Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 1988, Page 22, 23

Seeing the Light

Discovering the Palestinians

By Deane Tack

And who are the Palestinians? This was the question I asked an Arab-American acquaintance several years ago after he had explained that he was a Palestinian. I had ambivalent feelings as he told of his people being driven from their homeland by the Israelis who massacred entire villages and appropriated their land. Surely the Western world would have heard of such atrocities had they actually occurred. We were only aware of the heavy role of the Palestinian "terrorists," who received sufficient headline coverage and TV exposure to persuade the American public of the pervasive violent nature of all Palestinians. Most of us had accepted the terms "Palestinian," "PLO," and "terrorists" as being synonomous.

Since I don't condone violence as a solution to any problem, I asked my friend to provide some information that would be helpful in reconciling my mixed concepts of the Palestinians, and my skepticism at his accounts of such monumental injustices that it seemed impossible that they could have occurred in my lifetime without coming to my attention.

"Haven't you ever heard of Deir Yassin?" he asked incredulously.

I had to admit I was totally unfamiliar with the small Palestinian Arab village which he explained as being symbolic of the martyrdom of Palestinians by the Israelis. The details of this particular massacre of some 250 men, women, and children on April 9, 1948, were so appalling and repugnant that I had a tinge of doubt regarding their authenticity.

A SEARCH FOR THE FACTS

Only if I researched the situation and discovered the bare, unvarnished truths for myself, could I actually accept them. I was chagrined to realize that I, a retired schoolteacher, was relatively ignorant of issues involved in the Middle East conflict.

As I began researching the subject in 1981, I found that scarcely any books were available in the public library to provide the enlightment I sought. After writing to Arab-oriented foundations and individuals to whom I was referred, I soon acquired a sizeable, well-documented resource of books, magazines, pamphlets, and journals.

As I delved into the fascinating, yet incredible, fund of information, I was impelled to share it with everyone I knew. When I tried to explain that the Deir Yassin massacre was carried out by two separate Jewish militias, one organized by and responsible to Menachem Begin, and the other by Yitzhak Shamir, both of whom subsequently became prime ministers of Israel, I met with skepticism similar to that with which I had at first reacted. The only way to break through the resistance of the American public, I concluded, was to write a suspense-filled novel which supplied documented statistics and authenticated circumstances through the dialogue and dynamics of fictional characters. After three years of research and writing, the epic of an oppressed and homeless nation emerged as a novel, The Palestinian, subsequently published by Amana Books.

THE HUMAN DIMENSIONS 

In my empathy for the Palestinians, I gave the characters of my novel the human dimensions of love, passion, and loyalty, as well as hatred, thereby balancing the stereotyped version usually shown. The friendship of the Palestinian protagonist with a Jewish family in the U.S. serves to depict the central conflict as being between the Palestinians and Zionists, not with Jews per se.

With the expansion of my understanding of the Middle East conflict and its background, I have sought to share my information by appearing on radio talk shows and speaking to church groups and literary clubs.

OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN

So that readers may see "the other side of the coin," I have also donated 12 books to our local library, includingThey Dare to Speak Out, Journey to Jerusalem, and Assault on the Liberty.

Although I'm a non-Arab, I am contributing as much as I can toward disseminating truth about the Palestinian dilemma. Reader response to my novel, to my surprise, has been rewarding, rather than hostile. Through it and through the many resulting contacts and activities, I am seeking to stimulate the open-minded response and further desire in others to search for equity and peace in the Middle East. I know, whatever the initial reactions, that is possible because that response and that desire were awakened in me by one individual who took the trouble to "share the light" only six years ago, and in doing so changed the whole focus of my life.

Deane Tack is the author of The Palestinian and a retired schoolteacher residing in Oregon.