UM Arabic teacher brings Palestinian culture to students

April 12, 2007

MISSOULA – “Howdy; what neck of the woods are you from?” Colloquial greetings were some of the first parts of American culture that Palestinian-born Samir Bitar picked up when he moved to Havre, from Jerusalem in September, 1974.

He noticed the friendly nature of Montanans and appreciated the cultural similarities he found to exist in his new and old homes.

“I’m from a culture that greets,” Bitar said.

Bitar is the adjunct professor of Arabic at the University of Montana. He teaches first year Arabic with distance lecturer Dr. Nabil Abdelfattah and second year Arabic by himself.

Bitar uses his loves of language and culture to teach each one more effectively. Through his teaching he tries to make his students understand what it means to be Palestinian.

“I always say I teach language and culture,” Bitar said “Language is culture.”

Bitar sets aside time in his language classes to teach purely about Arabic culture. In some classes Birtar shows newscasts or clips of popular Middle Eastern TV shows such as “Star Academy”, the Middle East’s version of “American Idol.”

Bitar said that these shows show students something they won’t see on their local TV stations, or American television at all. He said they allow students to see a variety of Arabs and hear a variety of Arabic dialects.

“A Lebanese is nothing like a Saudi; Arabs are diverse,” Bitar said.

Teaching students Arabic culture gives them context for learning the language and lets them relate to the language. Bitar said that culture makes learning language more than just a process of memorizing. He said that students can recall the cultural context of the language and this helps them learn.

Jacob Childers, a 22-year-old UM junior is in first year Arabic. He has applied to study at the Rothberg International School in Jerusalem. He said that learning about culture helps him better understand Arabic, especially words that don’t have a direct translation to English.

“A lot of words that are used every day in Arabic make a lot more sense now,” Childers said.

One of the ways Bitar gives context to his students it to share stories about growing up Palestinian in Jerusalem such as being in the Boy Scouts and having meals with his family.

Bitar said that he feels the American media is not concerned with Palestinian culture. What they do show, they get wrong. Bitar wants to provide a real life experience that his students can relate to. “Not just sound bites,” he said.

One of Bitar’s concerns is that the media don’t show real Palestinian people. When he poses the question, many people say that have seen Palestinian refugees and terrorists in movies and on TV, but few to none recall seeing a Palestinian father with his wife and children.

“That would be too human,” Bitar said.

Bitar tells stories about being a kid growing up with the reminders of war and occupation all around him. One day he told his class about how his childhood house was bombed in the Six Day War.

Bitar described how his family and neighbors crowded in to the safest room in the house and covered the windows with sandbags. He believes that the sandbags his neighbor brought saved their lives.

Although those sandbags lessened the force of the blasts, shrapnel from an explosion hit Bitar.

He was taken to a nearby hospital and stayed overnight, but had to be moved the next day. “They burned the hospital,” Bitar said.

“I love listening to his personal stories,” said Emma Young, 23, a first year Arabic student.

Young said that learning about Palestinian culture has reinforced her belief that “certain aspects of culture are universal.”

Students often ask Bitar why there is so much conflict in the Middle East and about the Palestine-Israel conflict.

“Most Arabs feel that they’re living under governments that were put in place by colonial powers,” he said.

Bitar said that he believes one of the main problems is that Palestinians, along with many other Arabs don’t feel like their governments are a part of a progression of their own history, but rather that government is imposed on them.

This past December and January Bitar spent UM’s winter break in Jerusalem visiting his family. He dedicated several class periods to telling stories, reading from his diary, and showing pictures from the trip.

Bitar told the class about visiting two of his aunts who live in Jerusalem.

“I used to run from one house to the other when I was a little kid,” he said. Now this is impossible because of the wall Israel is building to separate its self from the Palestinian territories.

Bitar said his sister told him it would take about an hour to get to the aunt’s house inside the wall, but several hours to get back because of security checkpoints.

“It changed all aspects of life,” Bitar said. “Now all the shop keeper’s customers live on the other side of the wall.”

More than anything Bitar wants people to actively seek more knowledge about Palestine and to make up their own minds about the Palestine-Israel conflict rather than listen to the media.

“One thing I try to stress when I speak to the young is to encourage them to use critical thinking,” Bitar said, “As Americans they can. My job is to share my experience and they need to make up their own mind. The old should know that. Democracy is an activity and if we aren’t all involved it won’t work. That’s why we have what we have now.”

Bitar said that many Americans today don’t have time to be informed because, “they’re too busy trying to keep up with the Joneses, trying to make a living.”

If Americans could know one thing about Palestinians Bitar said, “They need to understand what Palestine means to the Palestinians. They know what Israel means to the Jews.”

Only this will help lead to the long-term solution of peace and coexistence, Bitar said.