Rating: 
Summary: Captivating, Fairly Balanced
Review: Thomas Friedman has truly done a wonderful job with this book. The book is split into two distinct sections, Beirut and Jerusalem. In the Beirut section, he writes about the complex history behind the civil war in Lebanon in the 1980's. He describes the key political figures in human terms you can relate to. He also writes about his own experience in Beirut which really added to the sense of reality of the book.The Jerusalem section, which I preferred, was a fascinating account and analysis of the Palestinian / Israeli conflict. He delves into the history behind the conflict and in my opinion he is able to analyze the conflict in a very real and practical manner. The book reads like a novel, with a lot of personal accounts and interviews. This book has got me hooked on reading more about the conflict and understanding the complex politics and history behind it. I would recommend this book for anyone who is interested in Middle East politics. This book is ideal for "beginners" and politicians alike. In summary, this book is captivating; it contains a balanced and practical analysis of the conflict. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Rating: 
Summary: A Fair, Firsthand Account from the Middle East
Review: I had previously read Friedman's "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" and was basically disappointed with that book. "From Beirut to Jerusalem", his first and more widely acclaimed, is much better. I am on the opposite end of the spectrum as Friedman, politically, so I was not expecting to agree with him on every view and suggestion for solution that he describes in this book, but his writing was entertaining, his stories amazing, and his opinions very fair to both sides. The book begins with Friedman's description of life in the middle of the Lebanese civil war. Friedman lived in the heart of Beirut when it was the worst place anyone could be at the time. His firsthand stories of bombings, murders, and simple terrorism, range from unimaginably scary to darkly humorous. Eventually Friedman and his wife move from Beirut to Jerusalem, where the second half of the book begins. This second part is much more applicable to today's news and debates since it is from an area in the middle of daily battles, whereas Lebanon's civil war has died down. Friedman, although Jewish, has many misgivings about Israeli actions in their conflicts of the past several decades. But unlike most of his workmates and friends at the New York Times, Friedman is also not afraid to tell the whole truth when detailing Arab atrocities. Friedman's account of Hafez al-Asad's massacre of his own people in the town of Hama, Syria, is one that should be read by every Westerner -- especially those on the left who think the Jews, aided by America, simply "stole" a small plot of Arab land from an otherwise friendly group of people. This book won many awards and is very unique in that it is a wide-ranging report from the world's greatest newspaper's leading foreign affairs writer. Many may dislike Friedman for his controversial views, (i.e. saying the famous Elian/machine gun picture brought joy to his heart), but in "From Beirut to Jerusalem", he is very honest and comes as close to playing the middle ground as is possible in a dispute that seems to have no middle, and will likely never end.
Rating: 
Summary: Irresponsible history - Should be able to give it no stars
Review: I know this is a popular book. When I lecture on the Middle East, everyone seems to have read it. There are some good parts -- such as the author's description of his personal experience in Lebanon. It's his historical analysis that's the problem. He argues at one point that you can understand Hafez Assad's seige of Hama (February 1982) by understanding the Umayyid Dynasty (beginning in the 8th century). This is classic Western bias. No one would say you could understand (insert modern Western massacre here, say Mai Lai) by understanding (insert ancient Western history here, say the Crusades). And yet Friedman is basically saying that Arabs haven't changed in a millenia. While this is obviously not true, (and couldn't possibly be true of anyone) it reveals an underlying and subtle racism -- or just abject stupidity. There are plenty of better books, and this shows me that being an easy read will beat being responsible any day.
