It's all perspective

I think that something that Berko does well is shed another light on the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict. She doesn’t provide many solutions (with the exception of the short paragraph at the end of the conclusion) but she does portray the story from an angle that is unusual for many westerners. I think that we get so stuck in our own opinions and beliefs about this issue that we forget that the opposition also has relevant things to say and ideas which we do not hear on a regular basis.

Reading Berko’s book also made me realize again how much a story changes depending on your prospective. She talks about Palestinian children being “brainwashed” about the benefits of being a shaheed. This conveys her own bias about the Palestinian view of the situation. She does not say in the book that she is an unbiased source and she clearly is not. As we discussed in class, she has a large stake in the conflict and so her reactions are often based on her emotions, whether she wants this to be true or not.