Kim Ghattas

And I think it's gonna be really interesting to tap into that, and I'm gonna find some people for us to bring in, even though it's ahead of the election, or maybe we'll bring them in after the election to do exactly what you said, Bernard, and, and get us to understand the perspective of people who are hard up against this without our moat, as you called it.

And there's one that's really kind of quiet but is out there is Hezbollah in Lebanon has been found to be hoarding explosives and rebuilding itself, and it would appear, according to people like Kim Ghattas, who's an incredible Lebanese journalist and reporter, that they're getting ready to attack their rivals in the, uh, Lebanese government, which could be a- another civil war type crisis in Lebanon.

You know, it is amazing how that crescent always comes back to us.

So that's one of them.

We value your feedback.

I'm thrilled this week to have as my guest, uh, Kim Ghattas, who is an author and Emmy Award-winning journalist.

You can see her writings at The Atlantic, the Financial Times.

You can hear her commentary in outlets like CNN and NPR.

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars-

Joining us now, contributing editor at the Financial Times, Kim Ghattas.

Her new book out today is titled The Best Kind of American: A True Story of Murder, War, and America's Undoing in the Middle East.

In it-

The new book, The Best Kind of American: A True Story of Murder, War and America's Undoing in the Middle East.

It's available now.

Author Kim Ghattas, thank you so much for sharing the book with us and for coming on the show this morning.

Thanks for having me.

The early 1980s, however, would prove a turning point not only for Lebanon and the wider region, but also for America's reputation there.

That at least is the contention of the journalist and writer Kim Ghattas, whose new book, The Best Kind of American: The True Story of Murder, War, and America's Undoing in the Middle East, looks at the murder of Malcolm Kerr, president of the American University of Beirut in 1984.

The setting, Beirut in the early 1980s, takes us to a city already divided by several years of war.

Colorful political personalities are brought to life from PLO leader Yasser Arafat to Lebanese Phalangist leader Bashir Gemayel.

She chose to focus on the value of empathy, she tells me, as Malcolm Kerr himself wrote, "The mark of a truly civilized man is empathy." I'm Faisal Yafai.

Here's this week's episode of The Lead.

[electronic music] Kim Ghattas, welcome to The Lead.

Thank you so much for having me, Faisal.

[upbeat music] I'll ask The Economist Paris Bureau Chief what is behind the unrest, and what happens next.

Then, Kim Ghattas brings us the latest on Iran.

And then I'll talk about the ongoing battle for control of the Arctic with the FT's Rana Foroohar.

Finally, blockers.

Thank you.

Next on GPS, what does one American academic's mysterious murder in the 1980s in Beirut have to tell us about the state of the Middle East today? My next guest has written a fascinating history.

The journalist and author Kim Ghattas joins me next.

AI isn't just creating new business opportunities.

Excellent.

And we have our friend Kim Ghattas with us, and it's kind of exciting.

For those of you who remember, Kim was here a little while ago.

She was talking about her new book, The Best Kind of American: A True Story of Murder, War, and America's Undoing in the Middle East.

Yes, indeed, and I, 'cause I do listen to quite a few podcasts, quite a few people sort of putting their oar in.

And what is really, you know, so tantalizing is to hear a very good, uh, commentator, like Kim Ghattas from, um, Lebanon, whom we've had on the show, uh, say in, in a, uh, a podcast recently that before October the 7th, the tragedy was there was such real progress being made with, say, particularly Saudi Arabia and Israel, and the talk about some form of genuine policy towards a Palestinian state of some sort.

They'd even drawn up a new accords.

It wasn't gonna be the Abraham Accords.

[laughs]

Yeah, right.

I mean, Kim Ghattas, a dear old friend of mine and a dear old colleague of mine, is always worth listening to, and, and so too is, is James N. Dorsey.

He's an award-winning scholar, a journalist, economist focused on the Middle East, which he writes about regularly on his very aptly named blog, The Turbulent World.