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Conflict in Middle East isn't TV show

By ELIJAH GOSIER
Published July 23, 2006

Bader Sharabati has gone from sadness to outrage. From angry to hopeful. His emotions have repeated that circuit in the past few days. Along the way, frustration has sat in the seat beside him.

His life would be much simpler if real life played out like television shows, in which no matter what format, characters and story lines are sketched in black and white.

There are good guys and bad guys. They stand starkly contrasted, with nothing discernible between heroic and dastardly. In the end, the hero always subdues the villain, and all is right with the world. So what if the good guy's path to victory left a body count?

No big deal. They were not part of the story. They were extras. Faceless, nameless extras. No one mourned for them. They were just part of the scenery.

But life is not a television show.

Sharabati knows that in life, good and evil often bleed into each other. He knows that heroes and villains are not absolute roles, but often are the same characters viewed from different vantage points. He knows that in life, the anonymous bodies that are often byproducts of their clashes really do have faces and names, even stories of their own and families who mourn for them.

In the past few days, Sharabati, like many other Americans, exhaled a lung full of anxiety as some of those real-life nameless extras made their way into the news. He shared the relief of many other Americans as meaningful evacuations from battered Lebanon got under way.

Sharabati, who said he came to the United States 17 years ago with $1,800, opened a smoke shop in St. Petersburg called Smoke Cheap. He expanded to include cellular phone sales, and it grew to three stores.

"I love this great country, its Constitution and its Bill of Rights," Sharabati exulted recently. "The American people are the most caring and compassionate people in the world."

His joy at seeing thousands of Americans safely removed from the danger in Lebanon is tempered, however, by the knowledge that hundreds of thousands of people facing the same peril still remain faceless extras, still in harm's way.

To Sharabati, each of those extras is a name - many of which he knows - a story, a family, a life equal in value to any of the American lives that are being plucked out of the danger zone.

That is where much of his frustration kicks in. He is frustrated that the rest of the world doesn't seem to assign as much value to the lives of innocent Lebanese trapped in the violence between Israel and the radical group Hezbollah.

"I totally disagree with what Hezbollah did," said Sharabati, referring to the capture of two Israeli soldiers, the action that triggered Israel's military response.

He said the friends he talks to several times a week who are still in the region are unanimous in their disapproval of Hezbollah's actions. He said those friends include Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, Moroccans and Turks.

"For the first time in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Arab street is not blessing what Hezbollah did," said Sharabati, who is Palestinian and spent the first half of his 37 years in Jordan.

Had the soldiers been part of an occupying force in Lebanon when they were captured, there would be widespread support for Hezbollah. But with Hezbollah venturing beyond Lebanon's borders to capture the soldiers, their action is seen even on the "Arab street" as provocative, he said.

Still, "as unanimous as they are in condemning Hezbollah, they're unified in unhappiness with the Israeli response. Two (captured) soldiers vs. 300-plus civilians?" Sharabati said, questioning the proportionality of Israel's response and the seeming reluctance of the rest of the world to condemn what he and his sampling of the Arab street consider grossly inappropriate.

He said President Bush's response, which went little beyond saying that Hezbollah should stop firing missiles and that Israel has the right to defend itself, is not impartial.

"It is viewed as favoritism, and showing favoritism in the Arab-Israeli conflict is how (the United States) contributed to the radicalization of Muslims," he said.

Sharabati said the religious and cultural differences at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which he said is the root of the crisis in Lebanon, is so deep that coexistence can be achieved only with the help from the rest of the world.

But that help is not forthcoming because most of the world views Arabs as less human than Israelis.

They have cast the Middle East conflict as a television program, and the Israelis are the good guys and Arabs are the villains.

Sharabati is frustrated the conflict seems so far from a peaceful resolution, frustrated at the relative powerlessness of an individual to change the prognosis. But the frustration does not drive him to inactivity. "I'm 100 percent against extremism," he said. "I talk to people and try to explain the Arab view. That's all I can do. I speak my heart, and this is a free country. I have learned over my 17 years here that I must speak my heart."

Somehow, after listening to Sharabati's heart for a few minutes, the black and white of television loses its appeal.

Elijah Gosier, a former Metro and Floridian columnist, will be featured twice a month in Neighborhood Times.

[Last modified July 22, 2006, 20:38:53]