The New York Times ran a long obituary Saturday for Conor Cruise O’Brien, who died Thursday at the age of 91, recognizing him as a distinguished Irish diplomat, politician, educator, historian, man of letters and public intellectual and noting that he wrote many books, mentioning nine of them by name.

But the Times, as Marty Peretz has observed, managed to omit any reference to what was perhaps O’Brien’s finest book:  “The Siege:  The Saga of Israel and Zionism” – published in 1986 and still, 22 years later, one of the finest books ever written about Israel.

How did such a book come to be written by an Irish author?  In the Prologue to the book, O’Brien recounted that he had represented Ireland at the UN for five years during the mid-1950s, and found himself – since the delegates were seated alphabetically – between the delegate of Iraq on his left and the delegate of Israel on his right.  For five years, he sat through the annual debate on “The Palestine Refugees” – a “bitter, sterile and static debate, taken up in the main by heated attacks on Israel by every Arab delegation.”

My own contribution to the debate . . . was emollient and “balanced”; something in it for both sides, but not much.  As I came out of the debating chamber after my first intervention on this item, I met a friend, an American newspaperwoman.  She asked me how my speech had gone over.  I told her I had been thanked by both my neighbors, the delegates of Iraq and Israel.

“Christ!” she said.  “Was it as bad as that?”

Over time, he struck up a friendship with both his adjoining delegates.  He recounted this vignette of a moment during a particularly bad speech by Adlai Stevenson, denying any American involvement in the Bay of Pigs:

While this performance dragged on, Gideon Rafael [of Israel], in the chair beside me on my right, was doodling on his pad, his face impassive.  The Caribbean is not a region of the highest priority for Israel.  When the time came, Gideon would cast his vote with the United States, keeping his personal opinion about the Bay of Pigs to himself.

Adlai’s peroration was even more embarrassing than the rest of his speech.  “I have told you,” he said, “of Castro’s crimes against man.  But there is even worse:  the record of Castro’s crimes against God.”

Several delegates looked faintly sick.

“Fidel Castro has” – Adlai here turned his page and peered at the new one – “Castro has . . . circumcised the freedoms of the Catholics of Cuba . . .”

Gideon looked up sharply and turned to me.  “I always knew,” he said, “that we should be blamed for this, sooner or later.”

His relationship with the Iraqi delegate resulted in many conversations during 1956 and 1957, at a time when there were some pro-Western circles in the Iraqi government.  But after the Iraqi revolution of July 14, 1958, his Iraqi friend did not return to the General Assembly:

Rather naively, no doubt, in the circumstances, I asked my new neighbor, the head of the new Iraqi delegation on the committee, whether he had any news of his predecessor.  Without moving a muscle, and with his gaze firmly directed into space, my new neighbor pronounced the single word:  “Hanged!”

It was the only word he ever addressed to me, if it was addressed to me.

After he left the UN in 1961, O’Brien did not pay much attention to the Middle East, but in 1981, after he retired as editor in chief of The Observer, he decided to go to the region “and have a look for myself and form my own opinions, without undue deference to the opinions of specialists, or any deference at all to collegiate opinions.”

The following year, he decided write a short “current affairs” book about the area, but as he studied and read, the book evolved in ways he did not foresee.  He put together a masterpiece of meticulous research and beautiful writing that is much more than a popular history.  In his Prologue, he wrote that:

The story I tell is a true story, told with due respect to chronology – master of all things – without invention, or propagandist intent, or added color:  there is color enough there, in the material, without need of addition.

The first sentence in the first chapter of his book was “Does Israel have a right to exist?” and the last sentence, 661 pages later, noted that while there was a momentary abatement in violence in view, “What is not in sight is an end to the siege.”  Twenty-two years later, the siege continues, and the book he wrote is still relevant and revelatory.