How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less

Author/Guide: Sarah Glidden

Why a Booktrail?

2000s: A unique way of seeing Israel and its struggles through the eyes of an artist

ISBN: 978-1770462533
Genre: Graphic or other

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What you need to know before your trail

Sarah Glidden is a progressive Jewish American in her twenties, who is both vocal about and critical of Israeli politics in the Holy Land. When a debate with her mother prods her to sign up for a Birthright Israel tour, Glidden expects to find objective facts to support her strong opinions.

During her two weeks in Israel, Glidden takes advantage of the opportunity to ask the people she meets about the fraught and complex issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but their answers only lead her to question her own take on the conflict.

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Travel Guide

Israel, Palestine

Despite its topic and themes, this is a charming and funny, not to mention unique travel memoir of a trip through Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, Masada and other historic places.

This however is an extraordinary account of a young woman’s journey to one of the most disputed territories in the world. Like anyone, she has her own ideas as to what the land must be like, how the culture and the people are, but she is surprised by what she finds and how her expectations are not always met, sometimes are surpassed and even completely wrong

On one occasion, she tries to take a non-chaperoned excursion into the West Bank.

“This is a very complicated issue here. On one hand, after it was built, the terrorist attacks in Tel Aviv have dropped from two a week to four per year. On the other hand, a lot of it has been built on Palestinian land and it’s caused many problems for innocent Palestinian people… My personal opinion is that, while I hate how it hurts many people, every day that I wake up and there’s no attack on the news, I think about the wall.”