The Human Face of Hezbollah
David Shribman reviewed A Privilege to Die in today’s Boston Globe. It’s an honor to be reviewed by such a heavyweight (David won a Pulitzer for his Washington reporting at the Globe, and now edits the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; I don’t know him personally.)
From the review:
Where some writers talk about the Arab streets, Cambanis has walked them. Along the way he encountered warriors and hospital workers, polished intellectuals and women who sell nuts by the curb, ideologues and theologians, those who engage in small acts of resistance and those who prosecute total war of the most brutal sort. …
What becomes clear is that the key to Hezbollah is its ability to spread virtue along with the violence. It promises, for example, to restore communities — homes and businesses — to their original conditions after each episode of conflict. “Hezbollah needed to keep [its] soft supporters happy,’’ Cambanis writes, “and to do so it needed to deliver bricks and mortar along with its ideology.’’
