People who know about my experience of having lived in Israel for four years ask me from time to time for my understanding of what goes on there.
There seems to be a lot of confusion among Americans over occurrences between Israel and its Muslim neighbors and among Muslim nations themselves. Here’s my understanding of why Americans misunderstand Middle Eastern affairs.
I’ll begin with two metaphors: the desert and canal locks. First, the desert. Ernest Hemingway wrote a book called “True At First Light.” In it he states, “In Africa, what is true at first light is a lie by noon.” Hemingway, in that line, refers to the play of light on African scenery at various times of the day. Something very similar is at play in deserts, except that in addition to variations of light transforming the view of the sands, the sands themselves shift from day to day: What you see on Monday may look the same as what you saw on Sunday, but it isn’t. It’s radically changed. So it is with alliances and enmities in the Middle East. Some are very ancient. Others change often and radically, shifting almost imperceptibly like the desert sands that surround, separate, connect and occasionally overwhelm the nations and the people.
Canal locks
A canal lock raises and lowers ships so they can move forward from one body of water to another. This action can be used as a metaphor to describe our state of mind when it comes to understanding the events unfolding from day to day in the Middle East.
We arrive at an understanding of events and underlying causes — at which point we are as though in a canal where we think the ship ought to be able to go forward undisturbed by other actions of locks. But then the water is drained from the lock and we find ourselves again at a lower level. Perhaps we can finish our journey through the canal at that depth. Perhaps we’ll have to rise in another lock in order to move forward.
The same is true of our understanding of Middle Eastern affairs. As soon as we arrive at what we believe to be an understanding of the current alliances and rivalries, they change, and we are once again at the bottom of our understanding and must rise in understanding as though we are at the bottom of yet another lock.
And, unlike in a canal, these locks don’t end. They go on and on, the state of politics in a culture that seemingly has no horizon point. We are as inept and late in perceiving the shifting dynamics of the political culture there as we are in perceiving changes in which grains of sand cover the deserts in that region — and the importance of the desert and its vicissitudes in defining the people who inhabit that region.
The shallow depth of Westerners’ understanding of that region is commensurate with the region’s own unyielding resistance to definition. They do not willingly open the doors to us. That we do not understand their alliances and rivalries is of no concern to them.
In the city of Eilat at the southern tip of Israel, I saw signs reading “Danger! Border Ahead!” My excitement at honeymooning there almost overcame my sense of danger at being so near to that border. I imagined crossing that line and seeing the places farther down that road. But I didn’t.
I knew why the sign was there. I didn’t understand why it had to be.
Joel Littauer of Vancouver is a retired teacher and lived in Israel from 1968 to 1972.
