From Beirut to Jerusalem

“That was Beirut. No one was keeping score. No matter how you lived your life, whether you were decent or indecent, sinner or saint, it was irrelevant. Men and women there could suffer wrenching tragedies once or twice or even three times, and then suffer some more…death had no echo in Beirut. No one’s life seemed to leave any mark on the city or reverberate in its ear.”

Friedman discovers that for someone living in a city at war, the sheer ubiquity of violence and terror could generate a wide variety of psychological effects. A prolonged experience of acute fear would drive someone to exhaustion, or madness, and so people develop coping mechanisms for tolerating acutely traumatic experiences. The sense of randomness Friedman describes here betrays a kind of fatalism that itself could be a coping mechanism: If one’s fate was written, and nothing they did would change that, they could go about living their lives as normally as possible.

“What made reporting so difficult from Beirut was the fact that there was no center—not politically, not physically; since there was no functioning unified government, there was no authoritative body which reporters could use to check out news stories and no authoritative version of reality to either accept or refute; it was a city without ‘officials.’ After the civil war broke out in 1975, the center in Lebanon was carved up into a checkerboard of fiefdoms and private armies, each with its own version of reality…[T]he pure white light of Truth about any given news story in Lebanon was always refracted through this prism of factions and fiefdoms and then splashed on one’s consciousness like a spectrum of light hitting a wall.”

Journalists are typically reliant upon authorities such as government officials, soldiers, or police to provide information, especially during a crisis. Such information may not always be reliable, but even having one official line that can be compared with the unfolding of events is more useful than having a host of contradictory accounts with practically no way to verify them independently. These challenges likely help to explain Friedman’s reliance on anecdotes, which provide a kind of poetic truth about Beirut where facts and statistics fall short.

“In order to do objective reporting a journalist has to negotiate with his environment. On the one hand, he has to develop access and intimacy with his subjects in order to gain real understanding of them, and on the other hand, he has to remain disinterested and distant enough from his subjects to make critical assessments of them. It is a delicate balancing act, but one that is essential to objective reporting. A reporter cannot possibly be fair and objective about a person or group if he doesn’t truly understand them, but he also cannot be fair if he understands them alone.”

The dilemma mentioned here could be applied to all journalists, but it is especially relevant to those operating in an intercommunal war zone. Under such conditions, information is a zero-sum game, where anything favorable about one side is detrimental to the other. Sources are not likely to be candid if they believe that the reporter does not have some measure of sympathy with their position, but too much sympathy will immediately invalidate that reporter to other groups. In the kaleidoscopic environment of the Lebanese Civil War, it was a nearly impossible balancing act that frequently put reporters in grave danger from their sources.

“In such a lonely world, the only way to survive was by letting others know that if they violated you in any way, you would make them pay, and pay dearly. You sent that message first and foremost by banding together in alliances. These alliances began with the most basic blood association—the family—and then expanded to the clan, the tribe, and then to other tribes…hence the Bedouin Arabic proverb: ‘me and my brother against our cousin. Me, my brother, and my cousin against the stranger.’”

Shocked by the Syrian government’s massacre of thousands of its own citizens in Hama, Friedman goes in search of an explanation. He ultimately finds it in what he describes as the cultural roots of the region, where the struggle for limited resources forged close ties among immediate groups, who then had no choice but to treat outsiders with inveterate hostility. In Friedman’s estimation, this ancient set of habits has grown only more dangerous with time, specifically with the emergence of weapons of mass destruction.

“I am certain that [Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad] never fool themselves about the underlying tribe-like and autocratic natures of their societies. They always understand the difference between the mirage and the oasis, between the world and the word, between what men say they are and what they really are. They always know that when push comes to shove, when the modern veneer of nation-statehood is stripped away, it all still comes down to Hama Rules: Rule or die. One man triumphs, the other weeps. The rest is just commentary.”

Friedman does not admire despots like Saddam and Assad, but he discusses them as if they possess a fundamental understanding of their societies and the requirements for governance. This remains true despite the use of large-scale, highly orchestrated political violence. Friedman even hopes that over a long period of time, their brutal state-building may finally put the tribalism of Arab politics in the past.

“While Beirut enhanced Arafat’s unique leadership attributes, it also tightened his political paralysis. Why? Because Beirut, city of illusions, made waiting for Godot fun. It made it easy for the PLO to continue avoiding the concessions for peace, which might have brought about a negotiated settlement with Israel, and to continue pretending that it was preparing for a war with Israel, when in fact it was doing no such thing.”

