Book Review: From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas L. Friedman
Before I go into detail about all the things I liked about this book, I should say up front that I thought the writing style was pretty annoying, perhaps even juvenile. The author tries to fit every possible metaphor he can come up with into the book, at every structural level. This results in really strange metaphors-within-metaphors that I find pretty annoying. For some reason, though, I thought that most of this weak writing style was in the first half of the book. It may be that Friedman wrote the part about Beirut soon after it happened, when he was younger.
Having said this, I absolutely loved the content. The overall structure – examining these two similar but opposite situations in Beirut and in Jerusalem – added tremendous insight. I am no expert on the topics he discusses, but I felt that he went very far out of his way to present a neutral point of view. It may be that I agree with Friedman on various issues and that I consider neutrality to be hearing what I want to hear, but I think he even criticized his own point of view (which seemed to sympathize most with the liberal Israelis). He even went as far in the book as to try to present solutions. His solutions may not be perfect and may not please everyone, but I have a great deal of respect for people who will put it on the line and present concrete ideas. It is too easy to stand on the sidelines and complain, without offering constructive suggestsions. Friedman does not fall into that trap.
In some ways, reading this was a life-changing experience for me. I have heard about the West Bank and Gaza my whole life, without really appreciating what the basic problem is. Friedman presents it simply and concisely (although from an Israeli perspective). He says that the Israelis want three things: a democracy, a Jewish state, and all of ancient Israel up to the Jordan river. They can only realistically have two of these things, because the vast number of Palestinian Muslims in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would cause any true democracy to move away from Judaism. Their solution right now is inaction through political deadlock, and the result is that the part they have chosen not to have is democracy: they effectively have a big Israel and a Jewish state, but not everyone living there gets to vote.
Some people might find all of this boring, but as an amateur foreign policy wonk, I was completely captivated. It is full of great first-person accounts, anecdotes that portray both the savagery and beauty of human nature. He ties all of this together with insightful analysis and descriptions of the major players at high levels – people that are still relevant today: Arafat and Sharon in particular. In some ways, I feel that every American needs to read this book in order to understand what the basic undercurrent of our foreign policy really is. It is not that I am positing some kind of Israeli conspiracy, but rather that we cannot escape the reality that the middle east dominates our lives now that we have declared a “War on Terrorism” and are occupying Iraq. I just wish that there was a version of this book for the past fifteen years since this one’s publication.