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Shut Up, I'm Talking: And Other Diplomacy Lessons I Learned in the Israeli Government--A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Gregory Levey
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 53110
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.3
ISBN: 1416556133
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.56940092
EAN: 9781416556138
ASIN: 1416556133
Publication Date: April 22, 2008
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Product Description
Shut Up, I'm Talking is 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 Talking is 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 too young for his job September 15, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
In his Author's Note, Gregory says that he wrote his tale of his failure (he doesn't call it that of course) in the service of the Israeli Government because "sometimes it's the comic details that best reflect the gravity of the larger picture." And he certainly wrote a hilarious, page-turner or a sad book. But it was sad for me at least because it was so obvious that Greg just didn't get it.
For years Greg worked for a country whose people and institutions are in profound transition. (And who are not at all sure they want to transform.) The transition is from a kibbutz-style country, a family; to a bureaucratized state with attendant civil institutions. From a big family where the cab driver gives the Prime Minister advice to a place where autonomous individuals take official rules and the arbitrary hierarchy those rules impose very seriously indeed. For years Greg worked (and even lived) in a place that only has the trappings of a bureaucracy but no actual bureaucracy--and for years he didn't see that.
At one point he tells his fiancée that Israel is a big family. But I never got the sense that he stopped to think what that might entail. In a family, you don't have a bureaucracy or rules. In a family, if a bunch of kids want a treat, they just stampede to the grown-up handing the treats out and the loudest ones get it first. In a family, if you want to get hired you don't follow formal protocol; you call someone. As Greg had to in the end call someone to get his job in the Mission.
But Israel, the state, can't just be a family. Because so much attention is directed at it, it is being forced to change. To become more bureaucratic. More like "a regular country". Or at least its civil institutions are undergoing that transition. It is a profound and painful transition--and one that many Israelis around Greg were not at all sure they wanted. That is why Israelis elected Ariel Sharon, a man renowned for his ability to do backward planning (i.e., decide on the goal he needs and on all the little steps needed to accomplish that goal) and that is why there was such a huge hole when Sharon was no longer there.
But Greg missed all that. He was too busy being frustrated; too busy being too young; too busy falling back on comfortable ideological assumptions. And so he failed to do the job he was hired to do: explain the improvisation-in-transition that is Israel to the rest of the world. The tale of his failure makes for a hilarious book that left me feeling very sad for this nice Jewish boy who takes rules so seriously. And when I finished the last page, I remembered that at the beginning of the book, Greg relates how Ambassador Mekel told him, "You look perfect on paper, so there must be something wrong with you."
There was. Greg was too young.
 Juvenile, patronizing, and not very funny July 30, 2008
The author, probably because of his youth, shows consistently a superior and patronizing attitude.
Probably due to his "outsider" point of view, he generalizes and presents negative stereotypes from just a few personal unpleasant incidents.
If you read it for laughs or to gain some understanding of the complicated situation of the Middle East, you will be disappointed.
I was.
Interesting Idea, but Something is Missing. May 18, 2008
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
I liked the concept of this book. Take the state of Israel and turn it into a Seinfeld episode. The writing style is rather basic and so flat, that it detracts from the revelations of the narrative. Also, too many lapses in the time line make for a heavily disjointed narrative. You often want to know more about his side trips to South Africa, than his glossed over, day-to-day grind in Tel Aviv.
Mildly amusing, but would have been a better New Yorker story than an actual book.
 A Laugh Riot May 16, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
Levey, Gregory. "Shut Up, I'm Talking and Other Diplomacy Lessons I Learned in the Israeli Government", Free Press, 2008.
A Laugh Riot
Amos Lassen
I do not think that many of us laugh when we think of the inner workings of government agencies but Gregory Levey knows differently. In fact, reading "Shut Up, I'm Talking" explains, in its own way, why the Middle East is so hard to understand.
