Pete Stauber went on a Congressional tour of Israel. As I recall he walked down to touch the Jordan River while saying the government of Bibi Netanyahu was our most important ally in the Middle East. As a Congressman I’ll have my own perspective about our most important Middle eastern ally.
The first really big book I read was James Michener’s The Source. Michener was a world citizen if ever there was one. His 1000 page works of historical fiction took up a lot of space on a book shelf. The Source was about Israel and my last year in high school learning more about that corner of the world led me to stick my nose in a formidable wall of paper and ink. I only got half way through it that summer but the next year I picked it up again and polished it off. The book about the discoveries of fictitious archaeologists digging through a hill, a tell, built through generations of people from the stone age to the modern era living near a spring.
Since that time I’ve relied on non fiction for my history but the introduction of the archaeologists at the beginning was charming. To the surprise of the book’s modern day narrator there was an Arab academic in the mix of diggers. The narrator was surprised to see a Muslim working side by side with Jewish Israelis. They all found the surprise of the American narrator charming. Why of course the Palestinians and Israeli’s got along famously. Until the didn’t in fifty years of news coverage.
So here are two of my Not Eudora columns the first, Eve of Destruction, from May 16, 2002.
And the second, You have my Sympathy Ilhan, written in Feb. 15, 2019
