Review of 'Tea With Hezbollah'

'Tea With Hezbollah: Sitting at the Enemies' Table. Our Journey Through the Middle East' by Ted Dekker and Carl Medearis. Doubleday, 245 pp.


    What happens when a Canadian author and an American author get together? Well if the Canadian is best-selling novelist Ted Dekker and the American is Middle East specialist Carl Medearis you get an interesting book. They don't spend their time arguing about Americans' know nothing take on Canada or the high price of American-made goods on this side of the border.
      Instead off they go to the Middle East to find out whether the top honchos over there obey Jesus's injunction, "Love thy neighbour as thyself."
   This is a dangerous journey. And as the twosome touch down in six countries, death, despair and violence lurk everywhere, as do many cups of tea.
   Dekker, an experienced novelist, describes the lands they pass through. Medearis, with a background in the Middle East, helps track down the leaders of movements like Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Sami Awad, the leader of non-violent resistance to settlers in Israeli's West Bank. Canada and the U.S. governments , by the way, classify Hezbollah as a terrorist group.
    Most of the men interviewed agree with Jesus's saying. Others are not so sure and who can blame them? "I've stood in front of moving bulldozers and Israeli jeeps many times," says the Palestinian leader Sami Awad, "to try to prevent them from destroying farmland. I've been physically assaulted more times than can be counted by Israeli troops who use their rifles, boots and batons."
   Awad has been denounced by Israeli leaders and by other Palestinians as a CIA tool. But he agrees with Jesus.
      This is a male-dominated book. The only woman who shows up in the book is Nicole, who Dekker invents. And Israeli leaders don't show up in the book at all. Nor do U.S. politicians who launched invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. But the book contains an interesting history of the Samaritans, one of  whom inspired Jesus's injunction.
    'Tea with Hezbollah' doesn't probe too deeply but it's an enjoyable read. "A simple teaching," Dekker concludes, "made 2,000 years ago may bring agreement and hope."