A short break from healthcare

I needed some light reading to detract from the insanity of this healthcare debackle, so...

I am currently reading Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman. It’s an older book, but from a historical perspective, that’s fine. Friedman is an interesting character. An American Jew, he became fascinated with the holy land during his teenage years and studied Jewish and Arab culture during high school and college. He became a reporter and went to Beirut to live during the late seventies and stayed there for five years before being reassigned to Jerusalem. Imagine a Jewish reporter, living in the middle of a civil war between the Druse, Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, Maronites, Palestinians, and half a dozen other sects or ethnic backgrounds, who are at times battling each other and at times battling the Israeli army. Throw in international peacekeeping forces from the US, France and a hand full of others and you can see the dangerous world of chaos that Thomas Friedman found himself in.

Although he is Jewish, he lived extensively in Muslim dominated areas (of course not really advertising that he was Jewish), and gained some interesting perspective on the conflict inside Lebanon and throughout the Middle East as a whole. While he has some fascination with the Zionist movement that resettled Jews in their ancient homeland, he is critical at times of Israeli action and takes a fairly even handed approach. If nothing else the stories are fascinating although obviously on the macabre side considering he is constantly surrounded by car bombs, shootings, kidnappings, random checkpoints from forty different militias, ethnic cleansing, and people generally overwhelmed with the situation that they are in.

One story he relates is a dinner party where machine gun fire opens up in the street right outside the home, which obviously is not in the plans of the hostess. As she feels her guests becoming more and more uncomfortable she finally asks, “should we eat now or wait for the cease fire?”

I still have about half of the book to read, but Friedman’s observations are extremely insightful and give you a very interesting picture of what military forces are up against when you go into a country occupied by several contingents of rival ethnic and religious groups. This is the first book of his that I have read, but have had others recommend his writings numerous times. If you want to get at least a decent understanding of the Middle East mindset I highly recommend it. Unlike many books on the subject it is an easy read.