In a F Question and Answer Session online Seth M. Siegel author of “Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution for a
Water-Starved World,”
author Seth M. Siegel laments how the Barnes & Noble
retailer places his book in the wildlife section. There isn’t a single animal mentioned anywhere
in the volume’s
352 pages.
“They
have me in the wildlife section because they don’t have a context,” Siegel says. “I would love to see a day, and I think it’ll happen soon, that there’s a water section in the bookstore.”
Indeed, at Siegel’s current pace, that day is
fast-approaching. The New York businessman never believed he’d sell the book to a major publisher,
but scored a deal with Thomas Dunne Books. He didn’t think he had a bestseller for any
list, let alone the book’s
eventual designations as a New York Times science bestseller and a Los Angeles
Times nonfiction bestseller. He never expected
his flood of invitations to speak nationwide—more than 300, of which he has accepted 120. Despite the
natural Jewish interest in a book that tells a story about Israeli
achievements, only a third of Siegel’s speaking invitations are from Jewish groups.
Everything considered, “Let There Be Water”
is shaping up as not just a popular
book, but a grassroots movement that Siegel hopes will help influence water
policy around the world.
“Most
authors, their goal is to sell as many books as they can. While to be sure I’m happy to sell as many books as I
can, my goal here is to start a conversation,” Siegel tells me.
I caught up with Siegel at one of
Jewish National Fund’s
(JNF) ongoing series of water
summits, which besides Austin have been held
or are forthcoming in Albany, N.Y., Boston, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Los
Angeles, Miami, New York City, Phoenix, San Diego, and Washington, DC. Given
its own contributions to Israel’s water breakthroughs, JNF has championed Siegel’s book, which is among the topics the
author discusses below in the rest of his interview with JNS.org.
JNS: Pro-Israel activists today face
a balancing act between “bad cop advocacy,” namely addressing security threats and countering
anti-Israel propaganda, and “good cop advocacy,” such as telling positive stories about the Jewish state. Is
good cop advocacy one of your goals in telling Israel’s water story?
Seth Siegel: “I am completely not thinking of
myself as an extension of the [Israeli] Foreign Ministry or as part of the
Israel advocacy apparatus. But here’s what I will say: As one who feels strongly about Israel’s safety and security, what bothered
me for a very long time is that we need positive stories. We need positive
stories for ourselves, to keep ourselves engaged, and we also need positive
stories to get people of our children’s generation motivated and excited—the same way that most everybody,
unless you grew up in a strongly Zionistic or Orthodox household, had a
galvanizing moment. Whether it was the Yom Kippur War or the Six-Day War or the
Ethiopian airlift or the Russian aliyah or the raid in Entebbe, or something
like that. I was tired of being in a position of saying ‘yes, but…’
in talking about Israel.
“The
book was not written with the thought that it was going to be a Jewish book.
The book was written with the idea that it’s going to be a policy book, and that as a second order of
magnitude, it also comes out in a way that people can feel a very good feeling
about Israel and that people who are strangers to Israel can be introduced to
Israel in a whole new way.”
So you didn’t write it as an advocacy book—but as someone who has worked as a
branding agent, do you think this is a story pro-Israel activists can use to “brand” Israel?
“I
don’t
think there’s a
more positive story one could tell about Israel today—whether it’s the historical section about what
Israel did, overcoming adversity, whether it’s how Israel through trial and error figured out its
technological needs, or the last third of the book, where I talk about ‘hydro-diplomacy,’
how Israel used water as a way of
opening the world to itself and changing its relationship with its
neighborhood. I think those are all very inspiring stories. So I think it would
be wonderful if people would use [the book] for that purpose [of branding
Israel]. I’d
be ecstatic. But I don’t
want to take my eye off the ball and say that that’s my purpose. My purpose is to make
sure that we start thinking about our water policy.”
Does it make a difference that this
water story comes from an independent source like you rather than an entity
with more “skin
in the game,” such
as the Israeli government?
“If the audience is a water commissioner in
Texas, then I don’t think it makes a difference whether I’m the source or whether the Israeli
government is the source. If it’s somebody who comes to this with more skepticism, then I think
probably an independent party is better.
“That’s why the book is so heavily footnoted, and that’s why the book has such a deep bibliography. There are close to 600 footnotes in the book, there’s a 12-page bibliography. The reality is that
I wanted to have that level of documentation because I thought to myself, the
neutral people coming to this, they’ll accept it as is. But the people who come to this with a
skeptical eye or even a hostile eye, I want them to know that there’s no game being played here. There is no
propaganda in this. This is the story.”
The book discusses how from 1962
until the Islamic revolution in 1979, Israel to a large degree ran the water
industry in Iran. Is that something worth mentioning in the debate over Iran’s nuclear program and the threat it
poses to Israel?
“What
I think should’ve
been done [during the nuclear negotiations], and repeatedly, is to point out to
the world that Iran once upon a time had a good water system, and that after
Iran threw the Israelis out, and exiled or killed some of their water
engineers, now Iran has perhaps among the world’s worst water systems. What I would have said is, ‘So how do they have the money to
build this nuclear program, but they don’t have money to build up their water system?’”
What’s the role of JNF in the success of
your book?
“When
I made the decision that there was a book to be written, I needed to develop a
sense of what the story was, and I had the good fortune of calling JNF. They
not only were excited about this, but they were exuberant about the idea of
sharing ideas and sources with me.
“I
was a business guy, and a business guy who walked into their office and said, ‘I wanna write a book.’
I’m going to guess they must get five of those a day. They
could not have been more supportive. They set up for me more than dozen of my
first interviews.
“The
second thing is that while this is primarily an Israeli story—a story of what Israel did for itself
and now, a great benefit for the world—what I discovered along the way is that the one great
supporter [of this cause] from outside of Israel was JNF.
#is
“JNF-USA
was the prime mover. Whether it’s the work down in the Be’er Sheva area with the river park, whether it’s the lake, whether it’s Israel’s national network of reservoirs, all
of that is a JNF story. And there’s now some 250 of these reservoirs built in Israel, and the
truth of the matter is, they probably never would have been built without JNF.
Had they never been built, it would have taken Israel a generation before they
would’ve
been ready to be water-independent.”
Looking into your crystal ball, do
you see the global water situation improving? If so, do you see Israeli
ingenuity getting some of the credit for it publicly?
“If
the world fixes its water problems, Israel will be just fine. First of all, it’ll reduce instability in its own
region. Second of all, Israel—as a source of innovation—will benefit economically from selling its technologies
elsewhere. Third of all, if it turns out that Israel does get credit, that’s good, but no deed is a better deed
because somebody gets credit for it. It’s not about the PR value in my mind.”
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