No Matter Where You Start, the Solution is Equal Rights For All

By George V. Parmelee

Although Noah Kramer says "History Begins at Sumer, " it was five millenia later that my wife and I began to see the vexing Middle East situation in a clearish light, first through our personal experiences while living in the region for seven years, and then through diligent attention to what many different people and organizations said, wrote and did about the situation.

Our Middle East history began one spring day in 1953 when the director of the research laboratory where I worked in Cleveland received a request from the United Nations Technical Assistance Administration. The new state of Israel wanted someone to advise it in matters of indoor climate. Because I had been researching problems of solar radiation and building cooling, my director suggested that I accept the assignment.

I jumped at the chance to visit the country whose struggles to achieve nationhood had received so much publicity in our media. My two months in Israel that summer were preceded by seeing a bit of Europe with my wife, Freddie, and our two daughters, 10 and 12. It was our first foreign experience.

The Epitome of Naivete

In regard to the Middle East I was the epitome of political naivete. I had never heard of the Balfour Declaration, and the negative impact upon the Palestinians of the developments which came from it. I had only a dim idea of the political maneuvers that preceded the UN plan to partition Palestine.

Most of the Israelis I worked with that summer had left Germany in the early 1930s, when the Nazi persecution of Jews was just beginning. I expressed a sympathetic understanding to one of the men, a French Jew, telling him that my maternal and paternal ancestors had fled France during the Huguenot persecutions and had come to America via Holland and England. Moreover, Freddie's ancestors had fled Germany because of the endless religious wars in Europe, at the same time and by the same route.

That was the extent of political discussion that I remember. The Arab presence in Israel did not come to my attention except on a trip to survey the thermal environment in Eilat. Our group was armed and alert to possible trouble in the desolate Wadi al Arabah bordering Jordan. I still recall, however, a meeting on my last evening in Israel at the home of the director of the weather division. There I sensed a tension that I later identified as arrogance.

Some months later, in 1954, one of the Israeli weathermen was our houseguest during a study trip to the US and Canada. He was surprised by the large amount of publicity and news coverage given Israel in the Cleveland papers. That has not changed much in the intervening years.

Would Americans venture into West Beirut for refuge today? What has gone wrong?

Our summer's experience gave Freddie and me a strong taste for travel, out of which was to come an intense concern over our country's role in the Middle East. Neither taste for travel nor concern about deteriorating American relationships with the Middle East were to be quenched in Freddie's lifetime, and they have continued in mine since her death a few years ago.

In September 1955, as an air conditioning specialist, I became a staff engineer at the Arabian American Petroleum Company, ARAMCO. Freddie and the girls flew to Beirut, where she set up housekeeping and put the girls in the American Community School. I followed two months later, going on to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, after a two week briefing in Lebanon. The family followed to Dhahran a year later.

The world opened wide its doors to our inquiring minds and eyes. What were Palestinians doing in refugee camps in Beirut? How did Lebanon and Syria relate? How did our western Christian enterprises fit into the sectarian millet system which characterized the political and social life of Lebanon?

In Arabia we met Palestinians, Jordanians, Lebanese and the other nationalities who were sprinkled among the large Saudi and American work forces. We began to acquire a much broader view of the Israelis and the Arab Palestinians as we worked, listened, read and traveled about the region.

Perhaps our first shock came during our first years, when we recommended to friends at home objective books about American relationships with the Middle East and Israel. Our friends wrote back to say that the books we named were not to be found in Cleveland bookstores. The light was pretty dim in the States then. Only recently has this subtle censorship been changing.

A small foretaste of the turmoil that has gripped Lebanon through much of two decades came in October 1956 when Freddie, Suzanne and I landed in Beirut on a flight from Tehran after visiting Iran on our first short leave. Sally was then in the ACS boarding department. Americans were pouring in from Syria and Jordan seeking a haven in Ras Beirut (now referred to as Muslim West Beirut). They feared the spread of the fighting in Sinai where Israel, Britain and France had teamed up to bring down Nasser because of his nationalization of the Suez Canal. How attitudes have changed! Would Americans venture into West Beirut for refuge today? What has gone wrong?

In May 1958 Freddie, Suzanne and I spent a long weekend in Iraq visiting the Muslim Shi'i centers in Najaf and Kerbala, and Babylon and other ancient sites accessible from Baghdad. Bookstores have always been a magnet and next door to our hotel we found Rabbi Elmer Berger's little book, Rho Knows Better Should Say So. It shed much light on how Zionism works!

Living in Two Worlds

When we returned to Cleveland in December 1962 so that I could accept a professorship in mechanical engineering at Cleveland State University, we began living in two worlds: American and, vicariously, the Middle East. We visited Dr. Berger in New York in 1969. Later that summer we gathered interested people at our home in Cleveland to meet with him. Such activities accelerated, thanks to the Rev. Donald Powers of nearby Cuyahoga Falls, who launched the Northeast Ohio Committee for Middle East Understanding that fall.

Our involvement in spreading understanding of the Middle East became continuous. It was sparked by Freddie's well-organized enthusiasm and propelled by our continued contact with Elmer Berger and the many friends we found who shared our desire for justice and peace in the Middle East. There will be neither, I am convinced, until our country acts decisively to support for all peoples abroad, including the Palestinians, the same self determination, human rights and fair play that we insist upon for all Americans at home.

George V. Parmelee of East Cleveland is active in the Northeast Ohio Committee for Middle East Understanding, Ohioans for Middle East Peace and other groups working for peace and justice in the world.