Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Lebanon War of 1982. The War That Never Stopped

Send us Fan MailThis is a difficult topic.  In my classes I had quite a few Lebanese students, mostly Shia but some Maronite Catholics, and a few Sunni.  Many were from refugee families.  Many were refugees themselves.  Over the years they told me stories of their families and of those terrible days. Even now I get angry at leaders who seem driven with delusions of changing the world and seem indifferent to the human costs of their adventures.  And who seem not to consider the downside of what might happened if everything does not work the way they hope. This is a complex war in which different leaders had different and often contradictory goals.  As I would often say to my students, "You have now had a unit on this war.  Would any of you have thought that these leaders could pull off their aspiration?"  Of course, none of them would have had such delusions.  The thought that 20 year-olds spending two or three classes studying a war would know better than to do what powerful leaders obviously did NOT know is enough to make you spit.  Remember, violence combined with political stupidity is like sexually transmitted disease.  It is a gift that keeps on giving.