From Beirut to Jerusalem - Book

“Why can’t the Israelis and the Palestinians stop fighting and just get along?” I used to wonder from the comfort of my couch in America, when violent images and news from the BBC World Service about that part of the Middle East disturbed my suburban peace.

I am quite sure that I am not the only one guilty of such simplistic thinking. Tom Friedman’s book, “From Beirut to Jerusalem” tells us why.

It is a book of his 10 years living in and reporting from Lebanon and Israel. It was written exactly 20 years ago, but is still just as relevant today.

Once in a long while, a book about a place comes out which is better than even going to that place. FBTJ is definitely one such book. Less than a year ago, I was in Israel and we visited Jerusalem and the West Bank. But there is no way that wandering about as a tourist for 10 days can compare with the writings of an insightful journalist who’s spent years there.

Friedman is a three time(!) Pulitzer-winner, and he won the National Book Award for this book. With a newspaperman’s eye for telling anecdotes and a novelist’s ability with visual metaphors he makes this book very readable, though it is not light reading by any means. In the book, we meet the frustrated Palestinian young woman who says “Arafat is the stone we throw at the world,” and the top Israeli officer who is so worried about the possible consequences of the intifada that he privately admits, “The sooner the Palestinians return to terrorism, the better it will be for us.”

The book helped me understand how the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have different goals from the Palestinians in Lebanon and Jordan and Syria and from the Israeli Arabs. (I will go so far as to say that this book should be made mandatory reading for college students who study the Middle East.)

I realize that not everyone has the time to read a 570 page book. I read a few pages a day in several places in India, and in trains and it took me a long time to finish the book. If you are really pressed for time, you should still consider borrowing the book from your library and read just the chapter titled ‘Faultline.’

In this very skillfully written chapter, Friedman has us angry at the Palestinians for the ways in which they make Israelis' lives uncomfortable, and a couple of pages later, we are fuming about the way the Israelis treat the Palestinians. Throughout the chapter, Friedman does this over and over, and we are disabused of our ideas that any simple solution would work and we realize how complex and layered the problem is.

For those who want to learn about the region, I highly recommend this book.

Likable Things About Travel in Israel

1. The nugget-sized country means that most intra-city travel is not much more than 2 hours. (Surprisingly, most buses took less time than what the schedule showed.)
2. Good public transportation meant that we could do the day trips ourselves, instead of depending on Travel Agencies.
   
3. The fact that they print out a whole week’s bus schedule when you ask for the next bus. (Very useful to plan day trips)
4. Tel Aviv’s all-day bus pass (Hofshi Yomi) which is just about the price of one round-trip ticket. (Why don’t Jerusalem and Haifa have this?)
5. Ubiquitous falafel stands for pita sandwiches on the go
6. Kosher restaurants that won’t mix milk and meat in the same dish – great for us lacto-vegetarians

Israeli Strudel

Sometimes, while traveling around, you get to pick up some neat trivia. While in Israel, I learned about the ‘Strudel.’

Back around 1890, Hebrew wasn’t a common spoken language. Like Latin or Sanskrit, there were many who knew it, but it wasn’t spoken daily. Ben Yehuda, born in the Russian empire who moved to (then) Palestine decided that the diaspora needed a common language and that it would be Hebrew.

For a language to flourish, it has to quickly adapt and assimilate many new words. And since there was no word for the symbol ‘@’ the Israelis decided to call it the Strudel, because it looked like their pastry.

Self-Parody Israel style

As soon as you land in Israel, you can pick up the palpable undercurrent of tension in the air. In all the young army people toting heavy rifles, in the ubiquitous metal detectors and in the unceasing questioning wherever we went. It took me a couple of days to learn to move that into the background and focus on the many other aspects that Israel had to offer.

So, in light of all this no-jokes-allowed backdrop, it was particularly enjoyable to see the T-Shirts on sale at Jerusalem. The Israelis seemed to poking fun at themselves a bit.

“MY JOB IS SO SECRET, I DON”T EVEN KNOW WHAT I AM DOING”

And

“ISRAEL – UZI DOES IT.” The army recruits are required to carry their rifles at all times, so you see these Uzi rifles all over.

And finally, knowing that the US supports Israel every year to the tune of $3 Billion in economic aid:
“AMERICA DON’T WORRY. ISRAEL IS BEHIND YOU.”