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Notes -
So, what are you reading?
Still on Hurewitz' The Struggle for Palestine. Slow progress. The topic of education has stuck in my mind. Jews educated young Zionists in schools on the Continent, while Arab Palestinians couldn't help but be influenced by their local peers.
Zurayk made an interesting comment in his book The Meaning of the Disaster that Jews spent their youths being influenced by all kinds of "isms." If we pare down his evident outgroup prejudice (he includes Naziism), there was a point being made there. From an Arab point of view, the Jews were importing a great deal of the rest of the world's thought. But taken literally, it seems that the Arabs lacked the desire to empathize because they were busy berating their own people in a nationalist educational program.
Meanwhile, the "national home" of the Jews became a done deal, and because of the pressure for emigration from Europe and its underlying reasons, Arab maximalist goals, rightly or wrongly, moved further and further away from their grasp.
In The Distance by Hernan Diaz, mostly as a primer of his writing style before attempting Trust. The book follows a Swedish man crossing the United States to find his brother in New York during the Gold Rush.
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