Few people moved through the intricacies of Mideast politics quite like Yasser Arafat, who stormed onto the scene as a militant guerrilla, won the Nobel Peace Prize, and then died under siege in his Ramallah compound during the Second Intifada. Friedman finds him at a curious moment in his career, where his organization is arguably at the peak of its organizational strength, and yet by digging roots, Arafat gave up the urgency that gave his movement an essential component of its power. This dilemma between relevancy and institutional strength would elude Arafat for the whole of his long life, and it would only prove more insurmountable for his successors.

“Arafat’s retreat marked the end of an era in Arab politics. After the fiasco of 1967, the PLO had emerged from the ashes like a phoenix that promised, and for a moment even seemed to deliver, a restoration of the lost dignity of the Arab nation. The guerrillas were going to lead a revolution that would sweep away the corrupt old regimes and make the Arabs again a force to be reckoned with. For the young, it was an age of political romance, and thanks to the OPEC oil revolution, there was plenty of money and Western sycophants to feed the wildest expectations and illusions. But in the heat of the battle of Beirut the Arab nationalist dream, to which the PLO had anointed itself heir, crumpled into a heap of silk-screen heroes and empty slogans.”

For decades, the PLO symbolized the struggle for freedom, which required at least by implication (if not explicit avowal) the destruction of Israel. Yasser Arafat realized sooner than most that this would be impossible, and so he somehow found a position straddling his people’s demand for militancy and the Israeli requirement for recognition while going years without making a firm promise in either direction. The PLO’s expulsion from Beirut marked the end of such ambiguity. Arafat could pose at least a theoretical threat across the border, but upon settling in Tunis, he would simply become a negotiator.

“The Israeli soldiers did not see innocent civilians being massacred and they did not hear the screams of innocent children going to their graves. What they saw was a ‘terrorist infestation’ being ‘mopped up’ and ‘terrorist nurses’ scurrying about and ‘terrorist teenagers’ trying to defend them, and what they heard were ‘terrorist women’ screaming. In the Israeli psyche you didn’t come to the rescue of ‘terrorists.’ There is no such thing as ‘terrorists’ being massacred.”

In describing the frightful massacres by Phalange militants of the refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila, Friedman finds the logical conclusion of long-running attitudes within Israeli society, particularly its military and security services, that allowed them to turn a blind eye to the violence taking place under their watch. The PLO undoubtedly contained terrorist elements who had committed crimes against Israelis and other Jews while preaching eliminationist rhetoric, and so Israeli soldiers could mirror that same tendency back upon their enemy, refusing to see the basic humanity of those who either lived in proximity of their enemies or might even offer them a measure of aid and comfort in the midst of a warzone.

“After the summer of ‘82, Arafat became more than ever a symbol, and maybe nothing more than a symbol, of the Palestinian refusal to disappear. He was judged by the Palestinians less for what he produced than for what he represented. No one put it better than a Palestinian coed at the West Bank’s Bir Zeit University. When I asked her why she stood by Arafat when he had brought his people nothing but defeat, she said with tears in her eyes, ‘Arafat is the stone we throw at the world.’”

Yasser Arafat had struggled for decades to balance a number of roles within his chairmanship of the PLO—the fearless guerrilla fighter, the globetrotting diplomat, the power-broker among the many Palestinian factions. The PLO’s expulsion from Lebanon made it exceptionally difficult to balance those roles, forcing Arafat to shift more attention to his international persona. Arafat could pull this off because his very existence was a thorn in the side of the Israelis, but as Friedman describes it, it significantly curtailed his actual political power.

“Even once they recognized that they were embroiled in a tribal war, however, the Marines failed to take all the necessary precautions against something as unusual as a suicide car bomber, because such a threat was outside the boundaries of their conventional American training…Colonel Geraghty, a taught, controlled man who always evinced an air of real decency, was no better prepared for Beirut’s surprises than his men. But who could blame him? He was caught in the middle of two political cultures totally missing each other: there was no course on Beirut at Camp Lejeune and there were no rules of engagement among the Lebanese.”

There is a long-running literary trope, reinforced by works such as Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad and Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, where Americans abroad are well-meaning but so ignorant and stubbornly optimistic that they often make things worse. Friedman’s story here reinforces this trope, and the US peacekeepers do seem ignorant about the real nature of their environment while confident in their ability to make a positive difference. The worst day in Marine history since the Battle of Iwo Jima, when a suicide car bomber killed 241 Marines, shattered whatever remaining illusions they had.

“Because Beirut was never just a city. It was an idea—an idea that meant something not only to the Lebanese but to the entire Arab world. While today just the word ‘Beirut’ evokes images of hell on earth, for years Beirut represented—maybe dishonestly—something quite different, something almost gentle: the idea of coexistence and the spirit of tolerance, the idea that diverse religious communities—Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, and Druse—could live together, and even thrive, in one city and one country without having to abandon altogether their individual identities.”

