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PITY_THE_NATION
November 14-19, 2006
I've been working my way through
Robert Fisk's massive 700 page Pity The Nation:
long book about Lebanon: The Abduction of Lebanon
"Pity the Nation"; and I'm finding by Robert Fisk
it tremendously impressive... November 2002
and also tremendously slow-going. ISBN 1560254424
Somewhere between history Note: written
and journalism -- with before Israel's
more than a little most recent
autobiography -- this invasion in 2006.
book reports on events
with a novelistic eye,
but without the Robert Fisk is a British reporter
novelist's tricks of who lives in Beirut; he has
simplification and covered the Middle East for many
structure. years getting as close to the
action as possible.
It might be easier to
follow if Fisk was
more partisian, but A vocal faction
he's not really taking would have it that And anti-American.
any sides -- Fisk is anti-Israel. And anti-Western.
And drowning in
This is not a Certainly, when masochistic self-
polemic intended Israel does loathing.
to convince you something evil, Fisk
that one side or doesn't hide his SMEAR_THE_MESSENGER
the other is the opinion of it...
Good Guys.
And I think, like
The situtation is a many people, he's
mess, every faction exasperated with LITTLE_DRUMMER_GIRL
has done something the soft-ball
heinous at one time or treatment the
another; and there are Israelis receive
very few obvious in the US news media.
prescriptions about
what should be done. TIPPING_THE_BANDWAGON
Just keeping the But that doesn't mean
factions straight that he's necessarily
is difficult an advocate for the
because of their Palestinian side --
sheer number... and they're weaker, but not
because Fisk necessarily better, and
doesn't try to by no means are they
oversimplify their saints.
character.
Of course part of
the trouble is my
own gross ignorence
of the subject; On (But most of the back-
nearly every page ground is filled in by
there's something page 200 or so...)
new to me that I
need to absorb.
I didn't even know that
Lebanon was created as late
as 1920, by the occupying
French colonial forces --
Fisk's take is that they
shuffled off the good bits
of Syria into another
country that would be under
the more sympathetic
influence of a Chrisitian (But hey, why would
faction called the you expect me to
Maronites. know anything about
this stuff, eh? I'm
And stop right there: the a mere American --
Maronites? I don't think with a University
I've ever even *heard* of education and a
these people before. compulsive reading
habit -- why would I
know anything about
Another faction I'd never the Middle East?
heard of would be the What does that have
Phlangists: which is to do with us?)
almost literally a
spin-off of the Hitler SLOW_ARC
Youth movement. The
founder was much impressed
with Nazi Germany in the
30s, and thought that
Lebanese youth could use
that sort of discipline
also...
Note though, that this
does not mean that it
makes any sense to think Still: the fact that the
of these people as Israeli's are *allied*
"Nazis": that would be with these guys is incredible.
too easy.
One more grim irony
for the pile...
For sheer excellence
of writing and depth of
knowledge, this book
has few equals. SAVAGE_NIRVANA
" 'It is a tragedy of both our people. How can
I explain in my poor English? I think the
Arabs have the same rights as the Jews and I
think it is a tragedy of history that a people
who are refugees make new refugees. [...]' "
-- p.31, Chapter 2, "The Keys of Palestine"
What a strange thing, the human race.
How is one to live in such a world?
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