This is a charming story for older children depicting the life of an American missionary family in Lebanon. Although some of the events may be fictitious, the children, the old house, and the village of Shemlan are all real, as are details like the oak tree with the concrete-filled hollow, the vineyard terraces, the missing stair railing, the fossils, Slanty Rocks, and quartz-rich Crystal Mountain itself. Set in the early part of this (20th) century, the author describes the childhood adventures of herself and of her siblings with village residents and in the surrounding hills. The nostalgic feeling is reinforced by delightful illustrations by Ernest H. Shepard of Winnie-the-Pooh fame. It is sad to note that the house, built by a feudal lord in the 1860s, was severely damaged during the war in the 1980s, and many of the trees were cut.

Here is a true and engaging story that goes to the heart of a
bloody feud unresolved since 1947. "Cursed is the Peacemaker" is
the go-to book for the historical drama of what it took to
negotiate that brief shining moment when there was-- as close as
it gets-- to a cease-fire between Israelis vs. Palestinians and
others in the Arab world.

Author John Boykin (a former editor at Stanford Magazine)
recounts the gripping story through the eyes and viewpoint of
Philip Habib, Reagan's Special Envoy charged with the enormous
task of staunching the bloodshed and destruction in Beirut in
1982...in 1947 and left with an unfulfilled United Nations mandate that
was to have been, like Israel, the provision for their homeland,
some Palestinians relocated to West Beirut where Palestinian
leaders carried on the battle against Israel, which retaliated.
In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and laid siege to Beirut to
destroy the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) once and
for all. The PLO is the umbrella of organizations that leads the
Palestinian diaspora.

President Reagan gave Habib, the Brooklyn-born son of Lebanese
immigrants, the task of talking to the warring sides and
persuading them to make some changes. Everything from vitally
important matters down to the price of Israeli pickles was thrown
on the table and it was up to Habib to sort it out. He convinced
the Israelis to stop shooting long enough for thousands of
Palestinian guerrillas to sail from the Mediterranean port city
under the watchful eyes of a multi-national force of 800 U.S.
Marines, 900 French and 500 Italian soldiers. This was no easy
feat. Habib persuaded the Palestinians to leave their families
behind in the West Beirut refugee areas of Sabra and Shatila with
their safety guaranteed by the multi-national force and the word
of Ariel Sharon.

This very readable story explains how imperfectly Habib
accomplished his task and yet how Habib's work stands as the
blueprint for the diplomacy that a person of iron will and
stature will need if ever there is to be a negotiated end to
this war that rips at the heartland of Christian, Jewish and
Muslim civilizations.

Boykin recounts the history in an engaging way and he's careful
not to assert his own opinions. The viewpoints he presses are
those that he documents were those of Habib, the talented, hard-
working, often gruff U.S. negotiator.

The book's completeness is a tribute to Boykin's persistence in
using, among other resources, the Freedom Of Information Act,

archives at Georgetown University's Foreign Affairs Oral History
Program, and extensive interviews with Habib's peers, his bosses
and underlings to piece together this important story about a
critical juncture in the life of an historical figure who
steadfastly refused to talk to reporters during negotiations.

Boykin provides the listening post for readers to "overhear" the
blunt conversations between Habib and the Marine Colonel James
Mead whom Habib came to rely upon to keep warring parties apart.
But Mead was no patsy. While he came to grudgingly respect Habib,
he was protective of those in his command. Boykin lays out the
negotiating positions of the various sides, noting that the
intransigence, the absolutist positions by Israel and Syria were
non starters.

Boykin conducted interviews with dozens of well-known diplomatic
players who knew Habib well-- everyone from Nobel Laureate Oscar
Sanchez Arias to Henry Kissinger (who knew Habib from his days
negotiating an end to the U.S. war in Viet Nam).

It can safely be said that there can be no peace in the Middle
East until there is a measure of justice for the massacre at
Sabra and Shatila, refugee camps that resemble acres of the
crowded tenement buildings that dot working class areas of New
York City. In these camps, Christian Phalangists went door to
door wantonly murdering more than 800 Palestinians while Israeli
soldiers stood guard seeing to it that no Palestinian could
escape. Details of what led to the massacre, for which even the
Israelis hold Ariel Sharon culpable, are of historical
importance.

Boykin describes what went on behind the scenes just before the
massacre of Palestinians on September 16-18, 1982. It was the
tragedy Habib had labored all summer to prevent and in the end,
he didn't, in part because Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger
withdrew the Marines who were charged with keeping the warring
parties apart. When the Marines left, the French and Italians
also left Beirut. That their families would be protected was the
key to persuading the Palestinians to lay down their guns and
leave Beirut. That Ariel Sharon broke his word and allowed his
soldiers to stand guard while mass murder was committed can not
be glossed over, especially since two decades later, Sharon
became Israel's elected leader.

