If it hadn’t actually occurred, the friendship between Ruth Dayan (born 1917), the first wife of Israeli politician Moshe Dayan, and Raymonda Tawil (born 1940), the mother-in-law of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, would seem not merely improbable but impossible. This joint biography from David (coauthor of Once Upon a Country) traces the women’s lives prior to 1970, the year of their meeting, and the collaboration that followed, one peppered with “standard quarrels” but forged by a mutual commitment to peace. In addition to noting the preeminence of politics in Dayan and Tawil’s lives, David opens up their personal lives: their childhoods, their children, their travails (Dayan’s divorce, Tawil’s house arrest), and their enterprises (Dayan’s Maskit, a craft and design collective employing immigrant women; Tawil’s news agency).
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