Levey was once a speechwriter for the Israeli delegation to the United Nations when he was only 25 years old. He was thrust into a world of foreign ministers, heads of state and American senators and before he knew it he was attending sessions at the U.N. as well as being responsible for the drafting of major statements of the Israeli government. Then he was transferred to Jerusalem to be the speech writer for then prime minister Ariel Sharon,
I found myself laughing aloud while reading the book and then running to the phone to call a friend and tell it to him. Levey was in Israel for three years during which Arafat died, the intifada continued, Hamas rose to power and Sharon had the stroke that has left him in a coma. He takes us inside the government of Israel and we see how casual the workings are and as well as how the government works behind the scenes.
As a non-citizen of Israel he sat in the Israeli seat at the United Nations General Assembly and when an important vote came up, he not only had no idea of how to vote but he had virtually no idea of what was being voted on.
Levey mixes satire and reality to give us the poetical picture and we learn that he became interested in Israel when he came to law school in New York and decided to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces. He is a Jewish Canadian and since he had time before he was due to report for military service, he applied for an internship at the Israel Mission to the U.N. and it is from that point that the comedy begins.
If you want to learn about Israeli politics this is not the book for you but if you want to laugh then you are at the right place.
RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "L'CHAIM! HILARIOUS INSIDERS LOOK AT THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT!" May 1, 2008
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
** AUTHOR'S NOTE **
"As I write this note, things don't look good in the Middle East. I'm not sure when you're reading this, but I assume that things still don't look good in the Middle East, because they never really do."
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The author Gregory Levey at the age of twenty-five-years-old and not even an Israeli citizen found himself sitting alone at the State of Israel's seat at the United Nations General Assembly. An important vote was about to take place, and he not only didn't know which way to vote on the resolution... he didn't even know what the resolution was!
This humorous and almost satirical yet somber situation was all set in motion innocently enough when Greg became bored in his second year of law school. The author being Jewish and a Canadian citizen going to school in New York decided to volunteer to serve in the Israeli army. After he signed up on-line for the army he still had a number of months ahead of him until he had to report to Israel. Unwilling to accept the monotonous months of waiting ahead he decided to apply for an internship at the Israeli Mission to the United Nations. What follows could provide enough fodder for a full season of hilarious sitcom material. As Greg followed up on his application, over and over again, without any positive results, he showed dogged determination and made yet another phone call to yet another person who told him to fax his resume directly to her. After still no response Greg gave up on the whole idea and left for Christmas break.
After he returned to New York in January he got a strange call from a man named Yaron from Israeli security. This led to many, many, phone calls with varying degrees of time between each clandestine call, with questions that ranged from "what side of the street did he live on?" to questions about the Jewish summer camp he attended as a child. Finally an interview was set up with Israeli Ambassador Mekel. The first thing the Ambassador said was: "You look perfect on paper, so there must be something wrong with you." During the interview the Ambassador told Greg there is no internship program but offered him a deputy speechwriter job on a part-time basis, because the regular speechwriter was going to be leaving and if everything went well he could take over fulltime. "Greg accepted the offer, but told him that as a Canadian, he was not eligible to work in the United States. The Ambassador shook his head before he even finished the sentence and said, "I can hire anyone I want. We'll just change your status from student to DIPLOMAT!" "So that was it. From the U.S. State Department's point of view, Greg was going to be an Israeli Diplomat, even though he wasn't an Israeli citizen." Greg had come in the hope of getting an internship and walked out as an Israeli Diplomat.
From there Greg starts writing speeches for Ambassador's in New York and gets noticed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's staff in Israel, and as a favor writes a speech for the Prime Minister. While working in the Mission in New York he takes a vacation in Israel and takes a course in "combat firearms". He subsequently takes another vacation and goes to Israel and takes an "intelligence and counterintelligence" course, and as part of an assignment has to go undercover as "Joey Shmeltz". He then gets invited to come to Israel and work on Prime Minister Sharon's staff. From there on out the author provides a never before seen "outsider's" view of the "inside" of the tumultuous stress that Israeli's face daily as a people and as a nation with a smattering of rye humor along the way.
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