Re-examining the Myths by Which We Live

By John E. Thompson

I have never been to Palestine, and only recently have I come to know some people from that occupied nation, but since I was a little boy, I have heard many first-hand accounts of what it is like to live under an occupying power. My mother, a Dutch woman who emigrated to the US as an adult, endured with her family the five-year occupation of the Netherlands by the Nazis. I treasure the stories that she, my uncles and aunts have told me, because together they constitute a moving narrative about endurance, bravery, and victory over oppression.

Some of the injustices my family endured were small, such as the commandeering of their bicycles by SS troopers; others were unforgivable. The stories they tell are sweet, however, because of Holland's eventual liberation by the Allied forces—or, as most who endured the occupation insist on putting it, by the Americans.

My favorite is the story of my uncle's return home after the country's liberation. He had gone underground and joined the resistance several years before, and no one knew whether he was alive or dead. One day, unannounced, unexpected, he appeared at the door. He was wearing the uniform of the British army, in which he had been serving to liberate his country. That night, the family celebrated his safe return by dancing the hokey pokey, which my uncle had learned from his British comrades-in-arms.

Together, these stories constitute a sort of personal myth for me. I use the term "myth" in the sense of a story illustrative of bigger principles—a vivid narrative that helps me to understand such imponderables as suffering, endurance, family, and of course, war. My myth is not literal, experienced truth. It cannot be. World War II ended 20 years before I was born. My myth is, no doubt, a romantic version of what actually transpired—but I am fortunate in that the version I cherish has proven basically consistent with the facts of history.

Because of my family's involvement in World War II, my personal myth differs somewhat from the public myth held by most Americans my age, which centers around such events as Pearl Harbor, D-Day, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and, of course, the Holocaust. This myth is formed by a melding of facts and nostalgia, of history books and Life magazine photos. Like my personal myth, it is not the literal truth, but it is, in the case of World War II at least, close.

Out of this myth was born another, the myth of Israel. The myth of Israel has, I now realize, a stunningly powerful appeal in the US because it strikes so many basic chords within the Western mind: it is a haven for an historically "homeless" people, a land created to right an ancient wrong. Its very existence is evidence, for those who suffer guilt at the historical treatment of the Jews, of the expiation of their sins.

The popular image of Israel resonates with religious imagery. It is a new Eden, a garden blooming in the desert. It is a place of redemption. For some Christians, the State of Israel represents nothing less than a step toward the apocalyptic culmination of history and the Second Coming of Christ.

Each of us has a responsibility to check his myths against reality.

It is a faraway place, both exotic and familiar. It is situated in the Middle East, an area as foreign and forbidding to many Americans as the surface of Mars, yet Israel's own people are mostly Westerners of European descent. They're just like us, right? They're pioneers in a hostile wilderness, manning an outpost of Western civilization. The myth of Israel pushes a hundred buttons in the Western mind.

I have long been aware of this myth, but not particularly swayed by it, perhaps because it had little personal relevance for me. I had few Jewish friends when I was growing up. The horrors of the Holocaust made less of an impression on me than those endured by my own family and adopted countrymen. (In my mind, Anne Frank has always been not the Jewish girl who wrote The Diary, but the Dutch girl who wrote Het Achterhuis.)

Similarly, my interest in Middle East events was marginal. I remember the big events: the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Marines killed in Beirut, the Achille Lauro. I belonged to that majority of Americans who, when it comes to Middle East events, throw up their hands at the complexity of the conflicts there.

"It's not my concern", I thought. "They've gotten themselves into this mess, let them get out of it. They've all got blood on their hands."

This was the perception I carried with me until last year, when I applied for a temporary position replacing an art director on maternity leave from a magazine publisher of whom I'd never heard. "Go home and read these first, " said the editor, handing me some back issues. "You don't want to be working for a magazine with which you don't agree." The magazine was the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. I took the issues home and read them. "Okay," I thought, "these guys have their angle. No problem." Having no strong opinions on the subject, I took the job.

I soon saw that the magazine was an honorable enterprise, and it seemed to have the facts to back up its assertions, but I assumed that a good portion of the story was being left out. Most small magazine publishers, at least in Washington, have a pet issue to tout, a personal crusade. I reasoned that, had I taken a job with AIPAC instead (an organization I learned about after starting work at the Report), I'd be getting the other, just as valid, side of the story. This assumption is a common one, I think, among those of us who are too confused, or too busy, or too tired, to sort out anything beyond our laundry.

Stories I Had Heard Before

What I could not dismiss, however, were the first-hand accounts of daily life under occupation in Palestine. The reports came from a part of the world I'd never seen and knew very little about, but these were stories I had heard before. My own mother had told me what it was like to be stopped in the street to show her papers to a soldier, what it was like to huddle for hours behind drawn curtains during curfews, to endure capricious harassment, searches and raids.

Reports of the same abuses being poured on the Palestinians hit home with me. I began to wonder if there was, indeed, blood on the hands of all parties in the Middle East. Whose blood was it? How and why had it been spilled?

Working on a magazine, one has to read every story in every issue, over and over again, in the process of creating it. Inevitably, the full import of what one is reading sinks in. I began to realize that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute could not be dismissed as a conflict between parties putting a different spin on the same facts. When I heard Martin Peretz, editor of The New Republic, categorically deny on television that a huge percentage of Israel's land is reserved for ownership by Jews alone, I realized that either he was lying or we were.

So who was telling the truth about Israel's policies toward its citizens, its practices in the occupied territories, and the validity of its claim to those territories? If it was why were so many Americans silent? Why was the US funding an illegal occupation seemed in no way to benefit US interests? Was it possible that an entire nation could be fooled about transgressions so blatant?

The answer to the latter question came with the military operation called Desert Storm. I remain undecided today about its wisdom or justice, but it taught me deal about how completely people what they choose to believe—in other words, about the power of myth.

No matter what one's stand on that war, our victory did not warrant the parades all-around orgy of self-congratulation that followed it. The Iraqi people paid, and are still paying, an incredible price for the transgressions of their leader. All Americans regardless of our individual stands purpose on the or necessity of the war, should have bowed our heads in grief over its terrible toll.

But we wanted, instead, to kiss strangers in Times Square, while tickertape rained down and cheers filled the air, the did at the close of World War II. We wanted to revive the myth of America as selfless defender of the civilized world. That myth had credence on V-E day but not on the day we came home from Desert Storm, an operation that was less a battle than an incredibly sudden and violent mopping-up operation performed in accordance with a n mix of moral values and self-serving goals.

I doubt that any of us can or should live without our myths. They give us strength and wisdom. But each of us has a responsibility to check his myths against reality. When I began to question the myth of Israel, it took a surprisingly small amount of probing to bring the whole structure crashing down.

I believe now that our foreign policy toward Israel is guided by a powerful myth fueled by the work of lobbyists, by collective guilt over past events, and by all of the symbolic and religious connotations evoked by the mere name of that state. If a maturing individual has the responsibility to measure from time to time, the myths he treasures against reality, and adjust his conduct accordingly, certainly we as a maturing nation have to measure the facts as they are revealed against the principles by which we live and adjust our foreign policy accordingly.

With this issue, John E. Thompson is leaving his position as acting art director of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs for graduate studies in the Netherlands and the United States.