“My blood is boiling!” the woman snapped.

And it really must have been. From 30 feet away, I could see she was trembling with the boiling blood flowing through her veins. Her voice quivered and cracked as she spoke. It would be a terrible way to die.

My blood suddenly ran cold. I was surprised, embarrassed and deeply saddened by her acute anger. I knew this woman. She was a member of my Rotary club, whom I’d just finished giving a presentation to about my recent trip to Israel and Palestine. She was a Jew and I had offended her. I stood silent at the podium while she railed away at me.

“You’re totally biased and sympathetic to the Palestinians,” she said accusingly.

She was right. I was biased and sympathetic, but I believed I had good reasons for that and hadn’t I confessed my biases during my talk? I glanced down at my notes.

My views and opinions are my own and I would be a liar if I told you that they were not biased and shaped by my personal experiences and especially by this most recent journey.

I wanted to interrupt her and ask if being a Jew perhaps made her biased in anyway toward the Israelis. But I remained silent. I didn’t want to throw anymore fuel on the fire that had already brought her blood to a boil. I’d come here to inform not incite, to promote peace not create hatred. Apparently, I had failed quite miserably.

She finished her rant and sat down. The room of about 100 people was silent. You could hear my breathing in the microphone.

Then another woman stood up. I didn’t know her. She had come as a guest that day. She introduced herself, informing everyone that she was Lebanese. She had come to America in 1979 and become a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Everyone in the room knew that the Israeli military had recently agreed to a UN-brokered cease-fire with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The cease-fire ended a month-long bombing campaign that had killed more than 1,000 Lebanese and displaced hundreds of thousands of others who fled into the mountains or across the border into neighboring Syria.

“You are biased,” the Lebanese woman said looking up at me. She was at one of the tables at the front of the room and I could see quite clearly her large brown eyes. “But aren’t we all?” she asked rhetorically, turning to the rest of the room. “I just want to say that never in my 27 years here in America have I ever heard an American talk about the Middle East nor the Palestinian situation in such an unbiased manner.”

She sat down and the room was silent again. I should have felt vindicated, but didn’t. I felt vulnerable and just wanted get out of there. I felt trapped at the podium and obligated to say something to wrap up the whole experience that everyone in the room—and especially myself—had just been through. But I was speechless. My ears were ringing and I felt shaky from the adrenaline rush. The club President came to my rescue and said some final words. I don’t recall what exactly; something about the need for ongoing dialogue and understanding to achieve peace in such a conflicted and complicated region. He thanked me for coming to present to the club and bestowed upon me a silver medallion with the Rotary 4-Way Test inscribed on it.

Of the things we think, say or do:

1. Is it the TRUTH?

2. Is it FAIR to all concerned?

3. Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?

4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

That concluded the program. Those who had been offended by my talk abruptly stalked out of the room in a huff, perhaps thinking that I had been unfair, that I didn’t know what I was talking about, that I was dead wrong. But others remained and clapped their hands. Some came up to personally thank me, pumping my hand up and down perhaps in an attempt to re-inflate my obviously sunken spirits. I was fair, they said. I was clearly knowledgeable. I was right on. “And don’t mind that Jewish woman,” one of my fellow Rotarians instructed me. “She’s the one who’s biased.”

But I did mind. I’d underestimated just how high and strong the barriers were for many Americans to accept anything less than a very pro-Israeli view when it came to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There was a wall between us and I’d just smashed into it with the naïveté of a crash-test dummy.

But “pro-Israeli” wasn’t quite right. I recognized the State of Israel and believed in its right to securely exist and prosper. Perhaps that made me “pro-Israeli” too. But I also believed that the existence of Israel and its security and prosperity could not be at the detriment of the Palestinians, which it clearly had been and continued to be. Perhaps that made me “pro-Palestinian.”

Whatever I was, I wasn’t a Palestinian. But I’d lived with a Palestinian and I’d just been to Palestine and to Israel where I’d spent hundreds of hours interviewing everyday people on both sides of the bloody conflict. Indeed, this was the source of my bias, but it was also a way of knowing and with that knowledge came consciousness and with that consciousness came responsibility—responsibility for what I would think, what I would say and what I would do in this world.

©Scott Dewing