A Bridge Too Short - Kai Bird’s one-sided Jerusalem memoir
“At the beginning of this coming-of-age memoir with a Middle Eastern twist, Kai Bird writes that he hopes his “voyage through the world of the ‘other’” will contribute to reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians. The Holy Land has never been short of volunteer peacemakers, but Bird would have us believe that his qualifications stem from his experience growing up in Arab Jerusalem, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt as the child of an American diplomat. Celebratory blurbs for the book from Fouad Ajami and Martin Gilbert are likely to make Bird’s claim appear convincing to many readers. But it’s puzzling that such tough-minded scholars didn’t see through the author’s veneer of empathy and evenhandedness and recognize his as one more in a long line of recent books—from both the right and the left—that anathematize Israel as a colossal historical mistake.”