Siege of "The Siege" Uplifted

Last month, I mentioned that Conor Cruise O'Brien's pro-Israel book, "The Siege", had been left out of his obituaries.

One nother aspect was an article from which I quoted and had suggested that "The Siege" ignored Arab sources.

This letter in the Times Literary Supplement sets the record straight:-

‘The Siege’

Sir, – In his letter (April 10) criticizing Richard Bourke’s article on Conor Cruise O’Brien, Barra Ó Seaghdha asks “How, then, can Bourke refer seriously to O’Brien’s The Siege without mentioning that it cites not a single Arab source or authority?”. I am not as convinced as Ó Seaghdha seems to be of the utility of searching for the racial antecedents of scholars.

Nevertheless, a brief glance at the endnotes to The Siege (which I reviewed in the TLS of October 10, 1986) produces, among others, the following names: Zureik, Jiryis, Halabi, Shehadeh, Tamari, Turki, Jabber, Sayigh, Heikal, Ajami, and Muslih, all well-known Arab writers or historians.

BERNARD WASSERSTEIN
Department of History, University of Chicago,
1126 East 59th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637.

Amazing, though, that it was Wasserstein who pitched in.