From Beirut to Jerusalem

What Hacker News says

1. sharadovAug 2020
   You obviously need an education on the Middle East, I suggest you read this book "From Beirut to Jerusalem" by Thomas Friedman, and watch the movie "Persepolis". The Roman Empire existed thousands of years back, the Iranian evolution happened in 78-79, and the after affects are still in play.
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2. gautamnarulaJul 2013
   Friedman is a skilled writer, but most of the backlash is from him taking well established ideas and presenting them as if he discovered them. For instance, his books "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" and "The World is Flat" are basically just standard treatises on globalization, but reading them you'd think Friedman has done years of painstaking research to uncover this new, previously unheard of trend.

   Not all Friedman books are like that. "From Beirut to Jerusalem" was excellent and should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to get a better grasp of the conflicts in the middle east.

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3. rokhayakebeOct 2009
   The world is flat..

   From Beirut to Jerusalem (not done yet).

   Both from Thomas Friedman.

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4. wolverine876Jan 2024
   > no budget for reporters that can only afford intern level experience glorified bloggers

   (Edit: apparently I didn't quite understand the parent; see dylan604's comment below.)

   Do you mean the NY Times? They have a large budget and if you read the bios of their reporters and opinion writers, you will see they have extensive experience, the top of their field.

   Edit: As a random selection, here's the first name on the top headline: https://www.nytimes.com/by/joe-rennison

   I have been a financial journalist for more than a decade. I began my career at a magazine called Risk, digging into the details of legislation introduced after the 2008 financial crisis, from rules around how much capital banks should hold to changes in the market for derivatives that had helped inflate the credit bubble that led to the Great Recession. I moved to The Financial Times in 2015 to cover the more complex corners of markets, such as sliced and diced structured bonds, before branching out to write about interest rates, debt and the stock market. I left the FT as the paper’s deputy U.S. markets editor and joined The Times in 2022.

   I graduated in 2010 with a degree in philosophy, logic and scientific method from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

   Here's the currently top listed opinion author: https://www.nytimes.com/by/thomas-l-friedman

   Thomas L. Friedman became the paper’s foreign affairs Opinion columnist in 1995. He joined the paper in 1981, after which he served as the Beirut bureau chief in 1982, Jerusalem bureau chief in 1984, in Washington as the diplomatic correspondent in 1989 and later the White House correspondent and economic correspondent.

   Mr. Friedman was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Lebanon) and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Israel). He also won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

   Mr. Friedman is the author of “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which won the National Book Award in 1989. He has written several other books, including “Hot, Flat and Crowded,” an international best seller.

   Born in Minneapolis, Mr. Friedman received a B.A. in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University in 1975. In 1978 he received a master’s in modern Middle East studies from Oxford. His column appears every Sunday and Wednesday.

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5. selfportraitMar 2022
   “The Zionist Jews who founded Israel had three basic objectives in mind when they thought about the kind of state they wanted to build, Israeli political scientist Areyh Naor liked to tell me: They wanted to create a Jewish state, a democratic state, and a state that would be located in the historical homeland of the Jewish people—the land of Israel—which technically included all of Palestine from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, and even some areas beyond, in what is today Jordan.”

   “Ben-Gurion essentially said in effect to his nation: ‘In this world we can only have two out of three of our objectives. We are being offered a chance for a Jewish state and a democratic state, but in only part of the land of Israel. We could hold out for all the land of Israel, but if we did that we might lose everything. If we have to compromise on our objectives, let it be on obtaining all the land of Israel. We will settle now for half a loaf, and dream about the rest later.’”

   “Then came June 1967. Israel, in the course of the Six-Day War, occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, extending, in the process, Jewish control over virtually all the historical land of Israel originally sought by Zionism. From that moment on, Israelis again faced the monumental question: What kind of nation do we want to be? Once again, it could only have two out of three of its objectives. One choice was to keep all the land of Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and to remain a Jewish state, but this could be done only by curtailing Israeli democracy. The only way Israel could permanently control the Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be by physically suppressing them and ensuring that they were never given political rights.”

   From Beirut to Jerusalem, Thomas L. Friedman

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6. d0gsbodyMay 2013
   Hah!

   When i was younger and trying to educate myself into a higher class, I read a couple of his books. The only good one was From Beirut to Jerusalem, which was published in 1989. Everything after that was just crappy analogies.

   I really don't understand how an "expert" in Middle East affairs could think that the USA going to war in Iraq was a good idea.

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