From Beirut to Jerusalem:

...Neither the Israelis nor the Americans ever understood the tangled sectarian blood feuds in Lebanon...

...And his blistering profile of Yasir Arafat and other leaders-Arab and Israeli-can hardly comfort anyone wishing to encourage the "peace process" let alone a modus Vivendi between Israeli Jews and the West Bank Palestinians...

...It can keep hope alive...

...The comment on Friedman is not only a telling reflection of the zealotry and inflexible spirit that has seized Israel's hardline defenders in the U.S...

...Nowhere is he more critical and despairing than in his withering description of self-styled American Jewish "leaders" and by his remark that "most intelligent young American Jews" have chosen to remain silent, especially after Lebanon and the Palestinian revolt...

...Readers may judge for themselves...

...Reading Friedman's opinionated, passionate, and persuasive account of his decade in the Middle East, one is struck by his pessimism, yes, but also by the ignorance each side appears to have about the other...

...Thus, in 1982, it was easy for the highly emotional prime minister, Menachem Begin, to become "so clouded by his own mythology" that he could ignore the fact that the "Christians" he wanted to rescue were a "corrupt, wealthy, venal collection of mafia-like dons...

...Murray Polner In the summerof 1982, while Beirut bureau chief for the New York Times, Thomas Friedman's father-in-law was told by an associate, "Your son-in-law is the most hated man in New York City today...

...One man triumphs, the others weep...

...Given the mutual damage each side has inflicted on the other, their dehumaniza-tion of one another, and the subsequent emergence of fanaticism, Friedman's pessimism is certainly understandable...

...But for those obsessed with rationalizing Israel's first nondefensive war-characterized by Ze'ev Schiff (military correspondent of the Israeli daily, Ha'aretz) and Ehud Ya' ari (Israel Television Middle East correspondent) in Israel's Lebanon War (1984), as "anchored in delusion, propelled by deceit, and bound to end in calamity"-the real culprit was "media bias...

...But it is in his final paragraph that he allows himself a glimpse of what could be...

...They look with hope to the United States...

...His crime...

...America doesn't have all the answers [but] it can keep asking the right questions...

...Even so, it's one thing to report and another to understand...

...Who, then, can trust whom, and under what circumstances, and with what assurances...

...A handful are worth considering, while others are not...

...Rule or die," is his definition...

...Nor does the United States come off much better in Friedman's judgment, what with the disasters brought on by inept Reagan administration officials and the host of consultants and hustlers they tended to attract...

...They were Christians like the Godfather was Christian...

...Consider, too, the Palestine Liberation Organization: still ambiguous about their willingness to come to terms with Israel despite recent declarations to the contrary and still practicing la'am, which Friedman defines as "a combination of Arabic words for yes and no...a perfect definition of PLO policy...

...it can keep the discussion alive...

...What, then, are we to make of the author's gloomy assessment...

...BOOKS A maze with no exit...

...As Friedman explains it, "I had helped inform the Jews of New York City of the less-than-heroic behavior of the Israeli army in Lebanon, the Sabra and Shatilla massacre, and other unsettling stories...

...Friedman's key to comprehension is grounded in his graphic description of his visit to Hama, Syria, after President Hafez al-Assad's troops slaughtered thousands of Sunni Moslems...

...The logical follow-up question, "Could this silence be a prelude to indifference toward Israel...

...These uncompromising attitudes here and in the Middle East go a long way to explain Friedman's sense of anger, disillusionment, and feelings of hopelessness...

...To be sure, he offers vague proposals for change...

...Casting aside the many blackguards he encountered he reminds us of the good men and women on all sides who desperately seek alternatives to the status quo...

...For those seeking easy solutions consider Israel's dilemma...

...At the same time Israel confronts 1.5 million Palestinians in the occupied territories who do not want to be governed by Israel, a fast-growing ultra-nationalist Jewish secular and religious right, and tens of thousands of settlers, many of whom may choose to fight their fellow citizens in the Israeli army rather than surrender their homes to Palestinians in any future agreement...

...Terrorist attacks and Arab belligerence have been its lot since the founding of the state, and continue today...

...as Friedman dryly notes, no Israeli specialist or intelligence official predicted-publicly or privately-the coming of the intifada or uprising...

...But the canard about Friedman can be applied just as easily to Israel's enemies, those Arab-Americans and their backers who also see daily examples of "media bias" against their side...

...This, Friedman argues, is the way things are in the region...

...is not posed but its implications are sobering...

...Marines, the alienation of the Shiite Moslems, and the arms-for-hostages deal with Iran...

...The Israelis were also incredibly myopic about the Palestinians they rule on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip...

...FROM BEIRUT TO JERUSALEM Thomas L. Friedman Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, $22.95, 525 pp...

...though not the majority of American Jews) but also an ironic twist in view of the fact that Friedman was the first Jew the Times ever sent to report regularly from Jerusalem...

...Indeed, Friedman points out that the Israelis had virtually no specialists on Lebanon before the invasion, believing that so fractured a country could never be a significant factor in the Middle East...

...Uninformed, uncertain, opportunistic, and ideological, the vacuum they fashioned by their lack of firsthand knowledge of Lebanese history led directly to the senseless death of hundreds of U.S...

...If Friedman is correct, and if the United States ever enters the region as a serious mediator, let us pray that it is up to so monumental and potentially dangerous a task.y dangerous a task...

...Assad, described by Friedman as an unprincipled thug, governs by "Hama Rules," by which he means that anything goes in order to retain power...