Letters from Tel Mond Prison

This riveting apologia from an American-born Jew convicted of terrorism on behalf of the Israeli settlers movement not only displays the motivations and development of a person capable of political violence but reveals a voice that is unsettling in its forthrightness and familiarity. Raised in Brooklyn, Era Rapaport was like many earnest young people of the 1960s. Believing in the ideals of social justice, he marched for civil rights and earned a master's degree in social work. Then in 1966 he went to Israel, where the desert and mountains rang with the history of his Jewish heritage. He soon became a medic in Israel's defense forces during the victorious Six Day War and fell under the influence of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, a leader in the West Bank settlement movement. Rapaport and his family became prominent pioneers of the movement and he eventually became mayor of the settlement town of Shilo. In poignant letters written to friends and family both before and during his imprisonment in Israel's Tel Mond prison, Rapaport tells how he initially attempted friendly coexistence with his Arab neighbors - and how those hopes diminished as hostile forces repeatedly tried to destroy all that he and his compatriots were building in their desert community. These powerful letters tell the story of Rapaport's painful transformation from an idealist to a man who felt compelled to plant a bomb under the car of a PLO leader, which severely maimed the man and made Rapaport a fugitive. He describes planning the attack, the five years he spent underground in the U.S., and his arrest, interrogation, and conviction. Letters from Tel Mond Prison is a fascinating portrait of a man and movement whose fierce attachment to the land and estrangement from government will greatly impact Israel's political future. It also offers a glimpse of the inner workings of someone whose political impulses are replicated in the actions of countless individuals around the world today. Introduced by award-winning sociologist William B. Helmreich, Letters from Tel Mond Prison provides the most devastating portrait in a generation of the politics of violence and how they exist around us.