Summary

Shut Up, I'm Talkingis a smart, hilarious insider take on Israeli politics that reads like the bastard child of Thomas Friedman and David Sedaris. Now a political writer for Salon, Gregory Levey stumbled into a job as speechwriter for the Israeli delegation to the United Nations at age twenty-five and suddenly found himself, like a latter-day Zelig, in the company of foreign ministers, U.S. senators, and heads of state. Much to his surprise, he was soon attending U.N. sessions and drafting official government statements. The situation got stranger still when he was transferred to Jerusalem to write speeches for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.Shut Up, I'm Talkingis a startling account of Levey's journey into the nerve center of Middle Eastern politics at one of the most turbulent times in Israeli history. During his three years in the Israeli government, the Second Intifada continued on in fits and starts, Yasser Arafat died, Hamas came to power, and Ariel Sharon fell into a coma. Levey was repeatedly thrust into highly improbable situations -- from being the sole "Israeli" delegate (even though he's Canadian) at the U.N. General Assembly, with no idea how "his" country wanted to vote; to nearly inciting an international incident with his high school French translation of an Arab diplomat's anti-Israel remarks; to communicating with Israeli intelligence about the suspected perpetrators of suicide bombings; to being offered leftover salami from Ariel Sharon's lunch. As Levey got better acquainted with the personalities in the government's inner sanctum, he witnessed firsthand the improvisational and ridiculously casual nature of the country's behind-the-scenes leadership -- and realized that he wasn't the only one faking his way through politics.With sharp insight and great appreciation for the absurd, Levey offers the first-ever look inside Israel's politics from the perspective of a complete outsider, ultimately concluding that the Israeli government is no place for a nice Jewish boy.

Author Biography

Gregory Levey has written for Newsweek, Salon, The New Republic, the New York Post, The Globe and Mail, and other publications. He is on the faculty of Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada.

Author's Note	p. xiii
Foreword	p. 1
There Must Be Something Wrong with You	p. 3
The Only One Who Turns Me On	p. 21
Damn! There's a Fish in My Pants!	p. 38
Hamas, the PLO, and My Love Life	p. 53
No Such Thing as a Free Lunch	p. 69
Note to Self: Don't Knock Over U. S. Senators	p. 85
My Name Is Joey Shmeltz	p. 105
The Foreign Minister Has No Clothes	p. 120
Weekend at Arafat's	p. 135
Ariel Sharon Was a Hard Man to Turn Down	p. 149
Is Plein Even a Word?	p. 167
Dancing Queen	p. 187
And Still Nothing	p. 203
A Prime Minister's Office without a Prime Minister	p. 220
Pretty woman and the Prime Minister of Israel	p. 231
One Last Job	p. 248
Acknowledgments	p. 259
Index	p. 261
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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Excerpts

Foreword

I was twenty-five years old and not even an Israeli citizen, but as a result of a bizarre series of events, I was sitting alone at the State of Israel's seat at the United Nations General Assembly, minutes before a vote on a U.N. resolution.

Worse still: I had no idea how Israel wanted to vote, and very little concept of what the vote was even about.

How on earth had I ended up in this situation?

I looked at the Irish representative on my left and the Italian one on my right. Each of them was much older than me and had several assistants sitting with him. More importantly, they both clearly knew how their governments wanted them to vote. At very least, unlike me, they were citizens of the countries that they were representing.

For something like the tenth time, I called the office of the Israeli ambassador on my cell phone and asked to speak to someone who could give me instructions, but the terrible phone reception at the United Nations meant that I got cut off before I could get any help. Again. I looked across the room at the diplomat representing the United States and thought that maybe I should just vote however he did, since Israel often followed the lead of its closest ally.

Then I looked at the door leading out of the large hall, and thought that maybe a wiser option would be to run and not look back. I thought of that famous story from the middle of the Cold War when Nikita Khrushchev took off his shoe and angrily banged it on the table at the United Nations. I considered doing the same, for no reason other than delaying the vote.

I could see that the voting was about to begin, and I quickly tried my cell phone again. This time, miraculously, I got through to someone with authority at the Israeli Mission.

"They're going to vote," I whispered urgently, trying to keep my voice down so that the Irish and Italian representatives wouldn't recognize the fact that I was an idiot.

"Who is this?" the voice on the other end of the phone said.

At this point, I came perilously close to throwing my cell phone across the room. Or maybe, I thought, I should slam my phone down on the table instead of my shoe.

"It's Greg," I answered. "I'm at the General Assembly, and there's going to be a vote."

"A vote? A vote on what?"

"On resolution number" -- and I told him the specific resolution at hand.

"What is that?" he asked.

"I don't really know," I answered. "I was hoping that maybe someone there had some idea of what it was, and could tell me how I should vote."

"I'll look into it, and call you back," he said, and immediately hung up.

The chairman presiding over the meeting called it to order, and began the prevoting procedure. I waited anxiously for the cell phone gripped tightly in my right hand to ring, the fingers of my left hand hovering uncertainly over the voting buttons before me.