Between Restless Jews and Weary Arabs

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Stories from the book

The following accounts explore certain Arab and Jewish mindsets crafted by culture. In some of these communities, deeply ingrained convictions may have shaped them into people who are strong, vulnerable, or problematic. This may have made them a danger to themselves and the wider world. These accounts are not intended to disparage either group; my goal is to shed light on the perils of excess.

An intense love story unfolds throughout the narrative.

  1. An obligatory womanI toured Yemen in 2005. It is a stunning country, one of the most beautiful I have ever visited.
  2. They got the whole country and its fish for freeDuring my visit to Israel, I ate with the hotel's owner, a Palestinian from East Jerusalem, at a Jewish fishery restaurant on Lake Tiberias.
  3. As long as you stay in the village, they will call me the cuckoldMy hands clasped in my pockets, my mind more confused than ever, I rang the doorbell at their home, not knowing in advance what I would say or what I would avoid.
  4. Proving ourselves by humiliating others“Our neighbour in Aleppo (Syria) throws his clothes around. He lies on his back and asks his wife to bring him the socks, the pyjamas!”
  5. How a man becomes a manI once travelled from Beirut to Toronto, and we stopped over in Frankfurt.
  6. A self-fulfilling prophecyJews are heavily indoctrinated that non-Jews are coming after them and that Israel is their ultimate refuge and that they have to protect themselves.
  7. This is France!The park was almost deserted. Tired, we sat on a bench in front of the lake.
  8. Poverty breaks family bonds"Khan Al Tamaseel," in Tripoli, Lebanon, is an old caravansary where fifty-five poor Sunni families live today, according to Zakariah, an elderly local resident and fisherman who guided the TV crew.
  9. Shortsighted hubrisAhead of his March 2023 visit to Rome, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu was asked what lessons he had drawn from studying Jewish and Roman history.
  10. When she delivered her baby, she felt most vulnerableRazan remarked, "When I worked in the lingerie shop, some of the women wanted me to call them whenever we received any new and exciting pieces of lingerie."
  11. Jews are the yeast of lifeI had a Flemish half-Jewish friend in Kuwait named Lydiane. We were pretty close.
  12. It is all about fear of going to HellThe fear of the ruling class, felt by defenceless ordinary people, is parallel to another fear instilled by religious clerics.
  13. Jewish mutual commitmentI was discussing the conflicts in the Middle East with Ken, a British professor of English literature at Kuwait University, whose services I used for editing specific reports in English at Focus Marketing, when he remarked…
  14. I’ll come back one day!I left the paper on the table and went back to bed. I was exhausted.
  15. No analysis of religious texts is permittedAt the Focus Marketing office in Kuwait, a law office sat on the 9th floor.
  16. The Talmud is the deliberation itselfIt is said that ideas are everything, and we are nothing without ideas.
  17. Your visits kept them separatedAfter realizing what Juliane meant, I retorted…
  18. How can change come about if fear is so pervasive?Fear of the security services, fear of foreign invasions and bombings, and religious fear.
  19. Dogs vs. catsAmazed by the extraordinary bonding between Jews, I once asked Lydiane, "Why do Jews continue to marry among themselves more often than not, despite modern social changes?"
  20. She had to come back, even if she didn'tShe looked sad and started crying. I could hardly hear her stifled, almost inaudible, and hushed sniffing.
  21. Arabs, a source of quiet sorrowIn 2010, I visited the Nemrud Dag historic site, which is perched in the mountains between the Tigris and Euphrates in southeastern Turkey, not far from the Syrian border.
  22. Ambition and hard workAmerican political scientist Norman Finkelstein said once: "I grew up in a lower-middle-class Jewish neighbourhood in New York, very ambitious, very aggressive.
  23. A gap of almost five decadesWhen we arrived at St Jérôme, the little rain that had fallen while we drove had stopped.
  24. I am a Muslim. ‘Wal Hamdu Lillah’One of my partners in Kuwait was Syrian. His name was Jawad.
  25. ‘Promised land’ and ‘God’s chosen people’Israel's rulers constantly repeat their notions of the 'promised land' and 'God's chosen people'.
  26. Fate comes back to haunt me!Liesel's disturbed soul – like mine – might have been rooted somewhere in her tormented past.
  27. The Arabs, a source of painful concernMany educated Muslim Lebanese, Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, and Saudis I met were literally ashamed of being Arab.
  28. Muslims, a source of difficult questionsOver the years, I have asked people I know: "How is it possible that the ongoing humiliations we suffer are accepted in the Arab world and nothing is done?”
  29. Beauty and hard-won richesOne day, Lydiane sent me an email that acted as a catalyst for me: “Life is about the young, the rich, and the beautiful.
  30. A door that could not be closed againA few months after my return from France, I started drafting the outline of this book, thus completing the manuscript I had already written.
  31. A king used to having everyone at his service, with dire consequences for womenJuliane couldn't understand why young Maghrebi males ditch school and throw rubbish around where they loiter in the square below her apartment.
  32. British (and its heir, the American) empire legacy in the Muslim worldIn its unrelenting pursuit of supremacy, what the British Empire did (like most other colonial powers) was effectively decapitate the progressive and educated elites through poisonings, car accidents, mysterious…

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Between Restless Jews and Weary Arabs by Dr. Camille Gedeon is available now on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions.

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