This story is a microcosm for what has gone wrong in the Middle
East. If peace is to come to the region, this story may contain
kernels of the reconstructed blueprint for what, along with iron will, is needed to find a peaceful solution.

It is somewhat hard to describe this book in a few sentences. Even though mostly fiction, the main character plays an uncanny resemblance to the author himself. Something that is especially noticeable if you ever read Caputo's Autobiography "Means of Escape." The picture this book paints of Beirut is frighteningly realistic, something that even non-fiction books written about the War fail to achieve. Likewise, the portrayal of a photojournalist, one who is asked to risk his life "to beat AP by 5 min." is superb by any account. Anyone who is familiar with Caputo's literary work knows how good this man is at molding and developing complex, intelligent, and memorable characters. Delcorso's Gallery is a prime example of this. I urge anyone who at the least is curious about what happened in Beirut to read this novel in addition to the history books out there. I do not know if history will repeat itself somewhere else in the future, but it is important to be aware.

Faisal Juma.

Lossing is directly responsible for the kindly view that the Shakers came to have in the eyes of America. This was the original article along with his sketches and illustrations which were finished out in water color before the wood engravers went to work. Absolutely astonishing details.

Ranstorp's work elucidates the key nature of the Lebanese Hizballah, their doctrine, tactics, political objectives, and ties to their state-sponsor Iran. If you want to understand what the future may hold for Lebanon, and the real prospects for a peace between Israel-Syria/ Israel-Lebanon, this book is a must read.

I am DESPERATELY trying to get hold of the author. Does anybody out there have any information for me PLEASE?

It makes me thinking of women's future...in the other word humanity's future....like her other books....Specially in the middle-east.... I started to read her books very early, when i was 13 and now I'm 29...She always help me feel that I'm not lonely in this world. Ifeel a common sense.

Despite the fact that the two authors are journalists, the book is accurate and credible enough to be used as academic reference. The book covers mainly the Israeli point of view, but its scope is wide and provides insight into the intricate workings and components of the Lebanese-Israeli-Palestinian interactions, as well as the internal aspects of Lebanese and Israeli politics relevant to the issues discussed. The book provides a most interesting and readable coverage of the Israeli military operation, and the behind the scenes planning and intrigue of this operation. Notable is the coverage of the deception used by the Israeli Minister of Defense, Ariel Sharon and Chief of Staff, Rafael Eitan in order to pull the wool over the eyes of the Israeli Prime Minister, Knesset and public. Quite astounding, considering the fact that these events took place in a democratic country. This book is a must for anyone who seeks to understand or research the subject.