The war did extraordinary damage to the cosmopolitan ideal of Beirut, but as Friedman notes, it continued to publish the most books of any Arab city and was home to a thriving university and a peace movement willing to brave shellfire simply to have their voice heard. None of this necessarily promised a return to the old idea of Beirut, which may itself have been a nostalgic recreation of an age that never quite existed, but it did show how much hope could stay alive under the most forbidding conditions.

“Show me someone involved in the distribution of goods and services in Lebanon today and I show you a militiaman, the brother of a militiaman, the cousin of a militiaman, or the friend of a militiaman.”

One of the most significant long-term effects of the Lebanese Civil War was that as war became a fixture of social life, all manner of commerce and public works became the domain of the various militias, who sought control over them as a means of exerting control over their segment of the population. Over time, the power and wealth that people could extract became more important than any ethnic, religious, or ideological objective they were supposed to be serving, and so they developed an interest in continuing the war mainly to shore up their own privileged position.

“I got to see with my own eyes the boundaries of men’s compassion alongside their unfathomable brutality, their ingenuity alongside astounding folly, their insanity alongside their infinite ability to endure.”

Preparing to leave Beirut as the conditions within the city deteriorated, Friedman came to see the random horrors and cruelties that neighbor would inflict upon neighbor as the flip side of the extraordinary generosity and mercy that one showed a stranger. Beirut was a lesson in the extremes of human experience, and while the good did not justify or offset the bad, it did show that even under the worst of circumstances, people can and do find a strength of spirit within themselves, a will to endure both as individuals and as communities.

“So, on the seventh day of the Six Day War, aid the jubilation and flag-waving, a huge question once again hung over the Israelis: Who were they? A nation of Jews living in all the land of Israel, but not democratic? A democratic nation in all the land of Israel, but not Jewish? Or a Jewish and democratic nation, but not in all the land of Israel?”

Here Friedman lays out a dilemma that persists for Israel to the present day. Being a Jewish state is seen as vital for Israel’s security, but so far this has required denying security to millions of Palestinian Arabs, whose restiveness in turn makes Israel less secure. For many Israelis, being a democracy is no less important than being Jewish, and yet many of those same people fear that extending equal rights to the Palestinians will threaten Israel’s long-term security.

“Israel today is becoming Vad Yashem with an air force. The past has caught up with the Zionist revolution and now may be in the process of overtaking it. The Holocaust is well on its way to becoming the defining feature of Israeli society. Even Sephardic and Oriental Jews who came to Israel from Muslim countries and who never experienced the Holocaust now treat it as part of their personal family memories. ‘The Holocaust is no longer a trauma that affected certain families in Israel,’ said Sidra Ezrahi, an Israeli expert on Holocaust literature. ‘It has become a collective pathology affecting the entire nation.’”

Friedman’s criticism that the Holocaust plays too much of a role in Israeli identity is not meant to downplay its significance or its value as a historical lesson. Rather, he is concerned that its role as the central event for all of Jews puts Israel in a position where they are constantly on the brink of extermination; their enemies correspondingly take on the role of Nazis, and the drama can only end when one or the other is destroyed. Given the unlikelihood of either occurring, it means that the conflict goes on forever, even as any kind of compromise becomes intolerable.

“I don’t have to worry about eating Jewish food to demonstrate culinary solidarity. I don’t need a delicatessen to show that I am Jewish. And for the same reason, I don’t need a synagogue. The whole country’s my synagogue. The part of the synagogue I always liked was the social hall, and the kitchen—you know, not the sanctuary. And so being here is a relief. I can be myself and Jewish but without having to think about it all the time.”

For many American Jews, moving to Israel is not a way to pursue a more intense Jewish identity but rather a more relaxed one, where they can be Jewish simply by being Israeli without having to fulfill all the requirements that are typically associated with religious observance. This sometimes strains their relationships with Jews, American or otherwise, who see Israel as a sacred mission that cannot be fulfilled until everyone is on board.

“With the PLO guerrilla leadership in Beirut, and later Tunis, claiming to have responsibility for confronting Israel and making all political decisions, it became very convenient for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to accommodate themselves to the Israeli system, even profit from it, while declaring that liberation was the PLO’s responsibility.”

One of the most surprising things that Friedman discovers during his time in Israel and Palestine is that whatever the injustice of the occupation, many Palestinians had found ways to deal with it and, on occasion, even benefit from it. While most would still opt for independence or even greater autonomy, some were also keen not to endanger the basic fabric of their lives. They therefore let the PLO take the brunt of the mission. It’s notable that Friedman’s suggestion that many Palestinians delegated total responsibility for liberation to the PLO is not supported by evidence.

