The War's Other Side

Israel Defense Force soldier Yariv Mozer made a film, titled "My First War," based on his experiences during the 2006 Lebanon war. He uses footage that he shot during the war:

"He videotaped as his fellow troops scurried for cover from incoming fire, as ambulances bearing the wounded raced to the hospital, and as disenchantment grew over a misguided battle plan that left the soldiers feeling, as one tells Mozer's camera, like 'somebody fooled us.'

...

Instead, Mozer and his fellow troops received conflicting orders, inadequate protections and an inscrutable strategy. The goal was to stop the rockets, but Hezbollah's Katyushas continued to streak across the sky throughout the war's 33 days. Soldiers slept in the open in orchards that could turn at a moment's notice into fields of fire. Units were ordered into Lebanon, then hastily pulled back when they encountered the enemy."

The film does have its critics. As the Washington Post article points out, there is something inherently limited in any war film that restricts its message to something similar to "Oh, the humanity!" Of course, war is tragic. But that simple trope does not provide any alternatives to another war. Israel and Hezbollah are currently preparing as if another round is inevitable, and Mozer's film is unlikely to do anything to change that reality.

Nevertheless, I'd still like to see it. Is this something that would be legal to show in Lebanon? Would the censors be willing to look in the other direction because of the film's anti-war slant?

Who Controls South Lebanon?

The folks over at Harvard University's Olin Institute for Middle Eastern Strategy want to know who rules South Lebanon. They even have a pretty map which delineates the positions and operational boundaries of each UNIFIL deployment, divided by country.

Despite looking like a governing force, I don't think there are any reliable indications that Hezbollah is losing its position of supremacy in the South. It is their country -- they just let UNIFIL and the Lebanese Army drive around. We are coming up on the two-year mark of the Lebanese Army's deployment to the South, and it is immensely disappointing that there hasn't been more progress in winning over the local population's trust and loyalty. It is a job that nobody, strangely, seems interested in accomplishing.

Anti-Viagra, anti-Israel

...the title pretty much sums up the politics of Egypt's often-bizarre Al-Ahram Weekly. This strange article warns of the looming threat that Viagra addiction poses to both Egypt's youth and its aged. "Fatal overdoses are not unheard of in Egypt," the author warns darkly.

I have only one complaint. How could the author have neglected to mention the connection between the Zionist entity's national colors, and the little, blue pill?

In Profile

Two very good profiles make for enjoyable Sunday reading: Rachel Cooke's profile of Robert Fisk in the Guardian, and Robert Worth's article on Syrian writer Khalid Khalifa's new book, "In Praise of Hatred," in the New York Times.

The Fisk article really is excellent, managing to describe what makes him at one time so admirable and at the other so infuriating. "'Have you read any Fisk?' he asks me on the telephone before I land in Beirut," Cooke writes, "a question that is insulting on so many levels." At the same time, Fisk comes across as intellectually curious, energetic, and courageous. Very well. These qualities are not necessarily contradictory. The same arrogance that can inspire somebody to write the only definitive history of the Lebanese civil war can, if given free reign, destroy good reporting.

The Khalifa article is not quite a profile -- perhaps it was pitched as a report on the Syrian censorship of "In Praise of Hatred" or a retrospective look at the violence between the Assad regime and the Muslim Brotherhood of the 1980s -- but Khalifa steals the show. Someone needs to write a profile of this guy. On why he started writing for television: “I needed a way to pay for alcohol."

At the same time, Khalifa has made his peace with making the compromises necessary in order to continue living in Syria. He is not an exile who comes out with all guns blazing against Syria's censorship of his work; he makes jokes about it, and even is a little peeved over Western moralizing over freedom of expression. How can Khalifa simultaneously possess the towering ambition to be a great author that Worth ascribes to him, and also make flippant jokes about the banning of the book which consumed 13 years of his life? That, at least, is the question I am left with. Maybe it will be answered in the next profile.

The Ivory Tower Crumbles

I wrote a largely pessimistic article on the prospects of Lebanon maintaining its reputation as one of the Middle East's educational hubs in the 21st century. My argument, essentially, is that the newly minted Western universities in the Gulf -- benefiting from a stable political environment and spectacular amounts of wealth -- will supersede institutions like AUB and LAU within a generation.

In fact, a first draft of the piece was even more pessimistic than the final version. The conclusion read something like (paraphrasing):

"Dean Reardon-Anderson credits 'an extraordinary amount of wealth, extraordinary vision, and extraordinary determination or power' for the expansion of the new Gulf universities. 'This combination does not exist everywhere,' he notes. He may as well have added: it does not exist in Lebanon."

Ouch. The center of the action for Western universities opening branches in the Gulf is in Qatar's capital of Doha. However, Dubai and Abu Dhabi have also sponsored new universities. Does the revelation that Dubai holds a massive amount of debt make me glad that we eventually went with a less bombastic conclusion? Well -- it makes me think, at least. In opinion journalism, as well as business, sometimes it is wise to hedge one's bets.

Poof

Muhammad Zouhair Al-Siddiq, one of the key witnesses in the Hariri assassination case, has apparently disappeared, notes Bernard Kouchner. Siddiq was apparently under house arrest in Paris. I suppose that the French prison system generally cajoles its inmates into staying with croissants and tea.

That said, the Siddiq disappearance points to a larger danger facing the Hariri investigation: there is no indication that the UN detectives are any closer at building a case against the assassins than they were two years ago. The utter blandness of the Bellemare report was not disappointing because it failed to give the March 14 forces some sort of confidence boost, but because sooner or later this information will find its way into a courtroom and will have to convince an nonpartisan panel of judges. Now, they have also lost a key witness. So it goes.

Sloppy Writing, Sloppy Thinking

In the pantheon of bland phrases, "a pox on both their houses" must occupy a prominent pedestal. With that in mind, I've been meaning to write about the mind-numbing nature of most Daily Star editorials for a while. And along comes this inevitable piece, accusing Lebanese politicians of being "obtuse," and I could not resist.

What does it say? Well, not much of anything. It stakes out the brave ground that Lebanese politicians should talk, and that they should compromise. It criticizes the "invincible stupidity," whatever that might be, of March 8 and March 14 pols. It asserts the gooey proposition that Lebanon's "irretrievably stubborn politicians [must] be made to understand that however gargantuan their egos, they are meaningless compared to the lives and livelihoods of more than 4 million people." It employs adjectives that do not quite mean what the author seems to believe they mean.

Substantively, I am annoyed by the assumption that all of Lebanon's problems were created by the individual stupidity of Lebanon's political class. It is almost as if the great and wise Lebanese people, whom the Daily Star dares not criticize, did not vote their representatives into office. It ignores that there are important differences between the rivals' vision of Lebanon's future which compromise cannot easily resolve, and that the continuation of the crisis is driven by this division.

Look, if the Daily Star wants to have a pro-opposition editorial page -- well, fine. If they want to offer the Siniora government qualified praise, great. But this sort of writing is worse than wrong. It is boring.

P.S: I am aware that comments are currently broken. My apologies. This was most likely caused by a group of spambots that have been tormenting the site, weighing down old posts with approximately 20,000 useless comments. Anyway, I'm working on getting the problem fixed. For now, if anyone has anything they want to add, feel free to send me an e-mail and I will be happy to post your messages in a new entry. Note: offer does not apply to spambots.