In the winter of 1999, I was with a friend in one of Sodeco Square's movie theaters, watching "The Confession," starring Ben Kingsley and Alec Baldwin. When the movie was over, we left disappointed because of the massacre perpetrated by the censors against the movie. And we were not alone. Collective sighs could be heard from the audience every time an edited-out scene was announced by the appalling noise that accompanies the cut. My friend and I could not understand why some scenes were taken out. The movie was about a man (Kingsley) who killed a doctor and a nurse in revenge for their causing of his only son's death through negligence. Then he turned himself in and insisted on pleading guilty even if that led to his exe-cution. We did not expect from the context that the edited-out scenes were of the sexual nature that the censors believe we are too immature to see.
But when I saw the same movie on a satellite movie channel, I no-ticed that the scenes in question included quotes from the Torah by Kingsley to his attorney (Baldwin), then to the judges and jury, to explain why his love for his only son was a part of his duties as a re-ligious Jew. Then I said to myself: "Is the Torah banned here, though it is recognized as sacred by both Christians and Muslims?" I even thought of running to the nearest big bookshop to see if the Old Testament is still available in "this land of freedom of belief."
Since then, Lebanese censors have stripped all films of any scenes related to Jews or Judaism. I do not mean "only" the scenes that may draw the sympathy of viewers for the victims of the Holocaust. But even if I accept, for the sake of argument, that cutting out scenes related to the Holocaust can be somehow justified, why have Jews and their religion become a taboo? I have the right to ask this question in Lebanon because in this country Judaism is one of the 18 officially recognized sects. Ironically, Sodeco Square is very near to the Jewish cemetery, which have been rehabilitated by the re-maining Lebanese Jews a few years ago, as newspapers reported. So what is our problem with the Jews of Lebanon? How many of them are still among us, and have the others left Lebanon for the West of for Israel, like so many other Jews in the Arab World after 1948?
The answers to these questions and others can be found in Kirsten Schulze's good book, "The Jews of Lebanon: Between Coexistence and Conflict", which appeared in London a few weeks ago. The book tells the story of Lebanon's Jews since the beginning of history, but it emphasizes the period between the arrival of Allied troops to the Near East in 1918 and the launching of the reconstruction process in postwar Lebanon in the mid-1990s, when leftist MP Najah Wakim criticized Prime Minister Rafik Hariri for allowing Jews to buy shares in Solidere, the company in charge of the process. Schulze argues that Lebanon's Jews were different from their co-religionists in other Arab countries because of their heartfelt identification with their fellow Lebanese In other words, they were Arabized and Leventine. Lebanese Jews believed in Lebanon as a permanent country for them and sympathized with Israel in a religious sense only. Interestingly, those who had left during the two civil wars of 1958 and 1975, feeling that the Lebanon of religious tolerance and cultural pluralism had ceased to exist, actually went to Europe and the Americas instead of to Israel. Excerpts from their rabbis' speeches on Jewish religious holidays, which were attended by clerics and politicians of all Lebanese sects, contain same calls for national unity that are still repeated in similar speeches today by current political and religious leaders.
Lebanon's Jewry had a special affinity for France, whose Jewish Alli-ance schools did their best to propagate French language and cul-ture among Jews in the Arab World. Lebanese Jews had a newspaper in Arabic called al-Alam al-Israeli (The Israeli World), which changed its name to al-Salam (Peace) after the establishment of Israel. According to Schulze, while the numbers of Jews in other Arab countries were decreasing in the 1940s, the number of Lebanese Jews doubled to 14,000. Syrian and Iraqi Jews, fleeing the fallout of the conflict in Palestine, came to this oasis of freedom, and were welcomed by the Lebanese authorities, thought they were not given the Lebanese citizenship. Wadi Abu Jamil, or "the Jewish Street," was no ghetto; it was just a Jewish neighborhood, as there were neighborhoods for Sunnis, Shiites, Orthodox Greeks, Syriacs, etc. This is the standard neighborhood demography of any Leventine city. Many Lebanese Jews were economically prosperous, and the wealthiest left the neighborhood to more classy areas, like Ras Beirut and Qantari. Owners of real estate in Wadi Abu Jamil were granted shares in return for their property appropriated by Solidere, similar to their Muslim and Christian compatriots who were real estate owners in downtown.
Almost each family had two homes: one for the winter in Beirut or Sidon and another for the summer in Bhamdoun and Aley. There were 14 synagogues. News about the few Lebanese Jews who went to Israel did not encourage other Jews to follow in their footsteps. Work in kibbutzim was tedious, while services or electricity, water and telephone were poor, and leisure time non-existent. While most were fluent in Arabic and French, their weakness in Hebrew disap-pointed the Zionists in Palestine. Jewish life was not always easy in Lebanon, jeopardized at different times by the call of some MPs to fire Jewish officers from the army, the campaign of Lebanese busi-nessman and MP Emile Boustany against Lebanon's Jewry for reasons related to business competition, and the call of MP Nazem Qaderi for compensating Palestinian refugees with Lebanese Jewish money. Nevertheless, Lebanese Jews continued to develop their cultural, educational and religious institutions here after 1948. Lebanese Jews had famous doctors, like neurologist and Community Council President Joseph Attieh, who represented Lebanon in many international medical conferences in the 1950s and 1960s. They also had famous journalists, bankers and merchants. Politically, they took a neutral stance, though they voted for Joseph Chader, the Ka-taeb's MP, in return for the protection offered by the party, along-side Lebanese policemen and soldiers, to Jewish citizens and their belongings during the crises of 1948, 1958, 1967 and 1975.
The exodus of Lebanese Jews started only when coexistence was shaken in 1958 then destroyed in 1975. They did not leave because they were persecuted by locals or terrorized by Zionist agents as the case was in other Arab countries. One of the 100 Jews still left here says he did not leave his country because "the lifestyle found here cannot be found anywhere else in the world."
The book, despite some faults - like its irregular English and its fail-ure to elaborate on interesting events, is informative. It is based on many good references, documents and interviews. And it sheds light on a period of tolerance in Lebanon that no other Arab country knew. In Lebanon's heyday, the country's Muslims chose it over Arab unity, its Christians over European protection, and its Jews over "the Promised Land." Maybe reviving tolerance - starting, per-haps, with movies - can help this country regain a role it lost. By that I mean not the role of the regional financial hub, as some peo-ple still unrealistically dream, but rather that nobler role as an oasis of freedom and a land of opportunity for all its hardworking inhabi-tants.

This book has everything anyone would need to travel to or study Lebanon. Just unbelievable.