In November 2000, I was sitting in my study in Jaffa, a mixed Arab-Jewish town just south of Tel Aviv, leafing through the latest issue of Critical Inquiry. This was a few weeks into the renewed outbreak of violence in Israel/Palestine, an outbreak that with a single stroke cancelled out the laboriously earned achievements of the Oslo peace accords, claimed the lives of thousands, and all but shattered the hopes of peace activists on both sides. Jaffa itself was transformed overnight, its delicate tissue of Jewish-Arab coexistence torn by Arab riots, Jewish vigilantes, and brutal police intervention. I was therefore looking forward to the momentary escape offered by the American journal that had just arrived in the mail.