October 1992, Page 40

Seeing the Light

Even Eight-Year-Old Can Tell Middle East Fact from Fiction

By Dr. Clyde Farris

The Arab Airways DC-3 taxied to a halt at the airport in Amman, Jordan on a summer afternoon in late June, 1955. I was only eight years old at the time, but I can still remember the warm wind and the glare of the sunshine as I stepped onto the tarmac.

My father had just taken a position as an agricultural adviser with the AID program and we were moving from the state of Montana to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. I had a sense of excitement and trepidation as I anticipated living in this new and strange land.

Even at that young age, I had formed the opinion that the Israelis were the "good guys" and the Arabs were somehow the "bad guys." Exactly why I felt that way, I cannot be sure, but it was probably due to a combination of factors.

Early Biases

I had attended the First Baptist Church in Billings, Montana with my family. I had been taught in Sunday School and Vacation Bible School that the ancient Israelites were a force for good and the ancient Egyptians and Philistines were a force for evil. Perhaps it was difficult for my eight-year-old mind to realize that a few millennia can change things considerably. Many Christian fundamentalists continue to err by applying an ancient Biblical scenario to the present day Middle East.

The other opinion-molding factor may have been television news. Television had barely arrived in Montana, but my parents never missed the Huntley-Brinkley Report. Back then, it was only 15 minutes in length, and I would generally watch it with them. I cannot honestly remember any specific broadcasts at that time that might have shaped my opinions on the Mideast. However, if the bias of the networks at that time was anything like it has been for the past 20 or 30 years, I suspect I was influenced in that fashion as well.

Whatever the roots of my pro-Israel prejudices, they were soon to be challenged by facts that could not be hidden by a smooth Israeli public relations machine. The Palestinian refugee camps (the ugly fruits of Israel's "War of Independence") littered Jordan in terrible squalor. The barren hillsides of Amman were covered with thousands upon thousands of flimsy shelters. Huts made of cardboard or a piece of canvas spread over a few poles would pass as a home for an entire Palestinian family. Perceptibly malnourished Palestinian children would knock on our door, asking for a piece of bread. Palestinian women would walk for miles to fetch a small container of water from the public well.

Only seven years earlier, these sad and desperate refugees had been prosperous shopkeepers, farmers and craftsmen in what had been known as Palestine before the holocaust had descended upon them.

My "seeing the light" was not a sudden realization that I had been "conned." There was no bolt of lightening or moment of insight to reveal suddenly the dark side of Zionism to me. However, by the time my family and I returned to the U.S., my views on the Middle East were no longer black and white. The pro-Israel bias of the media was now obvious to me. The inaccuracies, half-truths, and lies that masqueraded as news on the Middle East only served to further my suspicions that Americans were being fed propaganda and not the facts.

By the time I was in high school, my previous pro-Israel sentiments had been transformed into a healthy skepticisim about the basic morality of the creation of the modern state of Israel. When my high school social studies teacher told my class that pre-Israel Palestine had been inhabited by a handful of Arabs running a few camels, I raised my hand and challenged him on that point. I can still see the look of utter disbelief on his face-it was obvious that not student had ever questioned the party line before. He became flustered and then a little bit angry, but he chose his words carefully for the rest of the time we spent on the Middle East.

My experiences in Jordan had initially left me with a sense of ambivalence regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict, but this was gradually transformed into anger. I would hear someone quote Golda Meir's callous remark that "there is no such thing as a Palestinian" and think back to the misery of the Palestinian refugee camps.

I would see unrepentent Israeli terrorists, such as Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, masquerade as statesmen and accuse the Palestinians of terrorism. I would see Ariel Sharon, the Butcher of Beirut, sit in the cabinet of the same government that was staging a show trial of alleged war criminal John Demjanjuk. Israel continued to flout international law by illegally annexing land occupied by force and deporting the indigenous population.

As time went on, I felt an urgent need to tell my fellow Americans that they were being led astray on Middle East issues. I felt something like John the Baptist-a voice crying in the wilderness. I felt that the message was important for many reasons. First of all, our blind support of Israel was stupid because it was hurting America's interests. America was losing economically, and precious diplomatic capital also was being squandered. More importantly, however, what we were doing flew in the face of everything our country is supposed to stand for.

I felt something like John the Baptist-a voice crying in the wilderness.

Basic principles of justice and self-determination seemed to apply to everyone in the world except Palestinians. America should have been aiding the Palestinians in their just struggle for an independent state and punishing Israel for its gross human rights violations. Instead, America was giving Israel a blank check and turning a blind eye to injustice. America prides itself as being the world champion of human rights, but its hypocritical policies regarding Israel and the Palestinians are not lost on the rest of the world.

Today, however, I am more optimistic that the Palestinians may yet receive justice in my lifetime. The slow but irresistable current of American public opinion is finally shifting away from blind support of Israel, despite crude efforts by Israel's powerful media apologists to stem the tide.

I have confidence in the basic American sense of fairness. Once the facts are known by the average American, there will be a public outcry for a just solution to the problems of the Middle East. A cowardly Congress may have to be dragged along, kicking and screaming, but eventually will have to submit to the will of the American people.

Dr. Clyde Farris is an orthopedic surgeon living in West Linn, OR. For many years he has been the donor of the "Pray for Palestine" bumper stickers distributed by the American Educational Trust.

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