Dec 23 2008
There is an important section in Friedman’s “From Beirut to Jerusalem” that talks about the Phoenician-descent myth that Lebanese Christians invented for themselves, and how the Israelis bought into it hook-line-and-sinker as they were preparing for their first Lebanese invasion and occupation (circa 1980). I continue to be dismayed by how much residual resentment still …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2008/12/23/lebanese-ness-and-phoenician-genetic-markers/
Nov 08 2008
This afternoon I finished reading Susan Nathan’s “The other side of Israel: my journey across the Jewish-Arab divide” today (2005, ISBN 0-385-51456-5). The links below are from the back of the book. Equally interesting, near the end of the book, was this quote from 1930: “It would have seemed more sensible to me to establish a Jewish homeland …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2008/11/08/the-other-side-of-israel/
Oct 28 2008
From Ray Close: Eddy and the Mideast Joseph C. Goulden OP-ED: Middle East veterans of a certain era – the World War II era into the 1950s – speak with respectful awe of William A. Eddy. Soldier, scholar, statesman, spy, Arabist – of him a colleague said, “Bill Eddy was probably the nearest thing that …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2008/10/28/my-mothers-kid-brother/
Aug 24 2008
For me, this is probably the work that got the Israeli PR thinkers to seeing the possibilities for a beautiful friendship between Zionism and fundamentalism: Hal Lindsey’s 1970 “The Late, Great Planet Earth.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Late_Great_Planet_Earth I remember hearing about this while we were still in high school, and wondering what in the hell kind of foolishness …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2008/08/24/layers-part-2/
Aug 24 2008
There is another, deeper, emotional/spiritual layer to this entire problem. I used to try to explain it but it falls on secular ears, and is largely ignored as insignificant. It is anything but, and anyone who cares about justice and dignity in the Middle East would do well to try to understand it better. Back in …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2008/08/24/layers/
Aug 20 2008
What do we really cherish? America absolves itself the same way a smoker convinces himself he’ll never get cancer. In both cases, there is plenty of available information from which the truth of the matter can be gleaned, but that requires more introspection than most of us are willing to endure. Less than a minute …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2008/08/20/if-americans-only-knew/
Aug 09 2008
http://mahmouddarwish.com/english/introduction.htm A woman asked the cloud: please enfold my loved one My clothes are soaked with his blood If you shall not be rain, my love Be trees Saturated with fertility, be trees And if you shall not be trees, my love Be a stone Saturated with humidity, be a stone And if you shall …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2008/08/09/mahmoud-darwish-dead-at-67/
