Almost Dead Essay

The Community of Coexistence

I was relatively unknowledgeable about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict prior to reading Almost Dead. Reading this book inspired me to partake in outside of class research on the conflict. Almost Dead is a masterpiece novel written by Assaf Gavron, a Jewish writer. The book is about two different worlds coming together. Croc is an Israeli businessman who escapes multiple terrorist attacks and Fahmi is a young Palestinian man, highly influenced by his brother to become a terrorist. The two characters narrate their own stories in two diverse tones and voices which Gavron combine together at the end of the book to prove his point. Gavron tells us that people, no matter who they are and what race they are, are inherently nice and genuine people proved by the fact that Fahmi doesn’t kill Croc even though he is pressured to. Fahmi realizes that Croc is just another human being and doesn’t deserve to die. Croc also does not judge Fahmi by the fact that he is Palestinian, and even though befriends Fahmi for his own personal gain, also realizes that Fahmi is simply just another human being, despite the Israeli propaganda and hatred against the Palestinians. I believe that even though there are groups who maintain extreme views in both Israel and Palestine, the middle of the pack people are overshadowed by their radical counterparts.

My base of knowledge led me to believe that the Israelis and Palestinians both lived far away and secluded from each other. I came to that conclusion because I thought that they would never live by each other since they hated each other. We only hear about the extremists and we don’t know the actual relationship between the normal Israelis and Palestinians. While reading Almost Dead, there were many situations where a Palestinian would live in Israel and vice versa. Fahmi lived in Kafr Qasim, which is located in Israel, when he worked in Tel Aviv. I’ve always heard that the Israelis and Palestinians will...