The ‘New Middle East’ That Never Was P. David Hornik Matti Friedman, a journalist and writer who moved from Canada to Israel in his late teens in the late 1990s, has written a powerful little book, Pumpkinflowers, that takes you deep into Israeli and Middle Eastern reality. The Pumpkin was a hill in the southern-Lebanon security zone, which Israel set …
JRB review, Fall 2016
A Cedar of Lebanon Jewish Review of Books, Fall 2016 Amy Newman Smith Matti Friedman came home from Outpost Pumpkin, where he was based during his tour of duty in Lebanon, not long before Israel made the decision to withdraw from the “security zone.” “When the army pulled out of Lebanon, I was happy. I thought that the problem was …
“The Best Book About the Iraq War Isn’t About the Iraq War”
Douglas Ollivant, a retired US Army officer who served two tours in Iraq, and a former National Security Council Director and Senior Advisor in Afghanistan, wrote this review for War on the Rocks (June 30, 2016): Iraq veterans finally have their book; a manuscript that really deals with the whole of the Iraq experience. After over a decade at war in …
Australia dates, August-September 2016
I’ll be in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne between Aug. 27 and Sept. 4 — details here: Sydney Jewish Writers Festival Sat., Aug. 27, 7:30 p.m.: Israel’s Battle Lines (with Dov Lipman and Debbie Whitmont). Details here. Sun., Aug. 28, 12:30 p.m.: Unearthing Israel’s Hidden Stories (with Michael Visontay). Details here. Brisbane Tue., Aug. 30, Wed., Aug. 31. (Details available …
Council on Foreign Relations book pick
The Council on Foreign Relations podcast picked Pumpkinflowers as a recommended summer read, and CFR’s Bob McMahon, James Lindsay, and Elizabeth Saunders discussed the book on the June 16 podcast. Listen to it here.
Amazon Top 20 of 2016 (So Far)
June 22, 2016 “Pumpkinflowers” has been chosen as one of Amazon’s top 20 books of the year so far. It’s also included in the top 20 books in the History and Biography/Memoir categories. There are lots of great books on the list, which you can see here in a report from Marketwatch. Amazon describes “Pumpkinflowers” as follows: “Named after an infamous …
Prospect review (UK)
By Ben Judah June 16, 2016 The Hebrew of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is very different from the kind I was taught at synagogue. Wounded soldiers are “flowers.” Dead soldiers are “oleanders,” “their dicks were broken.” “Lebanon,” for the Israeli writer Matti Friedman’s generation, means not just a country—but also the muddied experience of their youth as military conscripts. …
Globe and Mail review
By Matt Lennox May 20, 2016 The term “asymmetric warfare” refers to any conflict where there is a large disparity between belligerents. This disparity may be reflected in size, organization, equipment, tactics, strategic objectives and even philosophical beliefs. To put it a little more crudely, asymmetric warfare generally consists of a modern military force combatting some kind of guerrilla army, …
Mother Jones interview
By Max J. Rosenthal May 21, 2016 In 1999, a Canadian-Israeli teenager named Matti Friedman went to war as an Israeli soldier. He manned a small hilltop outpost called the Pumpkin, one of a string of Israeli bases that stretched across southern Lebanon and served as both a defensive buffer for the towns of northern Israel and a magnet for …
Christian Science Monitor review
By David Holahan May 4, 2014 Matti Friedman, author of Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story, was there at the beginning, in 1998, fighting for Israel in the non-war against the non-state fighters of Hezbollah in ungoverned south Lebanon. It was, in his telling, the beginning of much of what is happening in the Middle East (and beyond) today: unending conflict with …