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PARTISAN REVIEW
product of the Arab-Israeli conflict but have become deeply en–
meshed in our perceptions and images of events as they actually
take place. I make this point because Jacobo Timerman himself
is an experienced, professional journalist who has opted in this
book to play fast and loose with the facts in a way that is aston–
ishing for a man conscious of the way that the outside world has
seized on false analogies to judge Israel's motives and actions.
Mr. Timerman recognizes the absurdity of the accusation that
the Israelis behaved like Nazis in Lebanon, and he states dearly
enough that" to speak of a Palestinian genocide, of a Palestinian
Holocaust, to compare Beirut with Stalingrad or with the Warsaw
Ghetto will move no one." But his own book, an impassioned,
angry, and indignant indictment of Israel's invasion (which he
oversimplisticaIry personifies as "General Sharon's War") is
constantly marred by analogies, no less false, drawn from his
previous experiences as a prisoner of the Argentinian military
junta. Even worse, for a report that purports to be about the war
in Lebanon, he has based his cond usions on the flimsiest of evi–
dence culled from a very brief guided tour in July 1982 of Tyre
and Sidon-that is, when he is not busy quoting in a highly se–
lective manner from correspondents of the
Jerusalem Post
to
bolster his case.
From his own account it is apparent that Mr. Timerman ar–
rived in South Lebanon with a preconceived idea in his head
that all the Lebanese hated the Israelis for invading their country,
notwithstanding the anarchy and chaos, violence and bloodshed
that had caused more than one hundred thousand casualties–
none of which had troubled our intrepid investigator any more
than they had unduly disturbed most Western journalists. For
the distinguished author of
Prisoner Without a Name, Cell
Without a Number
(an account of his incarceration by the Ar–
gentine authorities) intuitively "knows" that "what a cordial
and pleasant Lebanese is saying is contradicted by what I see ex–
pressed in his eyes." Mr. Timerman "knows" that the Lebanese
who greet him and other visitors with shouts of "Shalom!" do
so out of fear, and he, the "prisoner without a name," will never
fraternize "with those I have subdued by force." The sentiment
may be uplifting, even noble, but as with so much else in this
book, it neither corresponds with the facts nor does it indicate a
glimmer of insight into the realities of Lebanon. Most Lebanese
(and not only the Christian forces) understood much better than
