MERIP Media Resource
List, July 14, 2006
AVAILABLE
FOR INTERVIEWS on
the following topics:
- Lebanon
- Hizballah
USSAMA
MAKDISI
Ussama Makdisi is an associate
professor of history at Rice University. He is the author
of The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History and
Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (2000),
"Anti-Americanism in the Arab World: An Interpretation
of a Brief History" in Journal of American History
and an editor with Paul Silverstein of Memory and
Violence in the Middle East and North Africa (2006).
He commented today: "The Lebanese have been through this
before -- they can only watch with frustration and anger as
their country is being pulverized by the Israelis with US
support. In the short term, the Israeli attacks won't upset
the sectarian equation inside Lebanon, although many Lebanese
may well question the efficacy of Hizballah's military strategy
regarding Israel. And in the long term, this callous
Israeli assault on an essentially defenseless country will
not bring it peace. Israel has consistently created its
own enemies. Hizballah was formed in response to the Israeli
invasion in 1982, just as Hamas was founded as a result of
Israel's occupation of the Palestinians."
LARA
DEEB
Lara
Deeb is assistant professor of women's studies at the University
of California, Irvine. She is a cultural anthropologist who
has spent extensive time researching community activism in
the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Hizballah is the most
popular political party. She is author of An Enchanted
Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi‘i Lebanon (2006).
She commented today: "The current escalation of conflict
between Israel and Hizballah has to be understood in the broader
context of the new Israeli government and its policies of
extreme violence in Gaza, Hizballah's relationship with other
groups in Lebanon and the 1982 Israeli invasion and subsequent
occupation of Lebanon. No matter what the underlying rationale
for Hizballah's kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, Israel's
response has been disproportionate and counterproductive ."
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