thedrifter
07-30-06, 10:18 AM
Land Of Strife
William P. Barrett, 07.21.06, 4:45 PM ET
LOS ANGELES -
"The violence you have done to Lebanon will overwhelm you," the warning intoned. "You have shed man's blood. You have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them."
An overwritten statement this week from the leadership of Hezbollah, whose rocket attacks over the border from Lebanon into Israel triggered the latest round of Middle East nastiness?
Nope. It's a passage from the Bible's Book of Habakkuk complaining about the Babylonian invaders of Lebanon several millennia ago.
In Lebanon, violence, war and other forms of strife are as permanent a part of the terrain as its breathtaking mountains. Well-known recent carnage includes Lebanon's civil war in 1975, the Israeli invasion in 1982 and the bombing of the U.S. Marines headquarters in Beirut a year later.
But using the Bible (New International Version) as a sort of Michelin Guide to Lebanese territory and history, it's clear that the culture of mayhem--and the propaganda that often accompanies it--goes way, way back.
The center of much of the modern bloodshed, Beirut, is not mentioned in the Bible. The two Lebanese cities cited most often are the southern coastal towns of Tyre and Sidon--both of which, by the way, the Book of Mark says Jesus visited.
Israeli fighter jets recently struck targets in Tyre, just 15 miles from the Israeli border and a Hezbollah stronghold because of its dominant Shiite Muslim population. The Bible recounts a famous prediction of doom about 2,500 years ago for Tyre--then the capital of Lebanon--courtesy of the prophet Ezekiel, in the book named for him. He thought Tyre an economically thriving but insufficiently holy place that should be reduced to nothing more than a fishing village with plenty of open space to "spread fish nets" to dry.
Around 587 B.C., say historians, the invading Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar started a siege that lasted 15 years. The city apparently didn't fall. The Greek Alexander the Great finally fulfilled Ezekiel's wish two centuries later. He won with a seven-month blockade, after which all the city's inhabitants were either killed or taken into slavery.
Similarly, Sidon, 25 miles north of Tyre and another city just attacked by Israel, was the site of several ancient military defeats by the locals. One was by Esarhaddon in the seventh century B.C., then Nebuchadnezzar two centuries later. Modern conflicts have helped cripple Sidon's economy: It is the western terminus of a 780-mile-long oil pipeline from Saudi Arabia built in 1950 by the predecessors of ExxonMobil (nyse: XOM - news - people ) and Chevron (nyse: CVX - news - people ) but shut down in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
The Bible contains scores of references to Lebanon (or Phoenicia, as it is often called) and its complicated, love-hate relationship with the rulers of Israel to its south. King Solomon built his famous temple in Jerusalem with the wood of cedar trees cut and hauled from Lebanon. Numerous Biblical passages sing the praises of the verdant nature of Lebanon, a rarity in the generally parched region of the Middle East. The Book of Ezra describes a brisk trade in trees floated along the edge of the Mediterranean Sea from Lebanon to the Israeli city of Jaffa.
But then there's this zinger in the Book of Zechariah: "Open your doors, O Lebanon, so that fire may devour your cedars."
Ellie
William P. Barrett, 07.21.06, 4:45 PM ET
LOS ANGELES -
"The violence you have done to Lebanon will overwhelm you," the warning intoned. "You have shed man's blood. You have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them."
An overwritten statement this week from the leadership of Hezbollah, whose rocket attacks over the border from Lebanon into Israel triggered the latest round of Middle East nastiness?
Nope. It's a passage from the Bible's Book of Habakkuk complaining about the Babylonian invaders of Lebanon several millennia ago.
In Lebanon, violence, war and other forms of strife are as permanent a part of the terrain as its breathtaking mountains. Well-known recent carnage includes Lebanon's civil war in 1975, the Israeli invasion in 1982 and the bombing of the U.S. Marines headquarters in Beirut a year later.
But using the Bible (New International Version) as a sort of Michelin Guide to Lebanese territory and history, it's clear that the culture of mayhem--and the propaganda that often accompanies it--goes way, way back.
The center of much of the modern bloodshed, Beirut, is not mentioned in the Bible. The two Lebanese cities cited most often are the southern coastal towns of Tyre and Sidon--both of which, by the way, the Book of Mark says Jesus visited.
Israeli fighter jets recently struck targets in Tyre, just 15 miles from the Israeli border and a Hezbollah stronghold because of its dominant Shiite Muslim population. The Bible recounts a famous prediction of doom about 2,500 years ago for Tyre--then the capital of Lebanon--courtesy of the prophet Ezekiel, in the book named for him. He thought Tyre an economically thriving but insufficiently holy place that should be reduced to nothing more than a fishing village with plenty of open space to "spread fish nets" to dry.
Around 587 B.C., say historians, the invading Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar started a siege that lasted 15 years. The city apparently didn't fall. The Greek Alexander the Great finally fulfilled Ezekiel's wish two centuries later. He won with a seven-month blockade, after which all the city's inhabitants were either killed or taken into slavery.
Similarly, Sidon, 25 miles north of Tyre and another city just attacked by Israel, was the site of several ancient military defeats by the locals. One was by Esarhaddon in the seventh century B.C., then Nebuchadnezzar two centuries later. Modern conflicts have helped cripple Sidon's economy: It is the western terminus of a 780-mile-long oil pipeline from Saudi Arabia built in 1950 by the predecessors of ExxonMobil (nyse: XOM - news - people ) and Chevron (nyse: CVX - news - people ) but shut down in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
The Bible contains scores of references to Lebanon (or Phoenicia, as it is often called) and its complicated, love-hate relationship with the rulers of Israel to its south. King Solomon built his famous temple in Jerusalem with the wood of cedar trees cut and hauled from Lebanon. Numerous Biblical passages sing the praises of the verdant nature of Lebanon, a rarity in the generally parched region of the Middle East. The Book of Ezra describes a brisk trade in trees floated along the edge of the Mediterranean Sea from Lebanon to the Israeli city of Jaffa.
But then there's this zinger in the Book of Zechariah: "Open your doors, O Lebanon, so that fire may devour your cedars."
Ellie