Friedman's life, work and impressions of the two places when he was stationed there during the eighties, the work is informative in detail in more ways than one - horrors such as Hama and confusion of Lebanon are not this well known to those not of the nations involved, for example - and very worth reading.
Even as one reads these accounts one wonders at the cry against the comparatively smaller details of events elsewhere due to the democratic nature of the nations and culture in the said elsewhere places, while almost no sound is made about the Hama massacre of 38,000 Islamic fundamentalists and the neighbourhood they lived in by their own regime in an Islamic nation, just as very little noise is heard above the bare mention of the massacre of Armenian million and more by the Turkish government a century or so ago. But then, so very little noise or mention exists about the massacre of millions of Tibetans in Tibet by China, while billions were spent to arm the Afghans against - comparatively - an almost benign, benefic Soviet occupation (women will never be so free again as under the Soviet occupation according to the prophecy by the father of the protagonist in The Kite Runner, and it seems to be all too true even until now what with the neighbouring regime supporting Taliban to wage their war in a supposedly free Afghanistan, supposedly free from not only other other repressive regimes but from Taliban chiefly).
But then, it ought to be clear to anyone looking dispassionately, or with a passion for humanity, that the misplaced war on Soviet regime to the exclusion of ignoring massacres in Tibet, Hama, and elsewhere by Islamic fundamentalist regimes using weapons of terror across their own borders and within too (massacre prior to independance of Bangladesh by the military of west Pakistan of what they thought were their own people in the eastern part, including the horrendous use of women of Bangladesh, kept naked and chained so they could not run away, half a million women - or was it only fifty thousand? - so treated in inhumane way for sexual needs of the occupying west Pakistan military soldiers, a la nazi treatment of their own - read German, misnamed "Aryan", the real meaning of the world Aryan from Sanskrt having nothing to do with the usage made by nazi regime or their predecessor racists in any part of Europe - women kept for sexual use of their soldiers) being one example. The only difference was the German women were probably allowed to wear clothes when they were not being used.
And yet none of these various atrocities are mentioned a fraction as much as the happenings in a couple of places, easy targets for being not only democratic regimes of modern nations that believe in education and cultures of certain faiths that do not go about converting with aggressive fervour and hence targeted.
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One reads about the two nations and two cultures in this work - with people of diverse agenda and more than one nations in each of the two - and one is overwhelmed with the information unless one is extensively familiar with all this, which a general reader is not quite likely to be, not so much.
The diversity of Lebanon in the citizenry of not only including Christianity among the nation but remote and elsewhere not so well known branches of both Islam and Christianity is as much a new fact for most of generic readers as the description of almost claustrophobic nature of orthodox variation of faith in Israel that is so very a mirror image of Islam in its fundamental robe.
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Informative although not exhaustively so - for instance, details of the terrorism are missing with their effects, and the few mentions include a branding of a people but refrains from mentioning if such branding was justified by their sympathy and covert help for those that did commit acts of terror - this is an account of the author's life in the two places and his perception, understanding, and information about the people and nations of the two places - the number being a lot more than two.
Also, it explains a lot about acts of terror committed elsewhere that are linked to the topic of this work, by the tide of the movements, and successes perceived thereof by various others who sought to copy those successes including what counts as martyrdom, but more relevantly the expansion of a people connected by what is misnamed faith via methods tested and proved effective - high rates of reproduction, induction of small children in acts of terror and war (and subsequent howling against the same children being caught in crossfire or affected as result of the encouragement by the adults towards taking part in the war), occupation of lands and hypocrisy of howling protests against others either being part of the same lands or copying the occupation tactics, flat out declaration of not tolerating others among themselves and howling against similar reluctance by others to tolerate their own selves, using their own intolerance and democratic tolerance of others to their own benefits of expansion and take over towards a final aim of converting humanity with a clear agenda of clearing the world of any other faiths or systems, .... it is all eerily familiar across spaces and time.
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Interestingly another analogy is that about settling of US, Australia, and so forth, generally the continent(s) of the so called New World, by migrants from Europe; "settling" (they were none of them empty, to begin with!) those continents by every possible tactic including massacres and denigrations of real inhabitants of the places, including misnomers such as Indian (for a variety of people that had nothing to do with India - but then again, the very name India was given by people outside India to the land once so known) - or Aborigines, rather than retaining names they have for themselves.
