ellauri481.html on line 382: In 1992, Patrick Seale, former correspondent for the London Observer, and one of Britain’s top Middle East specialists, wrote a biography, Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire. Seale’s book made a stunning revelation: although portrayed in mainstream media as a “Palestinian terrorist” and “enemy of Israel,” Nidal was in fact employed by Mossad — Israel’s equivalent of the CIA.
ellauri481.html on line 404: Israel falsely accused the PLO of carrying out the attacks, even though the PLO denounced them and Abu Nidal took the credit. In the public mind, however, It was just “Palestinians.” Again quoting Seale:
ellauri481.html on line 422: Nidal fulfilled the stereotype of “Palestinians are terrorists” that Hollywood was simultaneously painting. He not only threatened to kill Oliver North, but Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Yet ironically, despite his innumerable murders and threats, no one brought him brought to justice. Even after 9/11, a decade after Seale published his book, Nidal was still at large.
xxx/ellauri127.html on line 112: When Nabokov died in 1977, The New York Times hailed him as “a giant in the world of literature.” Two of his novels, “Lolita” and “Pale Fire,” landed on the Modern Library’s 1998 list of the best English novels of the 20th century. His legions of fans regard Nabokov’s failure to win a Nobel Prize as one of the great literary travesties of the 20th century.
xxx/ellauri127.html on line 116: There are currently five scholarly journals devoted to Nabokov studies. His allusive style and trilingual (English, French, Russian) wordplay are catnip for academics, who endlessly parse challenging texts like “Pale Fire” — a novel in verse, followed by obscurantist commentary — finding new apercus tailor-made for small-journal publication. Nabokov’s apotheosis in academe is quite ironical, because he and his close friend, the literary critic Edmund Wilson, shared an icy disdain for the ivory tower. They viewed universities as ATMs, handy because there were so many of them, and because they were flush with cash. Nabokov, who arrived in the United States penniless in 1940, had to rely on teaching assignments at Wellesley and Cornell to feed his family for 15 years. The moment “Lolita” made him financially independent, he fled Cornell for Switzerland and never set foot in a classroom again.
xxx/ellauri127.html on line 120: In his lifetime, Nabokov received many contrary and often puzzled reviews. The Hollywood producer Robert Evans famously flew to Switzerland in 1968 to read an advance copy of the novel “Ada” in one day. “It was torture,” he recalled. Dwight Macdonald hated “Pale Fire” on behalf of Partisan Review, calling it “unreadable . . . too clever by half . . . Philistine . . . false” — and he hadn’t even finished his first paragraph!
xxx/ellauri416.html on line 438: The most modern scholars believe that the Philistines were part of the wave of migrations of peoples known collectively as the Sea Peoples, who helped bring an end to the Bronze Age. In particular, the Philistines were part of the second wave of migrations/invasions that were launched on Egypt during the reign of Ramesses III (ruled 1186-1156 BC). Although Ramesses was able to repulse the invasion and take many of the Sea Peoples prisoners, it is thought that the Philistines were driven to the edge of Egypt to the coastal region of the southern Levant where they settled sometime after 1177 BC. The Egyptians knew the Philistines as the “Peleset," which over time became “Philistine," becoming synonymous with the land in the southern Levant, which then became known as “Palestine."
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