If you like The Enemy Has a Face, try these:

Books about Missing Persons

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Missing by Catherine MacPhail

Shortly after her runaway brother is declared dead, thirteen-year-old Maxine begins receiving phone calls from someone claiming to be her brother

Missing Abby by Lee Weatherly

As the last one to see thirteen-year-old Abby, Emma is determined to discover the truth about her mysterious disappearance, spurred in part by her feelings of guilt over ending their friendship in order to ensure popularity at her new school

Season of Ice by Diane Les Becquets

When seventeen-year-old Genesis Sommer's father disappears on Moosehead Lake near their small-town Maine home in mid-November, she must cope with the pressure of keeping her family together, even while rumors about the event plague her.

Seek the Prophet by Daniel Parker and Lee Miller

In desperation, high school senior Tom Sinclair publishes his missing and possibly kidnapped girlfriend’s diary online, as he looks for help in locating her.

Books about the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Light Years: A Novel by Tammar Stein

Maya Laor leaves her home in Israel to study astronomy at the University of Virginia after the tragic death of her boyfriend in a suicide bombing.

A Little Piece of Ground by Elizabeth Laird with Sonia Nimr; illustrations by Bill Neal

During the Israeli occupation of Ramallah in the West Bank of Palestine, twelve-year-old Karim and his friends create a secret place for themselves where they can momentarily forget the horrors of war

Real Time by Pnina Kass

Sixteen-year-old Tomas Wanninger persuades his mother to let him leave Germany to volunteer at a kibbutz in Israel, where he experiences a violent political attack and finds answers about his own past

Israel and the US: War and Conflict

  It’s difficult for me to even begin to compare Israel and the United States because they are so different. It seems their only similarity is that both are countries founded on a need for freedom of a people. Israel declared its independence in 1948. It’s only 61 years old! While that’s middle age for humans, sixty years for a country translates into infancy. Most of the world views the United States as a young country, yet we have 234 years of independence, having signed the Declaration of Independence in 1775. Israel was founded in the separation of Arab and Jewish nations – Palestine retaining its Islamic faith and Israel becoming mainly Judaic. The Holocaust shook Judaism to its core and the need for an independent nation to protect its people and its faith became apparent. Hatred, though, was already strong: Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq attacked Israel days after it’s founding. Ever since then the Arab nations and Israel have been in conflict. That’s a very brief history of the struggle, but its roots are much deeper and more complex.

The United States seems to be the polar opposite of Israel. We are a nation founded on differences – the melting pot of different cultures and ideals. There is no one religion and no one voice. Each state is almost like its own country --they’re so unique. We house, as a nation, 306,743,000 people. Israel has only 7,411,500. The religion and most likely the constant strife unite Israel in a way America can never be. Violence here is random whereas in Israel it is political and most likely perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists.

Netta’s family is living in a very confusing place. They’ve gone from complete union of a people to being strangers in a ‘community’ that is very un-welcome to foreigners. Netta noticed at one point that to be Jewish in Israel required almost no effort whereas in America one has to go to temple and seek out that community. Because Israel is so involved in the politics of its nation and constantly at war, the citizens are very aware of the news, although it is biased. In America, even in the midst of the war in Iraq, we are apart from conflicts. It is not fought on our own turf and thus it is easy to forget or misunderstand war. In Israel that is never a possibility.

Laith and Netta

Laith and Netta's relationship seems to be particularly representative of the differences between life in the Middle East and life in the US. The two, although from the same area, say they have nothing in common except their mutual hatred, but they are both "foreigners" to their peers. If you were to pretend Laith and Netta were ambassadors for their countries, what would you conclude about each, and, in turn, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

The Immigrant Experience --Israel and the US

Although I’m in contact with immigrants, living in a country founded on the influx of foreigners, it is difficult to identify with the Hofmans. Netta consistently refers to Israel as “home” and feels very much isolated from America. She mentions that while Judaism was a part of life in Israel, to be a part of the Jewish community here requires active participation. It’s hard for me to imagine a country in which people are so connected. Sure, Americans have pride and are united in that, but we are all completely different. What differences have you noticed between Israel and the United States? It’s important to notice that Israel only became a nation in 1948 after the UN partitioned Palestine into two countries – Palestine (the Arab) and Israel (the Jewish). How do you think this affects citizens and their attitude towards their country?