bRamle city. A motley mix of some 40,000 Middle Eastern
bresidents, all but 5,000 of whom are Jews from Arab lands. It is
bnot a pretty city, and the main street is a garish potpourri of fast-
bfood shops with loud music blaring from loudspeakers. Off to-
bward the edge of the city, where it meets its sister town of Lydda,
bstands the Ramle prison. It is the maximum security prison in
bIsrael, and its grim gray walls with barbed-wire coils at the top
bare capped by sentry boxes set every fifty yards. In this prison,
bwith its more than 700 murderers, rapists, robbers, and Arab
bterrorists, I wrote this book.
bIt was on the evening of May 13, 1980 that they came for
bme: four plainclothesmen with a piece of paper, an un-
bprecedented Administrative Detention Order mandating my im-
bprisonment for six months without trial or charges. And so Ram-
ble Prison, the prison I had driven past so many times, the one
bvaguely suggesting a Hollywood movie prison out of the thirties
band forties, became my home.
bMy particular “home” was a tiny cell, some six by nine feet
bin size, in Wing Nine. My immediate neighbor to my left was a
bveteran Yemeni Jewish criminal named Adani, who was serving
bthe last part of a fifteen-year sentence for armed robbery. On my
bright was a Bedouin Arab, imprisoned for the rape and murder
bof a Jewish girl in the Negev area of the country. The possibility
bof his having been apprehended would have been slim if not for
bthe fact that he added greed to his original sin. Having buried
bthe body in a well, he applied for the reward by contacting the
bpolice to say that he had “discovered” it. Incredibly, his life
b