration of independence. He was also Israel's first ambassador to Scandinavia.

My grandmother was proud of her husband's diplomatic work: "Your grandfather was both charming and an excellent diplomat, and he knew how to cultivate close ties with people." She was particularly proud of the relationship he had cultivated with the Chinese ambassador. This was quite a feat because, having aligned itself with the West, Israel had no diplomatic ties with China in those days.

One afternoon, as we sat together on her old blue sofa, my grandmother showed me a faded newspaper clipping. Savta Sima's living room was always cold and stuffy because she would seldom turn on the heating or open the windows. The newspaper had turned yellow and must have been more than 20 years old. There was a photo of my grandfather dressed in coat and tails, wearing a top hat and walking alongside a horse-drawn carriage. I could tell from the photo that this was a cold and foggy European city.

My grandmother told me of my grandfather's presentation as Israel's first ambassador at the court of King Gustaf in Stockholm. "The ceremony took place on a Saturday," she explained, which is the Jewish Sabbath, when Jews are forbidden from driving or riding in vehicles. "He was the representative of the Jewish state — indeed of all the Jewish people — and he felt it would be proper to walk rather than ride in the royal carriage."

"He walked the entire way. He was tall and handsome, his back straight as an arrow, and the royal carriage was rolling beside him." I looked at my grandmother, and I could see how much she missed him.

The glamour of that life reminded her of her years growing up in Batumi, Georgia. Although she lived most of her life in Jerusalem, Sima always missed Batum (what she called the Georgian city of Batumi on the coast of the Black Sea). Every Friday afternoon, she visited us in Motza Ellit, and she would talk to me for hours about the grandeur of her childhood home. They had servants and carriages and were able to truly enjoy the beauty of the city. I imagined Batum to be paradise.

But when I knew her, Savta Sima was very thrifty. Her house was always cold in the winter because she only turned the heating on between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., regardless of the temperature outside, which during the Jerusalem winter frequently drops below zero. I remember one particular winter day, when I visited after school. It was snowing, and I called my mother from my grandmother's apartment, and I whispered into the receiver, "Mom, I am freezing." Savta Sima heard me and quickly came back with, "Freezing, freezing! Well, we are all freezing." Still, the heater remained off. When she watched television in the evening, she had all the lights in her apartment turned off, and she would wear a long, dark blue robe and dark sunglasses to protect her eyes from the glare of the television. "I know you think I am stingy. I am not stingy, I am thrifty."

When school was out, I would sometimes meet her at the medical clinic where she worked as a dermatologist and walk home with her. She was in her mid-seventies by then and worked only part time, so she was done at noon. I was no more than nine or 10 years old, and she would hold my arm as we walked and say, "Avrami, you are my cavalier." It was no more than a mile or maybe two as the bird flies from the clinic to her home. She would walk 20 paces at a time and then stop to rest. She refused to ride the bus or, God forbid, spend money and take a taxi. "A taxi? What an extravagance," she would say at the mere mention of the idea.

Back then, there was not much traffic as we walked by the small shops, cafes, and bakeries. We would pass the compound of Ratisbon Monastery and the Yeshurun Synagogue, two Jerusalem landmarks that stood next to each other, one Christian and one Jewish. Both of them were about as old as my grandmother, and she would captivate me with stories about the people who established and frequented them. "Ratisbon himself was a French Jew who converted and became a Catholic priest," she said with obvious disdain. "When Yitzhak Ben-Tzvi was president, he would come to worship right here at Yeshurun Synagogue." From there we would turn into the smaller and quieter streets of Rehavia. These were the 1970s, and to me Jerusalem seemed full of hope and optimism.

* * *

I was deeply influenced by the knowledge that my relatives helped shape the history of my country. It made me feel special to know that my namesake signed the declaration of independence, that he moved among kings and prime ministers, representing our country among the nations of the world. Being a proud Israeli patriot was something I did not need to be taught; it was infused in me by the men and women in my family.

Even the way my mother's parents met is a small piece of Israeli history. My grandfather, Avraham, was born in 1888, in Babruysk, a city in Belarus that was about 60 percent Jewish. As a boy, he received an education in a heder, or orthodox Jewish preschool, and then in a yeshiva, where he studied Jewish religious texts, before he entered a public, secular high school.

My grandmother would boast that he graduated from the gymnasium, as high school was called then, "with exceptional scores. And that is how he was accepted into medical school in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was tall and good-looking and always impeccably dressed." This last part she corroborated with the use of old photos. "He loved the ballet, and when he was a...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Just World Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1682570029
• ISBN 13: 9781682570029
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Anja's; service@anja-karge.de; ; Von-Gumppenberg-Str. 94; Pöttmes; 86554; Deutschland