{"product_id":"arab-identity-syndrome-arab-identity-israel-and-the-courage-to-rewrite-a-story","title":"ARAB IDENTITY SYNDROME: ARAB IDENTITY, ISRAEL, AND THE COURAGE TO REWRITE A STORY","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e \u003cdiv\u003e \u003cdiv\u003e \u003cspan\u003eI remember a scorching summer afternoon in Marrakech during the Second Intifada. I\u003cbr\u003ewas fifteen. My father kept Al Jazeera on constantly, and that day we watched coverage\u003cbr\u003eof an attack in Israel framed not as tragedy, but as heroism. In that moment, something\u003cbr\u003efrightening took root in me: admiration instead of horror, longing instead of grief. I\u003cbr\u003ewished to be the figure on the screen—not from political understanding, but because I\u003cbr\u003ehad been taught whom to hate and how to measure worth. That impulse was not innate;\u003cbr\u003eit was given to me. I needed only direction and approval. That realization still terrifies\u003cbr\u003eme, and it is why I cannot absolve the media and institutions that shaped us so\u003cbr\u003eirresponsibly while calling it resistance.\u003cbr\u003eAs I grew older, the story’s contradictions began to surface. I traveled beyond the\u003cbr\u003eMaghreb, read histories excluded from our libraries, and listened to voices absent from\u003cbr\u003emy upbringing. Most importantly, I met Jews and Israelis whose humanity and\u003cbr\u003ecomplexity shattered the caricatures I had inherited. I came to see that what I was given\u003cbr\u003ewas not history, but mythology—a political mythology born of defeat and sustained by\u003cbr\u003ecensorship, fear, and humiliation. It reduced Palestinians to symbols and wounded\u003cbr\u003eArabs by denying us self-critique, trapping us in performative outrage that enriched\u003cbr\u003eautocrats while sacrificing generations.\u003cbr\u003eThis book was born from a deep and persistent unrest. For years, I sensed that\u003cbr\u003esomething rigid had lodged itself in the marrow of Arab identity: a hardened narrative\u003cbr\u003erepeated until it passed for truth. As a Moroccan Arab Muslim, I absorbed it\u003cbr\u003eeverywhere—classrooms, Friday sermons, state television, political speech. It was a\u003cbr\u003estory about Israel—what it was and what it meant—but more profoundly, a story about\u003cbr\u003eus. It defined our virtue through their vice, our victimhood through their villainy,\u003cbr\u003edemanding allegiance rather than understanding. To question it was moral treason. I\u003cbr\u003eknow its power because I once lived inside it.\u003cbr\u003eThis book is an attempt to reclaim dignity. I write with deep affection for the Arab\u003cbr\u003eworld and growing respect for Israel’s tenacity and complexity, not as a detached\u003cbr\u003ehistorian but as someone shaped by the same emotions and illusions as millions of\u003cbr\u003eothers. I once believed Israel was the source of all Arab misfortune. I now see how\u003cbr\u003edearly that belief has cost us.\u003cbr\u003eI cried throughout the writing of this book—for the loss of Arab Jews, an amputated\u003cbr\u003elimb of our society we refuse to name; for Arab youth sacrificed to fantasies that\u003cbr\u003eyielded only graves and stagnation; for futures unbuilt and possibilities abandoned; and\u003cbr\u003efor the irony that Jews, an indigenous people of the region, were cast as eternal\u003cbr\u003eoutsiders. This book does not absolve Israel of its mistakes or deny Palestinian pain. It\u003cbr\u003eseeks to restore a narrative distorted by regimes that feared their own people more than\u003cbr\u003eany enemy, and to free Arab identity from a single, negative definition.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books Prime","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45914083328191,"sku":"78219af0-afa7-4503-b7b3-dab7e27dd857","price":35.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0761\/7550\/7647\/files\/a790a04872342bab2030593ce71858b5.jpg?v=1785054349","url":"https:\/\/books-prime.com\/products\/arab-identity-syndrome-arab-identity-israel-and-the-courage-to-rewrite-a-story","provider":"Books Prime","version":"1.0","type":"link"}