Newsfeed
Printer-Friendly ModeProfessor returns from Middle East, shares experience with students
September 11, 2006 —
As tens of thousands of people fled the war-torn Middle East last month, SVSU adjunct political science professor Jim Johnson arrived in Tel Aviv, Israel ready to document his two-week journey so that he could bring his personal account back to his students.
"The best education I've ever had in my life is first-hand experience in other countries," Johnson says. "I think it would be wonderful if my journey influences my students to travel the world and see things for themselves. You have two choices in life; you have the choice to be a passive player and learn about the world through books, and that's useful, but there is nothing that can compare to going out and drinking it in first-hand."
Johnson left for the Middle East Aug. 11 and returned Aug. 23. While overseas, he traveled from the northern Israeli cities of Haifa and Nazareth to the Syrian border and later to the Lebanese border.
Johnson witnessed the final days of the 34-day war, which began on July 12 after two Israeli soldiers were captured and eight killed by border-raiding Hezbollah militants.
"Within 24 hours I was into the war zone and air raid sirens were wailing," Johnson said. "I planned to rent a car and drive north, but you couldn't find anybody willing to rent vehicles going into the zone. So I finally found a source willing to rent a car. It was two brothers with a fleet of one rental car."
Johnson traveled with two 35 mm SLR cameras, and he plans to use a combination of still photographs and audio recordings for his classroom presentations. He believes the effect on his students should be dramatic.
He will use the current tensions in the Middle East to demonstrate his beliefs about the shifting atmosphere of international politics due to the increasing power of non-governmental organizations like Hezbollah.
"Contrary to what President Bush said while I was over there, Israel did not win the war," Johnson said. "He wasn't there. Israel did not win the war. This ceasefire did not call for the disarmament of Hezbollah. Iran and Syria are rearming Hezbollah, and it's a new day in the Middle East because now you've got Iran backing non-governmental entities like Hezbollah and the United States, of course, financing Israel. And they're waging wars that they wouldn't be able to otherwise. It's remarkably different from the world I was raised in, where tensions were instead between major superpowers."
Johnson says this travel experience has given him a new perspective on the likelihood of peace in the Middle East.
He believes peace is possible, but does not believe the United States will be responsible for it occurring. He has concluded that current U.S. polices in that region are counterproductive, making U.S. credibility too low to be influential.
"We wonder why they hate us," Johnson says. "And you sit there and you look up and you watch American-made F-16's fly over and drop American-made bombs, killing civilians in Lebanon who have nothing to do with Hezbollah, and then we question why it is that they're not fond of us? That's remarkable.”