October 1989, Page 26

Seeing the Light

My Second Visit to Israel Made a World of Difference

By Tom Kinsolving

Probably the first introduction I had to the Middle East's most contentious issue was in 1966, when my parents took me to see the film "Cast a Giant Shadow."

It was one of those blockbuster films, like "Exodus," designed to promote the Zionist cause. Israelis were portrayed as valiant warriors struggling against bloodthirsty Arabs.

Years later, in a library, I came across a little book entitled Myths & Facts. It was the annual propaganda manual published by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that provided all the "answers" to questions on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Like "Cast a Giant Shadow" and "Exodus," the reality of the diaspora-Palestinian, that is-was glossed over with a clever rationale:

The Jews who suffered the holocaust were desperate for their own state. Instead of compromising, the Arabs attacked. The Jews defended their ancient birthright and won. As for the existence of Palestinian refugees, Arab intransigence bore sole responsibility.

It was convincing. Then.

In 1976, when I was 19, I visited Israel for the first time with my father, a journalist. Our three-day visit was brief, but it left a vivid impression. As official guests of the Israeli government, we were given the red carpet treatment.

The Lebanese civil war was in full swing. With the PLO embroiled in the fighting in and around Beirut, Israel's northern border was quiet. Our guide, an Israeli officer, took us to see "The Good Fence," situated on the Israeli-Lebanese border.

"The Good Fence," he said, featured a mobile hospital to serve suffering Lebanese civilians. I saw women and children being attended by Israeli military teams. My predictable reaction: How nice of Israel to help the people of Lebanon.

Another vivid recollection of that first trip was a statement by our Israeli guide. Conditioned by the media's myopic reporting of the Palestinian struggle, I had asked why the PLO resorted to terrorism (I neglected to probe the issue of Israeli terrorism). The Israeli gave an answer worthy of print in Myths & Facts.

"They have little regard for human life."

Certainly.

Five years later, in 1981, I returned to Israel for two months. This time I was not an official guest of the Israeli government, but was there as a journalist. I spent a month living on a kibbutz near the Gaza Strip. In late December, I left the kibbutz to celebrate Christmas Eve in Bethlehem.

Cold, windy and rainy weather, military checkpoints, inebriated tourists, and heavily armed Israeli soldiers everywhere were not conducive to spirituality.

Is it any mystery that some Palestinians have resorted to terrorism? Forty-one years after their diaspora began and after 22 years of Israeli military occupation, Palestinians continue to struggle for their rights, so unjustly denied.

I was accompanied by a British friend, Eammon, whom I had met on the kibbutz. After attending a service at a little Jesuit church called the Milk Grotto, we began walking up one of the narrow Bethlehem streets that would take us back to a bus for Jerusalem. We turned a corner and witnessed a dramatic juxtaposition. There standing in line on a sidewalk was a small group of Israeli soldiers, aiming their automatic rifles in the air. Simultaneously, a group of six nuns appeared, walking single file along the same sidewalk.

Eammon tore open his knapsack, digging furiously for his camera. As the soldiers continued to aim their guns towards a Bethlehem rooftop, the nuns began to pass by, stoically, one by one. Eammon got to within yards of the scene and was about to get an incredible photograph when one of the soldiers broke rank and rushed toward my friend.

"NO PICTURE!" growled the Israeli soldier. Though he spoke little English, he sensed Eammon's defiance.

Eammon refused to back down. The Israeli was becoming enraged.

"PASSPORT!" demanded the Israeli.

Yes, it was a bit different than being an official government guest, this trip. I began to understand the helplessness of Palestinians under harassment and occupation.

The soldier scrutinized the British passport, and, after a lot of glaring, released us. Had we been Palestinians, we might have been subjected to far rougher treatment.

Although, upon my return to the United States, I published an article about that night in Israeli-occupied Bethlehem, I still did not fully comprehend the essentials of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict-until I was able to study them in graduate school in California from 1983-1986. By the time I completed my masters thesis on the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, I had learned, among other things, about the following:

• During the British Mandate, between 1922-1939, the Jewish National Fund pruchased over 383,000 acres of land in Palestine. Palestinian tenants and workers were consequently evicted from this acreage which, under Jewish National Fund rules still valid today, could not be resold to any Arab, nor could it be used to provide employment for non-Jews. The Palestinians were disinherited.

• When the United Nations approved the Palestine Partition Plan in 1947, the Muslim and Christian Palestinians outnumbered Jewish residents by two-to-one, and the Jews owned less than seven percent of the land. However, the partition proposal gave the Jewish one-third of the population 53 percent of the land and placed nearly a half million Palestinians under Zionist rule. The Palestinians were disenfranchised.

• In April, 1948, the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem, was attacked by a contingent of Irgun and Stern Gang Jewish terrorists, whose leaders included future Israeli prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. More than 250 Palestinians, nearly half of them women and children, were murdered. When the news of the Deir Yassin massacre reached other Palestinian communities, a panic ensued, causing mass flight. The Palestinians were terrorized out of their country.

With all of this in mind, is it any mystery that some Palestinians have resorted to terrorism? Forty-one years after their diaspora began and after 22 years of Israeli military occupation. Palestinians continue to struggle for their rights, so unjustly denied.

Yes, it is incumbent upon the civilized world never to forget the Nazi holocaust and the suffering of the Jews. Nevertheless, it is no less imperative that we recognize that using the holocaust to justify dispossessing and persecuting the Palestinian people is morally reprehensible.

Cast a giant shadow-of shame.

Thomas P. Kinsolving is a writer based in northern Virginia who specializes in foreign affairs.