Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East
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A definitive history of Lebanon, from one of the region’s most celebrated and controversial journalists The Barnes & Noble Review . . . Hirst's pretending that it is difficult to determine the winner of the 2008-2009 war between Israel and Hamas is both obtuse and callous. The author might be forgiven his starry-eyed view of Hezbollah's performance in the 2006 war, as even Israeli military analysts rated it impressive. But Hamas managed no such feat in its confrontation with the Israeli army. Whereas Hezbollah's battlefield successes overshadowed the terrible suffering of Lebanese civilians -- Shiites most of all -- Israel's rout of Hamas threw the plight of ordinary Gazans into stark relief. To claim, as Hirst does, that it remains unclear who won because Israel didn't achieve all its objectives is to obscure the salient fact that the Palestinian civilians of Gaza lost, and that they continue to suffer terribly as a result of the Israeli-Egyptian embargo. Journalists who write books about political hot spots tend to sensationalize, so it's no surprise that both Hirst and Smith (The Strong Horse) conclude with a hyperbolic flourish. Hirst warns that if another war flares up between Israel and Hezbollah, "other members of the Islamo-nationalist camp might join in: Hamas; Syria; and even, most formidably, the rising regional hegemon and Israeli-American bête noire, the ayatollahs' Iran. Together, they would wage a Hizbollah-style 'missile war' writ large."
