If anyone is wondering how much damage a lame-duck administration can manage on its way to historical infamy (or at best, oblivion), here’s what our Secretary of State had to say in response to the IAF attacks on Gaza (reminiscent, to this poor student of history, of the Stuka dive-bomber attacks on civilian populations in Spain …
Category: The Middle East
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2008/12/27/does-anyone-remember-guernica/
Dec 23 2008
Israel & Palestine: a response to avaaz.org
In reading about your various campaigns, I noted the following: “Israeli and Palestinian Avaaz members, like other Avaaz members and the general public around the world, firmly support a peaceful, just, two-state solution for Israel and Palestine and respect for human rights on both sides.” I’m sorry, but I remain unconvinced that such a “solution” …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2008/12/23/israel-palestine-a-response-to-avaaz-org/
Dec 23 2008
Lebanese-ness and Phoenician genetic markers
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
The other side of Israel
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
My mother’s kid brother
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
Layers (part 2)
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
Layers
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/