Review of Freidman's From Beirut to Jerusalem

I finished reading Friedman's book, From Beirut to Jerusalem. Boy is that man insightful. He really seems to understand the Arabs, their mentality, and politics. Jews . . . not so much. I seem to be getting the impression that he knows one brand of Judaism - ie, his, and everything else gets compared to that - always unfavorably. There is little insight there. However the first 250 pages really make sense of the problems in Lebanon - the civil war, the war with Israel. The dude on the front cover said something like "if you only read one book about the Middle East, read this one." Ditto. The book offers penetrating explanations for much of what you read about the region.

I have a whole slew of criticisms, which I will put up at some point when I am less tired. He is an apologist for the Israeli left/peace camp. He is also really condescending to the Arabs he talks about.

The story is something like this. There are these people in Beirut. They all hate each other. They have always been fighting, and always will be. There have been few moments of peace in Beirut every now in then in the past hundreds of years. Every now and then something happens to keep the peace. Either something external (eg, French colonialism) or internal (a precise balance of power). Something like the National Pact or some feelings of Pan Arabism. If this ever gets messed up, even a bit, there is war. Now, the way Friedman portrays this, it is OK, and we are to take this with a sense of humor, and never talk about the killing of anyone in a civil war as bad or anything, except in the perfunctory way we must. He seems to portray himself as some Journalistic version of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. It is romantic, and cool. We drank in the cool bars and ate in the "in" restaurants, even during the war. Boy - those were the days, the war days.

Moreover Friedman describes well, the set of rules for real power in the Middle East - Hama rules. This is where some Arab massacres thousands of other Arabs. This is part of the game which we have to accept with lots of humor, and amusement. It is really romantic, the way it is all portrayed. There everyone is part of the underground resistance. Only all 50 resistance movements are fighting each other, not an outside enemy. So Hama rules is how it is played internally, but once in a while someone else falls in to the game, like Sharon. You can fal in to the game just by showing up. If he does not understand the rules then he will screw up. If he does he is a butcher.

Now I like this idea of Sharon being held to a higher standard than Arabs, but it seems a bit unfair, if he is playing with them. (Game theory comes in here) Sharon, because he is Jewish like Friedman, is held to these impossible standards. He has to be moral. Why can't Sharon play by Arab (read Hama) rules? Every indication is that every one else is. It is because those are ugly rules. Friedman apparently thinks that Arabs can't be held to such a high standard, and frankly, I agree with him. But if the Jets were to bring guns to the fight and the sharks were only allowed to fight with their bare hands, I see a problem.

Now the fact is that Israel has guns, and Lebanon does not. But not only is Israel not allowed to use them, they have to sit by when other people do. They have to be moral. There is all this hig moral language imposed on Israel, that you do not see elsewhere. There is also a long analysis about why the media does this. (He is naturally exempt)

His understanding of Jews is kind of poor, and his analysis of Israelis is only slightly better. Long poorly chosen quotes from David Hartman make up for analysis. I assume that Freidman came to Israel thinking he knows all he needs to about Jews and Israelis (after all, he is Jewish) and didn't bother to listen to any of them. His "Sassoon" is a saving grace, in that he does touch on something - that a lot of Israelis are Sassoons.

His solutions are worth considering.