Rating:
Summary: The way the Middle East was
Review: Although Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem is currently enjoying a new wave of popularity, the potential reader should know that this is very distinctly a story about the Middle East in the 1980s, and offers but the merest foreshadowing of current developments in the Arab-Israeli conflict. That being said, Friedman's work still offers a relatively good account of the roots of the conflict (explaining, for instance, how Palestinians who actually seemed on their way to assimilating into Israeli society instead dramatically rejected it with the 1987 intifada). The author's sensitive rendition of the Lebanese civil war in the first half of this work is possibly the highlight of the book. Friedman's kinetic (and sometimes glib) writing style is an advantage insofar as it leads him to cover all the bases -- giving "equal time" to describing both increasing secularization and countervailing religious movements in modern Israel. Even though Friedman is definitely in the "peace" camp, he is relatively fair to those who aren't. The book's disadvantage is that a sophisticated analysis of Israeli motives is not matched by a similarly insightful analysis of Palestinian desires -- and this leads the author to overstate the prospects for peace. The main stumbling blocks of the "peace process" today -- the fanatical devotion of the suicide bombers on the one hand and Arafat's unwillingness to crush the radicals who enjoy broad support in the West Bank and Gaza on the other -- are mentioned as afterthoughts in Friedman's concluding chapter. In the end, Friedman makes the strongest potential argument for undertaking a peace process, one that is seldom mentioned in the Western media -- that idea that "disgorging" the Arab territories would enable Israel to be more authentically Jewish, forestalling a Palestinian population boom that would eventually overwhelm Israel if continued under the status quo. Friedman identified self-interested motivations on both sides for a Palestinian state. Over ten years later, it is not clear that a West Bank/Gaza state is really what the Palestinians are after. If it is was, why all the bombs right after the peace process began? What would have possessed Arafat to reject full statehood at Camp David last year? The answer probably lies in the vain hope that Arabs can eventually overwhelm Israel from within -- creating a state instead of Israel, not a state beside Israel. The Middle East is indeed a far more dangerous place than Friedman even realized back then.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: This is an extremely well written book about the Middle East conflict. The book is divided into two main sections, Beirut, and Jerusalem. The Beirut section is about the Lebanese civil war -- Friedman discusses everything from the history of the war, to the different factions of Lebanese society, to why and how the U.S. became involved. His analyses are generally on-target, and his personal stories about living in Beirut as a correspondent during the war make the section especially engaging. The Jerusalem section begins with a couple of chapters about Jewish culture and the origins of Israel; then goes with great depth into the history and analysis of the Palestinian - Israeli conflict. Reading this book sparked in me an interest in the affairs of the Middle East. It also gave me the background necessary to delve further into the topic and understand the history behind the current headlines on the region Highly reccomended
Rating:
Summary: The Ultimate Guide to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Review: Navigating through the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is hard enough; but doing so whilst remaining neutral and objective is almost impossible. Yet this is precisely what "From Beirut to Jerusalem" does: it takes a very thorough and candid look at the recent history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a fair and balanced view. Thomas Friedman, of the New York Times, narrates his almost decade-long adventure of reporting the Middle East, first in Beirut and then in Jerusalem. The product is an elegant and well-written book that combines his journalistic attention to precision, detail, and anecdotes with his historian's drive for proving context, perspective, and analysis. "From Beirut to Jerusalem" contains a great deal of adventure (who says reporters can't live James Bond-like lives?). But in the end, what makes this a great book is its ability to tell the story of the Middle East in the 1980s, while dissecting the important political and historical forces that define the geopolitical environment of the conflict. Written for the layman and expert alike, this is surely one of the best books on the Middle East.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: An interesting chronology and analysis of a journalist's decade long stay in Lebanon and Jerusalem. I learned a lot about the two countries and the issues that divide them. Friedman explained many complex issues with interesting analogies and I was impressed with his analysis of the true problems. A negative aspect of the book was that I often felt he was reporting the positions of the male elite and didn't truly capture the opinions and lifestyle for the majority of Israeli and Lebanese residents.
Rating:
Summary: A Frightening Firsthand Of The Middle East Conflict
Review: Both a personal memoir and treatise on the Middle Eastern conflict, From Beirut To Jerusalem manages to excel in both areas. Thomas L. Friedman writes of his years as a reporter in Beirut and Jerusalem (obviously), and the reader walks these streets along with him as he interviews and lives among both leaders and common people. In Beirut, the chaos and lawlessness of daily life is frightening, more scary than any horror novel. In Jerusalem, we see from Friedman's eyes the tension of the Palestinian situation and its effects on both Arabs and Jews. What struck me the most, and impressed me, was Friedman's evenhandedness in his observations. He was never quick to place blame. I found this book to be an informative treatise on the situation in the Middle East, the best on the subject I have read.
