In a review of An Improbable Friendship, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, co-founder of Ms. Magazine, speculates how the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict would have ended four decades ago had Ruth and Raymonda been in charge.” The British film critic Adrian Hennigan, writing in Haaretz, agrees that the Middle East would be a vastly better place had one of the two women “called the shots at defense HQ in Tel Aviv.”

            The dramatic arc of An Improbable Friendship follows Ruth Dayan as a teenager debating with her socialist friends how best to create a New Society by overturning social taboos and crusty power structures that rely on violence.  Drawing on the humanism of her youth, Ruth sets out on a path of self-liberation. She eventually rebels against philandering General Dayan whose plea to his children is  “Let each of you cultivate our ancestors’ land/ and have the sword within reach above your bed.”  

Ruth’s demands a divorce from Moshe in 1970 immediately following her first encounter with Raymonda Tawil, an Acre-born Palestinian feminist and journalist firebrand, a woman nicknamed the “Lioness of Nablus.” 

            Ruth has never met anyone quite like Raymonda, a feminist on a mission.  As a young girl Raymonda encountered a mysterious Italian priest, a clairvoyant and mystic. The priest gave her a “secret mission” to “show many, many others, Jews and Arabs, the same thing. To help restore love in this promised land” ruined by hatred where myths, archeology, history, and religion kept people apart, swords in hand. 

             For decades, Ruth and Raymonda join in protest marches against the occupation. Ruth is always prepared to pull strings to get Raymonda out of prison or house arrest. She visits her in the hospital following a beating, and gets permission to her to leave the country after a car bomb delivered the message that she had gone too far.  After Oslo, when it seemed that that tragic conflict between their peoples has found a good ending, she visits Raymond in Gaza and finally has a chance to meet her son-in-law Yasser Arafat.  Arafat is so excited that he begins kissing Ruth on one cheek, then the other.  

              Twenty years after the failure of Oslo, the two friends continue to speak out for peaceful dialogue as the most effective weapon against the male-warrior cult of war.  Letty Pogrebin urges her readers to “dive into this compelling story” because the final message of the book is how the human spirit, guided by empathy, will in the end triumph