{"id":82068,"date":"2020-01-18T12:25:25","date_gmt":"2020-01-18T19:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=82068"},"modified":"2020-01-20T15:03:44","modified_gmt":"2020-01-20T22:03:44","slug":"a-prolegomenon-to-my-first-sojourn-in-the-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2020\/01\/a-prolegomenon-to-my-first-sojourn-in-the-middle-east.html","title":{"rendered":"A Prolegomenon to My First Sojourn in the Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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\"Near<\/a>
I have seen this signpost many times during visits to the vicinity of the United Nations observation post on Mount Bental in the Golan Heights.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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I posted a light item yesterday (\u201cA couple of songs from my first residence in the Middle East\u201d<\/a>) about my first stay in the Middle East, which occurred way back in the first half of 1978. \u00a0(That was 42 years ago. \u00a0Forty-two years! \u00a0As the saying goes, I didn\u2019t realize that getting old would take so little time.)<\/p>\n

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Anyway, I might as well continue a little bit in that nostalgic and autobiographical vein.<\/p>\n

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I grew up in California, in a family on the fringes of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>, with a marginally active mother and a non-member father. \u00a0Like most Latter-day Saints of the time and, for that matter, like most Americans of the period, I was naturally, almost instinctively, an admirer and an enthusiastic supporter of Israel.<\/p>\n

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At this point, it seems appropriate to cue the dramatic 1960 theme from the film Exodus<\/em>, which centered on the founding of the modern State of Israel and which starred, among others, Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Sir Ralph Richardson, Peter Lawford, Lee J. Cobb, and Sal Mineo:<\/p>\n

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