When I heard that actor Peter O’Toole died last year on December 12, 2013, I was sad. Mr. O’Toole was nominated for an Academy Award for a film called “Lawrence of Arabia.” Although the film was loosely based on T.E. Lawrence’s accounts of his time in the Arabian Peninsula during World War I, it was director David Lean’s depiction of the peoples of that area, in contrast to what at the time we considered civilized people are like, that sets the tone for misconceptions about what living in the Middle East is like. In the film, Lean depicts the peoples as warring tribes too intent on fighting over watering holes, and on petty arguments between tribes, instead of fighting for their own independence from the Ottoman Turks. The film has Lawrence giving the concept of a unified Arab nation, of tribes united under a common flag, of similar peoples with similar beliefs, and similar culture could not even be fathomed by the Arabs themselves. He also shows the people as backwards and manipulated by the smarter Europeans, whose only concern is using the Arabs as a sideshow to distract the Turks from helping the Germans on either front during World War I. Continue reading →