I've just read your article "Gideon Levy Took a DNA Test and Found Out the Truth About His Ancestors' Link to Israel." A fun read. Made me chuckle quite a few times. I learned of you when reading Don't Say We Didn't Know by Amos Gvirtz. He refers to your work very favorably. I've been wondering who to contact of those wishing to expand the public's knowledge of Israel's expansionism. On learning that you're The Most Hated Man In Israel, I thought I'd start at the top and then work my way down. If you would provide a foreword or review of my novel, I would greatly appreciate it. If you have a fee for providing such a service, please let me know.
My novel focuses primarily on the conflict between the political ideologies of the left and right in the US. My personal identification is as a progressive, but I chose to tell the story from the viewpoint of a conservative confronting information he hasn't heard before. Because of the right's determined support of Israel, the Herodian Temple and Mt. Moriah found their way into the story. The central character is a theme-park designer and the conservative media studio where he works is building a Disneyland-style theme park. They intend the park to be as secular as the Disney and Universal parks, but they also want to subtly counter Disney's mildly progressive messages, like "It's a small world after all," with more conservative messages, like "In America we speak English." The title of the book is Just to the Right of Disneyland. Tucked into a corner of the park, which is divided into eight very different lands, is the themed area that will recreate the Jerusalem Temple from early in the 1st century. Since a park of this sort could see 10 million guests per year, it arouses the ire of groups which remain unnamed throughout the book, and they blow up a truck on the Temple construction site. (The current Bible-land park in Orlando sees only a small percentage of the guests that Disney parks see, and so its Temple replica isn't as threatening.) A progressive professional woman enters the story and urges the designer to eliminate the Temple attraction rather than building a reinforced structure around it to protect it, as they're planning. In subsequent meetings she proposes adding a replica of the Dome of the Rock and moving the Temple replica to a location just to the south. Her belief that this would remove the threat to the Temple and ensure the safety of guests convinces the reluctant studio and they begin construction. Bombs are subsequently discovered at both construction sites before they detonate, and the future of that part of the park is left uncertain. No one claims responsibility for any of the bombs. It's left up to the reader's political predisposition to decide who is responsible.
In the meetings, the professional woman, from a family of lawyers, Jewish on her mother's side, Anglican on her father's side, discusses Israel's expansionism. She argues that the joy conservatives will feel when visiting the Temple replica will reinforce an already positive view of Israel and further obfuscate the methods Israel uses in its expansion. I have the central character, and everyone he knows, unaware of any human-rights violations committed in Israel's return to land God had given them centuries ago, because I was unaware of it until a few years ago, and as a conservative Baptist years ago, that was my perspective then—it was Israel's land, the Palestinians were merely housesitters. I have the woman offer the argument that after 18 centuries of non-governance, since the Bar Kokhba revolt, some kind of statute of limitations would apply to Israel's current claim to the land. The land, as I understand it, had been under continuous Muslim control since Saladin regained Jerusalem in 1192. She argues that an unwitnessed verbal agreement between two parties is very hard to defend when there's a dispute with a third party. She also argues that any other nation forcibly retaking land that had been theirs centuries ago would precipitate multilateral resistance, like Iran reclaiming Babylonia, and Indians reclaiming the Americas.
Does this sound like a project to which you could lend your influence? Its primary market is American readers, of course, but America seems to be the most in need of the information. With the popularity of theme parks around the world, the fun framework of the theme park in the story would broaden the book's appeal to a wider market.
Thanks very much for reading.
