Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Leila Abu-Saba is the extraordinary Lebanese-American blogger at Dove’s Eye View. I know her only through her blog and our various e-mail exchanges. But I feel we are brother and sister at heart.

Tonight, she has outdone herself with her anti-eulogy for George Habash. From my slight acquaintance with ancient Greek via the UC Berkeley summer language program, I can tell you a eulogy is a “good word” for the dead. Leila has no good word to say about Habash (which is why I call hers an anti-eulogy) except when she speaks about the beginning of his PFLP movement. But her words about Habash’s impact on the Lebanese civil war and subsequent Palestinian terror are profound, true, and only won through immense personal family suffering.

Leila’s Christian grandmother was murdered by Palestinian and Lebanese leftist militia during the 1985 sacking of her village in the civil war. Largely (though not wholly) as a result of this personal trauma, Leila has turned away from force and violence as solutions to the conflict besetting the Middle East. To paraphrase Paul Simon: Here’s to you, Leila Abu-Saba.