ABSTRACT
The Yellow Wind is David Grossman's account, written for the Israeli weekly Koteret Rashit, of his "seven-week journey through the West Bank" in 1987. It was undertaken in order to understand "how an entire nation like mine, an enlightened nation by all accounts, is able to train itself to live as a conqueror without making its own life wretched." Grossman leaps across the divide between Jews and Arabs by making his Arabs into Jews. Grossman maintains that the Palestinians "are making use of the ancient Jewish strategy of exile, and have removed themselves from history. Susceptibility to balderdash disappears, however, and self-effacement turns to strident self-assertion when Grossman finds himself among the Jews. Among the Arabs, even when he sees children receiving "education in blind hatred," he tries "to be neutral. Yellow Wind is, however, by no means lacking in harsh criticism of Arabs; but these are almost always made by other Arabs.
