Fire-Breathing Liberal: How I Learned to Survive (and Thrive) in the Contact Sport of Congress, Rep. Robert Wexler, with David Fisher, 2008, pages 147-148:
‘ . . . When I was in Ramallah on the West Bank in 2000, I had a free hour between meetings and thought it was important to learn about public opinion and attitudes held by Palestinians about America. So I went into a small café—a little shop with three men sitting sipping black coffee. I sat at the counter and ordered something small, and then struck up a conversation with the owner behind the counter. The other men joined in. They were friendly and had strong opinions and wanted to express them. Did they know I was a congressman? No. But they knew I was an American and they told me what they wanted Americans to know. I learned more talking to those four men than I could have learned from reading twelve books.
‘I did the same thing in Tel Aviv during the second intifada. I finshed my meetings and I took a little walk. I stopped in a bar and ordered a beer. When I went to pay for it, the bartender wouldn’t accept my money. I insisted, but he told me, “We haven’t seen an American in here in nine months. I’m just glad to see an American.” That made a big impact on me. It told me how isolated the Israelis were feeling at that moment.
‘As opposed to being junkets, or vacations, these trips are exhausting. I try to cram as many meetings as possible into the shortest time. Often the day begins at eight A.M. local time and lasts late into the evening. And these are intense meetins with intense people. . . ’
http://books.google.com/books?id=emIkGk ... er&f=false
06 Jul 2010, 12:22 pm
