Jean Said Makdisi's reissued memoir of recounts bombardment, siege and civilian resistance in scenes painfully familiar from Gaza and Israel's renewed assault on Lebanon. . . .
Originally published in 1990, at the end of Lebanon's 15-year civil war, which, like many a "civil" conflict, boasted plenty of outside participation, most notably by Israel, Beirut Fragments was rereleased this year. . . .
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 occupies a full chapter of Beirut Fragments, since it is this event that finally, halfway through the civil war, provides Makdisi with a prolonged moment of macabre clarity.
Of course, Israel has been bombing the country from the get-go, not to mention performing its signature move from the psychological terror playbook: the sonic boom.
Early in the war, Makdisi recalls, she wrote "more than one piece entitled 'The Morning After an Israeli Air-Raid'", then modified the title to "The Morning After Another Israeli Air-Raid" and then to "The Morning After Yet Another Israeli Air-Raid - Five Years Later". . . .
Fast forward half a century from the start of the Lebanese civil war, and Makdisi's war memoir reads at times like current events. The "accusatory word genocide" is as far from an exaggeration as ever in the Gaza Strip.
Israel is once again engaged in lunatic urges to eradicate sections of Lebanon, pulverising entire villages in the south of the country under the age-old pretext of maintaining a "security zone" to protect itself against the "terrorists".
Now, of course, the appointed "terrorists" in Lebanon are no longer the PLO but Hezbollah, which formed as a direct result of none other than the 1982 Israeli invasion. Fancy that.
If history is anything to go by, people generally resist their own destruction, meaning that Israel's ongoing paroxysms of violent hatred will likely only breed more violent resistance and more war.
But that, unfortunately, seems to be the whole point. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.