CENTCOM Groups of Interest

Friedman, who twice garnered the Pulitzer as a New York Times correspondent in Lebanon and Israel, further delineates the two countries in this provocative, absorbing memoir cum political and social analysis. A condensed, incisive history of the Middle East is proffered, as well as personal reflections on his 10-year sojourn: the issue of Friedman's Jewishness in Beirut, the fact that he was the Times 's first Jewish reporter in Israel, the bombing of his apartment in Beirut by the PLO, which took the lives of his Lebanese news assistant's children. A top-flight observer and interpreter, the author elucidates the complex religious factions obstructing Lebanese and Israeli politics; the agendas of various posturing, media-loving Arab and Israeli leaders; the perversity of daily life in 'Wild West Beirut;' the wanton murder in Lebanon of U.S. marines and Palestinian refugees; America's fascination with Israel; the waning romance between Israeli and American Jews; and the Palestinian intifada.

Palestinian Resistance: Organization of a Nationalist Movement presents the Palestinian conflict as a consequence of the emergence of Arab and Jewish nationalism in the 19th century. This book discusses the variables that intersect to produce Resistance politics. Organized into 11 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the increasing threat to international stability of Middle Eastern conflicts in terms of global impact and military destructiveness. This text then examines the emergence of Palestinian nationalism that is connected with the appearance and growth of the Palestinian Resistance Movement. Other chapters consider the more complex relationships that developed over time between the various guerilla groups and established Arab governments. This book discusses as well the importance of the ANM in providing an infrastructure of political and logistic support that extend throughout the Arab world. The final chapter deals with the concept of protracted social conflict.

On September 6, 1970, members of the militant Palestinian group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, hijacked four commercial airliners in order to draw attention to their cause and gain the release of their comrades being held in Swiss prisons. Three days later they commandeered a fifth plane, and, without killing any of the hostages, spectacularly blew up three of the planes at Dawson's Field in the Jordanian desert. Through interviews with militants who carried out the attack, journalists, crew members, and passengers, this production examines these events, and how and when Middle East militants began to see civilians as legitimate pawns in their struggles for self-determination.