Pity the Nation
Irani, George Emile
her life, and she assessed it all: "love, for me, has been rather more as if I were a bun- dle of wheat going through the threshing machine than anything else. When I came through I was clean...
...In January President George Bush went to war with Iraq...
...Fisk is outraged at the unjust and bloody fate facing the innocent civilians--Lebanese and Pales- tinians--in West Beirut...
...marriage for me has meant pure disaster, and a strange cruel starvation of the heart...
...His most powerful chapters are those dealing with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and its aftermath...
...At forty-four, he is today the only foreign correspondent still based in Beirut...
...Robert Fisk's book is a welcome con- tribution and an excellent reminder of what type of neighborhood Lebanon and the Middle East is today...
...The story of how America was dragged into the Lebanese quagmire is another interesting chapter...
...Fisk has a moving chapter on the kidnap- ping of his colleague and friend, Terry Anderson, the Associated Press bureau chief who has been in captivity in Lebanon for six years...
...This marked the first confrontation between the United States and the forces of Islamic revivalism...
...For American Catholics, this book is a reminder of how Christianity can be used merely to shield an ethnic identification...
...The predicament of the Maronites of Lebanon and the Arab Christians in general is another incentive to work for the peace which is more than ever needed in the land where Christ was born...
...Another consequence of the U.S...
...servicemen lost their lives...
...May the publication of these Letters renew and refresh Katherine Anne Porter's presence among us as a writer of substance and very considerable grace...
...The Syrians, too, did their best to have me removed from Beirut, not just because I had reported from Hama (where more than 10,000 people were murdered by the Syrian regime) but because in the words of the Syrian ambassador in London--I had shown contempt for Arabs in general...
...in a letter to her nephew, she opined that, "all life worth riving is difficult, nobody promised us happiness...
...For Reagan and his staff Lebanon had become the staging ground for an all-out war against the evil empire, i.e...
...In the summer of 1982 the forces of Ariel Sharon laid siege to the Lebanese capital and cut off water and electricity from the population...
...Fisk is a sharp and balanced observer of a country, Lebanon, which in the last sixteen years has been in the throes of a ruthless and bloody civil war...
...Nonetheless, a difficult, dislocated life did not embitter her...
...foreign policy in the Middle East...
...The result of such a folly was the blowing up of the U.S...
...In 1979, the Shah of Iran, a staunch friend and ally of the U.S., was overthrown and replaced by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini...
...Fisk, unlike many other Western journalists, has an intimate knowledge of Lebanon...
...Fisk takes us across Lebanon...
...Between June 4 and the end of September 1982 alone, the Israeli inva- sion left 17,825 dead...
...He tells us that the Iraqis had complained about his reporting of how the wives of men who opposed Saddam Hussein were "gang-raped in front of their husbands...
...Fisk's reporting created trouble not only from the Israelis...
...LESSONS FROM LEBANON PITY THE NATION The Abduction of Lebanon Robert Fisk Atheneum, $24.95, 678 pp...
...As can be expected, Fisk came under fire for his vivid description of Israeli soldiers' behavior in Lebanon...
...In 1982, another friend of the U.S., Israel, invaded Lebanon...
...it is not a commod- ity you have earned, or shall ever earn...
...As a result of that inva- sion, Marines were dispatched to Lebanon and 241 U.S...
...When I came through I was clean winnowed...
...blunder in Lebanon was the taking of American and other Western hostages...
...It is a by-product of brave living, and it never comes in the form we expect, or at the sea- son we hoped for, or as a result of our plan- ning for it...
...He depicts in poignant words the relationship between the United Nations (UNIFIL) forces stationed in South Lebanon and the various militias and armies roaming the area...
...A heavy price to pay for a country that had signed an armistice with Israel in 1949 and did not participate in any war between Arab armies and Israel after 1948...
...Middle East cor- respondent for the Independent in Britain, Fisk wrote for the Times of London from 1976 to 1987 as their Middle East corre- spondent...
...The consequences for the region are still in doubt...
...the Soviet Union...
...George Emile Irani he 1980s were a decade of disaster for U.S...
...Basically, he disagreed with the official Israeli line that the purpose of "Operation Peace for Galilee" was to mop up Palestinian "ter- rorists" from Lebanon...
...embassy in West Beirut and the killing by a suicide bomber of 241 ser- vicemen...
...Sixty-three Americans were taken hostage at the American embassy in Teheran...
...This book is must reading for the lessons it contains for all those who are concerned with that vital region of the world...
...This peace-- shalom, salaam---cannot occur if we allow the "abduction" of Lebanon to become that of the whole Middle East...
...Here he is at his best trying to present the facts objectively without falling victim to the propaganda of the Christian Phalanges, the PLO, Syria, or the Israeli occupation troops...
...In addition to the internal contradictions between the various warlords and thugs, Lebanon since 1975 has become an arena of confrontation for regional (Syria, Israel, Iran, the PLO) and global powers (U.S., Soviet Union, France...
...In the South he encounters Shiites, Palestinians, Israelies, and their Christian Lebanese proxies...
...19 April 1991:267...
...The Middle East has been for most Americans a kind of distant but constant nuisance, a place deliberately cut off from the "Judaeo- Christian" lenses through which we are trained to understand and manage the world in which we live...
Vol. 118 • April 1991 • No. 8