“And so, for twenty years, the play went on: Palestinians talking to the world about resistance, even resisting individually, but resigning themselves as a community to the Israeli system; Israelis talking to the world about their ‘enlightened’ occupation, and then doing anything they had to, behind closed doors, to keep the Palestinians quiet.”

Friedman suggests that communities of both Israel and Palestine endured by lying to themselves and to each other. Both convinced themselves that the occupation would not be permanent, even as they behaved as though it would be and went years without taking any actions to expedite its conclusion. According to Friedman, the utter disjuncture between word and action endured, until it didn’t, and both sides had to reckon with their failure to do the thing they said they had been doing all along. This proclamation generalizes the experiences of the Palestinians, removing any nuance, and presumes a monolithic mindset.

“For many years thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza had talked about being one people, but they hadn’t behaved like it. That changed with the intifada. All PLO factions began working together within a unified command leadership. Muslims fundamentalists set aside their differences with secularists and Christians, and in virtually every village collaborators were either punished, or stood up, apologized to their neighbors, and vowed never to work for the Israelis again. In fact, the one thing the Palestinians kept talking about over and over again in the first few months of their uprising was not their ‘victories’ over the Israelis but their own newfound sense of solidarity.”

The pleasant fiction of two communities making do under the conditions of the occupation ended, perhaps permanently, with the Intifada. It was not clear if any material conditions had changed, but as soon as someone took decisive action, it quickly prompted countless others to follow along. It was the same pattern that had previously prevailed, but in reverse. Whereas once collaboration was the mainstream and resistance was the rarity, now those who sought the old normalcy were left isolated.

“What happened instead was that many Palestinians, but by no means all, went back to dealing with Israel or working with Israel—in some cases sporadically, in others on a reduced level—while young Palestinian children, often eleven-and twelve-year-olds, continued rioting, throwing stones, and getting shot. Their deaths seemed to become the warrant which allowed their parents to go on working in Israel and not engage in truly significant civil disobedience. Palestinians would point to the number of people being killed each day and say, ‘see, we are suffering. Now let us have our state.’”

The Intifada was extraordinary in its length and sustained intensity, but it couldn’t last forever, especially against an Israeli state that regarded such resistance as an existential threat. The Palestinians as a whole certainly did not give up—young people continued to provide the locus of protest, just as they remained the principal target of Israeli repression. Yet those who sought a kind of normalcy tried to use the threat of resistance as a bargaining chip while pointing to their own example of cooperation as proof that a political solution would elevate the moderates over the radicals.

“There is a hole in the floor of the nave of the church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Old City of Jerusalem. In ancient times, it was believed that Jerusalem was the center of the world and that this hole was the center of the center—the very navel of the universe. Sometimes I have the impression that foreign correspondents who reside here, and the hundreds more who visit every year, still believe that. Why else would they so often focus the attention of millions of people upon this small city and this small country?”

Despite not being particularly religious himself, Friedman recognizes the role of religion in shaping this conflict, especially in ways beyond devotion to a particular faith. Even as the United States becomes a more secular country, its religious origins continue to suffuse its culture and its ways of looking at the world.

“The attention the Palestinians received because their enemy was the Jew has also been a source of enormous frustration and confusion, because although the West seems to be talking about them, it doesn’t seem to be really feeling for them. Instead, it only seems to truly feel for the Jew—sometimes it is feeling anger and other times compassion, but these emotions seem to be reserved largely for the Jew. It can be extremely frustrating to think that the world is talking about you but not feeling for you.”

Friedman notes that although the suffering of Palestinians seemed to register on the American mind, it did not translate into any substantial American effort to push for Palestinian rights among either political leadership or at a grassroots level. Friedman wonders if this is because Jews are both heroes and villains in the story, and as much as the American observer might regret the suffering borne by the Arabs, it is a matter of the Jew correcting their behavior rather than the Arab deserving any reprieve for their own sake.

“Although Israelis and American Jews began dating and fell in love after 1967, they never got married; they never made that total commitment to each other. Theirs was a romantic fling—an affair. As with any love affair, it was only skin deep; the two parties didn’t really know that much about each other…but, as in any romance, there comes a moment when the starry-eyed couple discover who the other really is and, just as important, who the other’s relatives are hiding in the bedroom closet.”

Friedman’s metaphor captures something essential about the sudden shifts in sentiments between the world’s two largest Jewish national communities. The unflagging US support for Israel that many Americans treat as a fact of nature is actually rather contingent and is perhaps based on the faulty assumption that Israel and the US could only benefit one another. The more wrinkles that emerged, the more their differences gained in their significance.