Identity and crisis: review of Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh’s Surrounded: Palestinian soldiers in the Israeli military
The Jerusalem Post, May 15, 2009
An Israeli Arab friend of mine, Saleh, is married to an American woman. He is conflicted: Though part of him would prefer to raise his children here among his family, he chooses to raise them in the US. One of the reasons he gives is that his two boys, as the children of a Muslim Arab, will not be able to join the army and thus will not reap the benefits of serving the State of Israel. When Saleh comes to visit the village he grew up in, a stone’s throw from Lebanon, he looks at the army age young men standing around, “doing nothing,” and he doesn’t want his sons to join their ranks.
But what happens when Israeli Arabs join the other ranks – those of the IDF? This question serves as the touchstone for Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh’s academic yet accessible Surrounded: Palestinian Soldiers in the Israeli Military.
