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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #148776 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-22
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Review
"A funny, sometimes horrifying look at the inner workings of international government agencies.... [Levey] makes speechwriting seem cooler than even Aaron Sorkin imagined.... Read it for the hilarity and the keen portraiture, but try to pretend these people don't actually make decisions about the fate of the world." -- Kirkus Reviews

"This brilliant and blindingly funny book is like a nonfictional season of The West Wing set in the Knesset. If you ever wanted an insider tale about why the Middle East is such a complicated, heartrending, and yet unbelievably compelling saga then look no further. Gregory Levey has captured the soul of this conflict with charm, grace, and diplomatic wit." -- Matthew Polly, author of American Shaolin

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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.

Copyright © 2008 by Gregory Levey

Customer Reviews

Interesting Idea, but Something is Missing.
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
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!"
** 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.