BLAMING ISRAEL

Thomas Friedman’s “From Beirut to Jerusalem” (Book Review, July 16) displays a degree of intellectual dishonesty that is appalling to read from a reporter who is credited with much expertise in dealing with a subject as complex and argumentative as the Middle East.

What Friedman fails to make abundantly clear is the PLO’s desire to create a “state within a state” in Lebanon and to establish international terrorist camps throughout that country, and the great indifference of the West to the suffering and decimation of the Lebanese Christian population due to PLO-Syrian occupation. Friedman tends to gloss over this fact, but when the Israeli army advanced north toward Beirut, the Christian and Shiite villages along the way greeted the Israeli soldiers with the traditional welcoming custom of bread and salt, in scenes reminiscent of American soldiers being joyously greeted in Belgium and Holland during the Liberation March in 1944. Maybe Friedman, hunkered down in his apartment during the siege of Beirut, was unable to witness this, but there is plenty of documentation around to verify it if he wanted to do so.

Friedman also writes: “I took Sabra and Chatilla as a blot on Israel and the Jewish people.” C’mon, Friedman, get real. Those vengeful Falangists who marched into the camps following the death of Bashir Gemayel could not have charity and forgiveness on their minds after seven years of fratricidal civil war. The only blame that can be placed on Israel, or Gen. Sharon, for that matter for the massacre (and yes, it was a massacre) is the failure to grasp the deep-rooted anger and hatred that the Christians of Lebanon felt toward their Muslim neighbors. It may be of interest to note here that Israeli attitudes toward the Phalange cooled perceptively after Sabra and Chatilla.

In placing considerable blame on Israeli leaders such as Begin, Sharon, and yes, Meir Kahane, and glossing over the excesses of Arafat and the Islamic fundamentalists, Friedman’s book falls well short of a good, balanced overview of why the Middle East is what it is.

ALAN ROCKMAN

UPLAND