Word: lebanonization
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...years as a journalist in Lebanon and Israel taught Thomas L. Friedman two important lessons. "First, when it comes to discussing the Middle East, people go temporarily insane, so if you are planning to talk to an audience of more than two, you'd better have mastered the subject. Second, a Jew who wants to make a career working in or studying about the Middle East will always be a lonely man: he will never be fully accepted or trusted by the Arabs, and he will never be fully accepted or trusted by the Jews...
...last clause will raise some eyebrows and hackles, but Friedman, who has mastered his subject, fully documents its accuracy. During most of the 1980s he covered the Middle East for the New York Times, initially as bureau chief in Beirut and then in the same post in Jerusalem. In Lebanon, Friedman was "the only full-time American Jewish reporter." In Israel he was not. Solitude had its comforts, he found. "People assumed that if you were in Beirut you couldn't possibly be Jewish," he writes. "After all, what Jew in his right mind would come to Beirut?" But members...
...into scandal. His followers held 52 Americans captive in the U.S. embassy in Tehran from November 1979 to January 1981, thus dealing a severe blow to the re-election chances of Jimmy Carter. Then, in what began as an effort to secure the release of American hostages held in Lebanon, the Reagan Administration became enmeshed in the Iran-contra affair, its gravest foreign policy blunder...
Responsibility for the bombing remained uncertain. The Syrians, who control West Beirut, blamed Lebanon's Christians; the Christians accused the Syrians. But fittingly, the death of the peace-loving cleric inspired a rare display of unity: Christians and Muslims joined in a one-day nationwide strike to mourn his loss...
Hammadi, who is linked to the radical pro-Iranian group Hizballah, was arrested in January 1987 while trying to smuggle explosives through Frankfurt airport. West Germany denied a U.S. extradition request after Hammadi backers kidnaped two German businessmen in Lebanon, prompting criticism that Bonn was knuckling under to blackmail. Hammadi could have faced the death penalty in the U.S., not an option in Germany. Said Stethem's father Richard: Hammadi "deserves punishment more severe than allowable under German...