Rating: 
Summary: objective reporting only gets you so far
Review: There is a strain of thought among journalists, to which Friedman unfortuantely succumbs, which says that one must at all costs be objective. While that practice is instructive and helpful when reporting in a newspaper (this is why Daniel Pearl's murder was so heinous) it is of little use in a memoir. One wishes that Friedman would take a stand, on any person and any issue about which he writes. Unfortunately, that is not this book, so we are treated to vague, noncommittal descriptions of such heinous individuals as Arafat and Saddam Hussein. These are descriptions devoid of context or judgment. Friedman's resolute refusal to engage in the moral subtleties of the Middle East's contentious territorial fights is at once alarming and banal. The principle of objectivity to which Friedman hews so closely is of limited use, and in a book like this, one hopes for more depth than the mere attempt to treat Palestinians as if they were Israelis, or to treat Kurds as if they were members of the Ba'ath party. In short, Friedman espouses the morally relativistic multiculturalism that has become de rigeur among intlelectual liberals in the United States: judge no one, offend no one, and surely, don't morally indict the violent actions of those whose actions may be 'justified' under the rubric of 'oppression.' His is a venal and insidious view of the Middle East conflict because he refuses to judge, analyze, or critique its state of affairs. Rather, he merely wants to report. What a shame.
Rating:
Summary: It was important to feel that Israel was right
Review: In the 1980's Friedman could not feel that the Israeli incursion into Lebanon was sound policy. He wrote the articles for THE NEW YORK TIMES detailing the massacres in Palestinian camps by the Phalangist forces. Likud blamed Sharon's unsuccessful war in Lebanon on the Labor Party. In Lebanon Amin Gemayel tried to exclude the Shiites and Druse leaders. Gemayel did not foster national reconciliation. The democracy Lebanon had in the past was a sectarian balance of power. Lebanon still has more books published than other countries in the Arab world and still has a freer press. Both the Labor and Likud parties in Israel fell in love with the ancient biblical lands acquired in 1967. After Labor was ousted the settlements grew. After Begin came to power in 1977 and after the Camp David Accords in 1978 it was obvious that he could not annex the West Bank. A pragmatic policy was pursued. David Ben Gurion had realized his first consituency was the facts, the second one his people. In contrast, Peres, Rabin, and Shamir were weak leaders. They were technocrats. By the late 1980's the author believes that Israel and its leaders were afflicted with symbiotic paralysis. The Zionist revolution was meant to liberate. Because of the holocaust, Israelis have the sense of living on borrowed time. In the 1950's the holocaust was a secret shame. The heroic people were the Zionists. This changed after the Eichmann trial in 1961. Survivors and victims were no longer seen as sheep led to the slaughter. Awareness was heightened in 1967. The 1973 war brought an even heavier burden. Israelis live in a very dynamic state. An observer believes that what really holds Israel together is a kind of tribal security. About half of the Israelis are unobservant. The question of Palestine went into remission in the years between 1948 and 1967. Palestinian identity was born after 1967. Previously many inhabitants of Gaza took on Egyptian attributes and West Bank residents even had the possibility of becoming Jordanian citizens. Palestinians suffered an identity bind after 1967. Some Israelis do not want to be colonizers. Jewish settlers find their sense of home in history, in the Bible. Others rarely visit the occupied territories. In 1985 Israel revived the British Mandate policy of administrative detention. Defense lawyers were not allowed to see the evidence. Defense was a mockery. There was a mask of law--military courts. The Shin Bet, the security forces, used interrogation and confession to avoid burdening the court system. Interrogators chose to hide the use of physical pressure and lie to the Court. Events between Palestinians and Israelis are often seen as acts of war. The author believes the Israelis engage in moral double book keeping. The Intifada, starting in 1987, was triggered by the death of a Palestinaian boy. The use of stones consituted massive nonlethal civil disobedience. Israel has a high profile in the Western news media. News from Israel is intuitively familiar and relevant to the Western ear. Modern Israel is both unsettling and exciting to the Christian world. Israel is expected to be a yardstick of morality and a receptacle of hope. The Palestinians have recieved more attention than any other refugee community.
| 
