Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (Nation Books)

With the Israeli-Palestinian crisis reaching wartime levels, where is the latest confrontation between these two old foes leading? Robert Fisk s explosive Pity the Nation recounts Sharon and Arafat s first deadly encounter in Lebanon in the early 1980s and explains why the Israel–Palestine relationship seems so intractable. A remarkable combination of war reporting and analysis by an author who has witnessed the carnage of Beirut for twenty-five years, Fisk, the first journalist to whom bin Laden announced his jihad against the U.S., is one of the world s most fearless and honored foreign correspondents. He spares no one in this saga of the civil war and subsequent Israeli invasion: the PLO, whose thuggish behavior alienated most Lebanese; the various Lebanese factions, whose appalling brutality spared no one; the Syrians, who supported first the Christians and then the Muslims in their attempt to control Lebanon; and the Israelis, who tried to install their own puppets and, with their 1982 invasion, committed massive war crimes of their own. It includes a moving finale that recounts the travails of Fisk s friend Terry Anderson who was kidnapped by Hezbollah and spent 2,454 days in captivity. Fully updated to include the Israeli withdrawl from south Lebanon and Ariel Sharon s electoral victory over Ehud Barak, this edition has sixty pages of new material and a new preface. "Robert Fisk s enormous book about Lebanon s desperate travails is one of the most distinguished in recent times."—Edward Said