Therese Zrihen-Dvir

1. This book of fiction is for me a story of strength and of hope. As an American Jew I can and do look at the Israeli- Arab conflict since even before statehood in 1948 as a continuing of the worldwide struggle for Jews to survive. Notwithstanding the book’s title, it is about human kind’s ability to pick itself up, even from the worst of tragedies, and to go on living. Naomi rushes to the hospital a young Russian immigrant Israeli soldier who had been wounded in the Palestinian’s suicide bombing of the commuter bus. We learn that this act of kindness was in character for Naomi, and that of her adult daughter Nicole who had earlier witnessed the double suicide bombing on Jan. 22, 1995 of the Beit Lid bus station. Numbed Naomi and Nicole attended the funerals and paid calls to the families of as many of the victims as they could. The book is not a naïve attempt to show this horrible side of life. Naomi attempts to learn why Palestinians would choose death over coexistence with Israelis, why a Palestinian mother would raise their son to become a “martyr,” or why Palestinian crowds would celebrate a “martyr’” deaths with cheers and distribution of sweets. Neither the Palestinian nor the Israeli in the book can make the other understand their point of view. If one needs to look at this book by this Israeli author as an attempt to present the incident from an Israeli point of view then so be it. In the ceremony to induct new officers into the Israeli Armed Forces at the fortress at Masada my feelings in the continuing struggle for Jews to exist in the world but especially in Israel can be summed up in two words heard in the ceremony ”Never Again”.… (altro)