Is settling of Palestine - by an original people driven out of it by Rome two millennia ago - against the unwillingness of the more recent inhabitants of the land (bought by the settlers from owners who were of the same ilk as the unwilling recent inhabitants, only they were rich landowners and couldn't care less for the tenants' opinions, feelings, or lives - unless they simply knew they were taking the money for a land they intended to drive away or massacre the new settler from anyway) - is this worse than the massacres, and worse, of original people of continents of Australia and America, by weapons and infected blankets and deliberate "whitewashing" of races by using European male settlers' usage of women of the land (it would be called rape if the males involved saw those women as human, but in all likelihood they saw them as objects of use, and this is worse than rape) and taking the resulting children away by force, causing disruption of families and trauma very like that of slavery of people kidnapped from Africa and sold in US - well, one doubts Israeli occupation of Palestine, including the post '67 territories, could even begin to compare, all the more so since it was a much persecuted people flocking to their homeland they had been driven away from by Rome then occupying Judea, and never allowed to live in peace anywhere else in the world with the exception of two places, two nations (one since expanded, one severely divided and a victim of terrorism of expansion by a colonising and conversionist people or two).
Those two places through history of the two millennia when Jews were driven out of their homeland and dispersed, seeking to live elsewhere and never allowed to feel at home or have rights, were India and China.
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In the land and culture that India was before the forced partitions (due to some that required supremacy of their faith as a national character), Jews lived in peace, were free to follow their own faith and culture or assimilate as much as they chose, prosper, and survive - as other refugees since and before, including Parsis, those from Persia fleeing terrors of a persecuting new religion over a millennium ago, and more recently Tibetans. This is by no means a complete or exhaustive list, either - it includes all those from east or west that came with intentions of life rather than that of death of others.
China on the other hand assimilated the Jewish diaspora gently - according to Pearl S. Buck, for example - until trace of such assimilation is found in a name here, a nose there, and very little more.
In India - what is now retained by that name - however, one can find old Jewish settlements in various places, and people who have lived there for all this time. The young might have emigrated elsewhere, but that was due to better economic prospects post formation of Israel as much as a returning to an ancient homeland or finding others of one's faith from across the globe - all the positive reasons, and none of the usual ones of persecution or lack of any rights of citizenry on par with everyone else.
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Events have gone far beyond the book's beginning of Hamas, of course. Now the world is smaller, terror spread beyond boundaries of the nations that have been the usual target, rogue nations have been reluctantly admitted by various powers of west after attempting to coopt them into "fight against terror" by labeling them as a partner of US in this fight and bribing them with billions of dollars unaccounted for - only to find the money vanishing, more demands for sophisticated weaponry, and backdoor coordination by those "partners" with the very agencies of terrorism they have been pretending to cooperate fighting. This is today, post not only the horror of towers unfolded over a decade ago but nearly a year post having the man who masterminded or at least was leader and spirit being hunted down in his lair in the very heart of military establishment of the "partner" of US in fighting terror.
Few dare to ask, was US really so stupid as to be duped by this nation, one born less than a century ago out of terrorism used for demanding it to begin with (but teaching its children, falsely, that it had existed for over a millennium, never mind how unlikely it was to exist even today without the massacre of thousands in Calcutta to force the demand), all along, or was it something else?
Now however not only this is post 2001, it is post the 26/11 targetting of western and Israeli people in a landmark luxury hotel in Mumbai used as focal point of a terrorist attack masterminded on cellphones from across the western border to instruct the terrorists continuously, and there can no longer be a pretension of doubt about the rogue nature of the agencies that mastermind and train the terrorists while denying it with open lies as long as the paymasters are willing to buy the lies. Hamas has been joined by various other agencies of terror as a front for the authorities of the rogue nation - agencies that merely change names and claim to be institutions of charity, on the whole creating a picture of a killer on the loose pretending to be a beggar and denying both begging and killing, or blackmail that joins the two.
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These are some of the books I read during last half a century or so, and some of the thoughts, questions, reactions and insights, emotions - and so forth -, evoked on reading them, either then or later sometime during the interim years and decades, or even thinking over now, that are summed up here while trying to record my impressions about what I read.
Serene, Reflecting
Life Recedes