Growing up in Asia didn't really contribute to my knowledge of anti-Western sentiment. If anything it made me less pro-West, but also the idea of East and West...unimportant. I wasn't any more comfortable in England or the States than I was in Japan or India. I liked how the roads were smoother in Seattle, and I could eat more fast food, and Saved By the Bell was on every afternoon, but even when I read Seventeen magazine and started to want everything a teenaged American girl is supposed to want, I was oblivious to the divide between East and West. I remember in seventh grade I was really bummed out when our track meet in Karachi was cancelled because of a bomb threat. It seemed to happen all the time, but I didn't really wonder why. Just some hateful people up in Pakistan...

In Alternative Voices I learned about Orientalism, and the motives behind the writings that separated a civilized West from an exotic and primitive East. In Orientalism, Edward Said writes,

So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say that Moslems and Arabs are essentially seen as either oil suppliers or potential terrorists. Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab-Moslem life has entered the awareness of even those people whose profession it is to report the Arab world. What we have instead is a series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the Islamic world presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression.

Orientalism was the foundation of everything I learned about the Middle East from then on. That's why I loved studying race and ethnicity; we can't even attempt to become global citizens if we don't understand the roots of racial and ethnic division. Hear that Whitman? My major was useful! R.I.P, Race and Ethnic Studies...

My point is....the last year or so has been a tremendous exercise in source-searching. I look back to my senior year, staring at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict section of the library before starting a paper for Middle East History, and finally getting it. I couldn't trust these books. The year before I had written a paper on Japanese internment during WWII, and had encountered a book that said it was completely justified during a time of war and heightened fear. I'm ashamed to say that as a college junior, the mere fact that this book had been published rocked my world. Now I stood in front of 60 years of conflict (or over 100 if you start with the birth of Zionism) full of wars, battles, internments, treaties, resolutions, all on one shelf...and chances were, half of it was a load of hooey. Who spoke for the East? Who spoke for the West? Who made them seem...unimportant?

After facing the IP Conflict section with horrified curiosity, the first name I looked for was Edward Said. As a Palestinian-American he bridged the East-West gap and became the top scholar on the gap itself. The more I learned, the more I learned who to trust. The ones who sacrificed their careers, reputations and safety to put peace and human rights first. Rashid Khalidi, Mahmoud Darwish, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Hanan Ashrawi, Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappe, Gideon Levy, Uri Avnery....

It's been a slow process, but I've come a long way. Up until a few years ago, I assumed that Al-Jazeera was a media outlet for terrorists. Until today, I viewed the website Electronic Intifada with suspicion, even though I know the word intifada refers to the "shaking off" of an illegal Occupation. Turns out they have a pretty stellar team.

Electronic Intifada: German firm helps Israel cement occupation with Light Rail

And a glimmer of light from Haaretz:

Thousands of Arabs and Jews Protest in Tel Aviv against Loyalty Oath Requirement