I definitely learned a lot from reading Jimmy Carter's book (even if I only read the "required" parts). I would like to say that the book was very interesting and that I really enjoyed it, but that would be a lie. I have absolutely no interest in politics, and this is probably the main reason why I used to have no idea what was going on in the Middle East.
However, I can honestly say that Palestine Peace Not Apartheid increased my knowledge of the Middle East ten-fold. The book was an easy read and it didn't make any assumptions about the reader's background knowledge of the issues discussed. I think one of the most helpful aspects of the book was the first chapter because it gave me so much background information. Seeing that time-line really gave me a good image of why the Middle East is in shambles today.
This may sound ridiculous, but before this class I was unable to distinguish between the different conflicts in the Middle East. If you would have asked me a few weeks ago, I would have thought that Palestine and Afghanistan had something to do with one another. In the United States, we often use the term "Middle East" to refer to both the War in Iraq as well at the constant struggles in Palestine, and I was led to believe that these problems are one and the same. Therefore, when I read the time-line, I was somewhat surprised to see that the September 11th attacks were not mentioned.
I think that it is quite obvious why I was unaware of this before reading Jimmy Carter's book. Even though it seems like our news system is constantly talking about the West Bank and Israelis and the Gaza Strip, we never really learn the source of the problems. We only hear what's going on today and from our point of view. And we wonder why people always say Americans are uneducated.
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3 comments:
I think you are raising some important questions about "our news system" -- I wonder if we should look into that in class.
I agree with you I am not a big fan of politics either. And yes this book would in my opinion not be on the bestseller's list.
It's not that ridiculous that you learned so much from this book. For the longest time I didn't even know that Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt were neighbors. I knew they were near each other. But I am happy to have learned so much also, and now I too have a much better understanding of the Middle East than before.
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