From Beirut to Jerusalem
by Thomas L. Friedman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Thomas L. FriedmanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1995-08
ISBN: 0385413726
Number of pages: 588
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of From Beirut to Jerusalem
Book Review: I Finally Get the Picture
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is an analysis of the factors underlying both the Lebanese civil war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Friedman wrote the book after living in Beirut for five years and then Israel for five years as Middle East correspondent for UPI and the New York Times. Thus, the first half of the book covers his experiences in Lebanon and the second half, Israel.
Friedman arrived in Lebanon in 1979, where the civil war had already been going on for four years. Among other battles, he was there for the Israeli invasion and subsequent withdrawal, and for the bombing of the U.S. embassy and Marine headquarters. In this book, he writes about his personal experiences and challenges covering the war. He also explains the major political and military factions in the war, laying out, for instance how the U.S. military forces came to be hoodwinked into actively supporting one warring faction against others when they had ostensibly been brought in as peacekeeping observers.
A vitally important part of this section is Friedman's description of Hama Rules, in which he chronicles the horrific attack in 1982 by Syrian government forces on one of their own major cities, where entire neighborhoods were flattened into parking lots without bothering to first remove the inhabitants. Friedman points out that the massacre in Hama is just one example of the extreme brutality found in the Middle Eastern approach to conflicts. According to Friedman, "the best way to understand what happened in Hama is to understand that politics in the Middle East is a combination of three different political traditions...: tribe-like politics (adherence to certain intense primordial or kin-group forms of allegiance, letting others know that if they violated you in any way, you would make them pay),...authoritarianism,...and the modern nation-state.
Friedman's analysis of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon sent chills down my spine. Friedman writes "instead of entering Lebanon with a real knowledge and understanding of the society and its actors, Israel simply burst in with tanks, artillery, and planes in one hand a fistful of myths in the other-myths about the nature of Lebanon as a country, about the character of Israel's Lebanese...allies, and about Israel's own power to reshape the Middle East." An interview with Avraham Burg, an Israeli paratroop officer who served in Lebanon summed up the situation "We knew it was some kind of complicated Middle East Belfast. Okay, so they had lots of tribes. It meant nothing. We didn't know about the differences between Sunnis and Shiites. And then, all of a sudden, we went in." Fast forward 20 years, replace "Israel" with "US" and "Lebanon" with "Iraq," and we have a startlingly accurate portrayal of the second Gulf War. Too bad our illustrious leaders didn't take the time to read this book before going ahead with their invasion plans.
In the second part of the book, Friedman explains both the Israeli and Palestinian sides to their conflict, although being Jewish himself, he focuses on the Israeli side. He notes that the reason why Zionists are so tied to keeping the occupied territories is their religious significance-they want to walk in the lands of their religious texts. This is why they could never be satisfied with resettlement elsewhere, not even South Florida. In their struggle to regain land and autonomy, the Palestinians have been hampered by being scattered and factionalized, and dependent on their need to earn a livelihood in Israel.
Towards the end of the book, Friedman includes several chapters that seem addressed more towards American Jews and Israelis, in which he analyses the relationship between these distinct communities, the role of the media in the Palestinian conflicts, and possible approaches to peace. I found his metaphor for explaining the difficulty of creating a lasting peace in the region very compelling: it's as if the Israelis and Palestinians are consulting with a fertility specialist. What the specialist has to constantly keep in mind is that no amount of intervention will work until both parties show a sincere interest in getting pregnant and maintaining the pregnancy.
I first encountered Friedman's writing following 9/11 when his Times column was regularly reprinted in the Gulf News in the UAE. I had been living in the Middle East myself for four years, and was amazed that someone with a New York byline could have such insight about the attitudes of the people on the ground in the Middle East, and how Middle Eastern politics really works. This book should be an essential text for anyone interested in contemporary world politics, especially those desiring to take an active leadership role.
Summary of From Beirut to Jerusalem
Winner of the 1989 National Book Award for nonfiction, this extraordinary bestseller is still the most incisive, thought-provoking book ever written about the Middle East. Thomas L. Friedman, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, and now the Foreign Affairs columnist on the op-ed page of the New York Times, drew on his ten years in the Middle East to write a book that The Wall Street Journal called "a sparkling intellectual guidebook... an engrossing journey not to be missed." Now with a new chapter that brings the ever-changing history of the conflict in the Middle East up to date, this seminal historical work reaffirms both its timeliness and its timelessness. "If you're only going to read one book on the Middle East, this is it." -- Seymour Hersh. "From Beirut To Jerusalem is the most intelligent and comprehensive account one is likely to read." -- New York Times Book Review.Israel Books
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