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LITTLE_DRUMMER_GIRL

                                                November 14-21, 2006

I read the John le Carre novel
"The Little Drummer Girl"
shortly after it was published
in 1984 (a few years after
I'd graduated from college).

This is a tale of a young
woman recruited to act as
a spy on the Palestinians,       A theme that le          "The Honourable
because of her background        Carre has returned       Schoolboy"
as an actress with an            to several times is
involvement in left-wing         the shapelessness of     "A Perfect
political organizations          human character --       Spy"
when she was in college.

Along the way, le Carre
talks a little about the         This is a difficult subject
Israel-Palestine dispute,        to write about in an engaging
and shows characters             way -- it undercuts the story
from both sides in               form at a fundamental level.
action.
                                                       This novel is
This was actually the                                  le Carre's most
first time that I                                      succesful
understood how Israel                                  effort at this.
was created:
                                                       The young woman
At the end of the second                               is turned against
world war, after the                                   her former side
Nazi holocaust, the UN                                 through a very
set up a "Jewish Nation"                               gradual, delicate
as a refugee...  And the                               process that's
Palestinians were the                                  fascinating to
people who were actually                               watch.
living there at the time.    
                         
   No where in my schooling, no
   where in the American media,                               A question
   had I stumbled across that                                 though: could
   simple point of history.                                   it be that the
                                                              reason this
   We heard "Palestinian" and                                 novel "works"
   "terrorist" paired together                                is that it's
   over and over again, without                               the one with
   ever getting a sense of the                                a female
   original cause of the fight.                               protagonist?

                                                                 Perhaps
        I talked with The                                        we don't
        Toadkeeper about this                                    reject
        book, and he commented                                   a drifting,
        "Can you believe I saw a                                 malleable
        review of that book in                                   female
        the New York Times that                                  character
        claimed it was a                                         in the same
        pro-Palestine book?"                                     way we
                                                                 would a
             I responded:                                        male one.
             "Oh yeah.
             Sure it is."
                                                                    ROMANCE
          He was disgusted: to him it
          was a neutral presentation
          of the issue -- "the reader
          must decide, just as the
          characters must decide"...

                   The thing is: I think
                   we were both right.

                   When everything you
                   hear is biased in
                   one direction, a
                   neutral viewpoint
                   is heard as a
                   contrary argument.

                   Maybe it's not possible
                   to be neutral in a             NEUTRAL_ADVOCATE
                   partisan world.



At that point I remained
tentatively pro-Israeli...           As one of le Carre's
                                     characters puts the
But I understood that                question: Do you
this might have been an              think Israel should
artifact of the bias in              be swept off into the
American culture.                    sea?

                                     Well, no.

                                             START_THE_CLOCK



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