As a young man, Friedman considered himself fully Jewish and fully American—proud of what the Jewish state had accomplished and yet not willing to give up his own nationality. After having reported on Israel for several years, Friedman became aware of how the symmetry between those identities, which he had always assumed, was beginning to fray and had been since the Six-Day War, the moment which had given a young Friedman a sense of dualism in the first place. For decades, American Jews looked at Israel like “a bomb shelter” (454), both a refuge and a reminder of continued danger.

After 1967, it seemed like Jews no longer needed to fear the outside world, and Israel itself, rather than the faith, could become a central aspect of Jewish pride. This helped many Jewish Americans turn support for Israel into a near-universal position in US politics, affections which Israel eagerly reciprocated. But while Israelis and American Jews “began dating and fell in love after 1967, they never got married” and so sentiments were practically bound to fade (461). Closer economic ties meant that Jews began immigrating to America, and with the US providing enormous military support, Israelis came to resent a feeling of dependence that flouted their sense of rugged independence. Many Israelis, especially on the right wing, criticized American Jews for not fully living out their Judaism. After the 1973 war, American Jews likewise ceased viewing the Israelis as “supermen” (469), and in response to the emergence of American-influenced Reform synagogues, some Israeli politicians tried to limit Israeli citizenship to Orthodox and Conservative Jews.

Friedman himself became an unwilling participant in the drama between Israelis and American Jews when his unflattering reporting on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon made him “the most hated man in New York City” (478). But by the time of the Intifada, his critiques were nowhere near as controversial. He jokes that “all that many [Israelis and American Jews] have in common is Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band” (481, possibly misidentifying Springsteen, who was raised Catholic, as Jewish). Friedman finds that younger Jews are less emotionally attached to Israel, and as a result do not feel the need to take action when they misbehave, as though such was their responsibility as Jews. The more Israelis became cognizant of this disconnect, the more they revived a sense of their own vulnerability and an awareness of the fact that not even their ultimate champion on the world stage was reliable in the end. Eventually, American Jews must come to realize that Israel cannot simply become another country like America and that American Jews are not going to become a facsimile of Israelis.

While taking his wife and young daughters out to lunch one day, a stone from a Palestinian cracked the windshield of their car. The Times had already offered him a job back in the United States, and so the incident seemed like a fitting end to his time in the Middle East. The region had changed considerably, but Friedman wondered how, instead of modernizing, the region had somehow gone back into a primordial tribalism. He had spent the better part of a decade reporting, only for friends back home to shake their heads and dismiss Lebanon and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as a lost cause; besides, “in an age of 99-cent-a-gallon gasoline, who needs it anyway?” (496).

Yet Friedman still hopes, after all he saw and experienced, that the United States has a lot to offer the region—it cannot solve their problems for them, but it can facilitate reconciliation, much as it did between Egypt and Israel in the late 1970s. It should not take every gesture of goodwill seriously, but America’s irrepressible optimism can be combined with a stark realism to show how peace might be possible, without harboring any illusions regarding the obstacles along the way. Friedman believes it possible to balance an attitude of “cut-the-crap-let’s-get-down-to-business” (502), ready to negotiate but also to draw firm lines, and “be a real-son-of-a-bitch” (505) when it comes to thoroughly hostile actors such as Iran. There is no guarantee that the United States can effectively take on any of these roles, much less balance them effectively, but it is the last, best hope of “liberating Arabs and Israelis from the chains of their past” (509).