How a Pro-Palestinian American Kidnapped in Lebanon Became a Jew

In her young twenties, Debra Balson* was an idealistic pro-Palestinian American who moved to Lebanon to fight for the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). She didn’t realize what she had actually signed up for until it was too late. Debra has made the difficult decision to share her story now “because the world has to know the truth.”

Debra was born in France to an American Christian military family, the oldest girl of five children. In the 1960s, when Debra was nine years old, the family moved to Libya.

Her family lived off-base on the far side of Tripoli in an international neighborhood where they were one of the few Christian American families. The neighbors consisted mostly of Arab Muslims. Debra played in the streets with Muslim children.

While they went to church each Sunday, Debra was always bored and hated going, and didn’t connect to this watered-down version of religion. But she did wear a cross around her neck at all times.

One day, a Muslim child in the street grabbed the cross from around her neck and threw it to the ground while calling her an Air Force brat. “I had to learn how to fight, especially because I was a girl,” Debra explains. “As an American girl, I was viewed as promiscuous and less than, simply because I was American.”

A gang of notorious boys always roamed the neighborhood. They ranged in age from 7 to 20 and would search for girls to violate in the streets. There were no cops around to call for help. Debra learned to protect herself by using branches to ward off these attackers.

“If you don’t fight back, it’s a sign of weakness and they will attack stronger. You must fight back. Even if you lost, they respected the fact that you tried, and often would not attack again. After I fought back a couple of times, they started to leave me alone. That’s how it goes when you are an American kid in a Muslim country.”

Dad came home and announced, “You have two hours. Pack your bags, we are leaving.”

There were other American kids who lived across the street from Debra but they never went outside the walls of their house because they feared for their safety.

Debra can recall a time when her parents went out one night. They hired two blonde American sisters to babysit. “A few men in the neighborhood who were in their twenties got drunk and tried to break down the door to get into the house. They knew my parents were out and there were no men to protect us. We barricaded the door with the couch, got out baseball bats and waited for my parents to return.”

Debra’s father informed the Air Force about the episode and it never happened again.

“There were some Arab Muslims who were wonderful and hospitable and would give you the shirts off their backs,” says Debra, “but most of the neighborhood was extremely anti-American.”

During the Six-Day War in 1967 the Army decided to evacuate civilians because the environment was dangerous. “Dad came home and announced, ‘You have two hours. Pack your bags, we are leaving.’”

He hid his uniform with his wife’s large dress because there were riots in the streets of Tripoli due to the war.

“It was mayhem. I saw someone throw a man off a building and others chasing people wildly on the street. We took a detour and made it onto the base. We flew in C130 cargo planes that were equipped for paratroopers. I was 12 when we escaped.”

The family eventually made it to Mississippi, and her father was able to join them there a few months later.

Getting Swept Up in the Pro-Palestinian Cause

Debra’s father decided he wanted to end his military service and completed his final year of service in Vietnam. After that, he went back to school and made a new life for their family in Texas.

While in Texas, Debra remembered what it was like to be a foreigner and helped foreign high school students integrate. “I was Muslim-friendly because I grew up in Libya and I knew the unspoken rules of conduct.”

She continued helping students well into college where Debra met and started dating a guy that would later become her husband.

Farhad convinced Debra to attend a meeting for the DFLP, an organization for Arab students in the U.S. and Canada. There was a call for fighters during the Lebanese Civil War.

“Farhad* was a Palestinian. He was also a Communist. He was a very intense person and I got all caught up in the pro-Palestinian cause. I believed him when he told me that Jews had taken their land and that they had been displaced. He would talk to you for hours until you agreed with him. There was no arguing with him.”

While dating, Farhad convinced Debra to attend a meeting for the DFLP. This was an organization for Arab students in the U.S. and Canada. There was a call for fighters during the Lebanese Civil War. Debra decided to go to Lebanon with her boyfriend. Since she was alienated from her family at that time, they viewed her as a perfect candidate.

Once in Lebanon, Debra and her boyfriend tried to convince terrorists that they needed to change their message if they wanted the world to align with them. “We would talk to the terrorists who hijacked a bus full of kindergarteners and tell them that it was not a good tactic.”

They tried to convince terrorists who would kill children or push an old man in a wheelchair off a boat that it wasn’t a message that worked. Debra urged the fighters to leave civilians alone and instead attack the military.

The group viewed her and her boyfriend as a threat. Debra and Farhad soon realized that the DLFP was trying to kill him. “The way it works there is if they don’t like what you’re saying, you will ‘accidentally’ die and be promoted as a martyr.”

For example, when Debra first arrived, they watched two men fighting. “One guy spit on the other. A couple weeks later, the guy that did the spitting was found dead. They pushed him to the frontline of war and abandoned him there.”

Needless to say, Farhad and Debra’s message wasn’t penetrating, and the group viewed her and her boyfriend as a threat. They split them up and Debra was given a new identity. “They would give people fake IDs from a town that had been burned. Buildings that held official records were burned all the time. There is no one to check records because there are no records to check. So, voila! They issued a new ID.”

Kidnapped

Even though the DFLP was actively trying to kill her boyfriend, they wanted to keep Debra alive because she was an American and was valuable for propaganda purposes. The couple decided it was time to leave and sought refuge at Farhad’s parents’ house in Tyre. At one point, when her boyfriend was not home, five guys entered the house to take Debra. Farhad’s brother did nothing to protect her and she was kidnapped.

Five guys entered the house to take Debra. Farhad’s brother did nothing to protect her and she was kidnapped.

Debra explained, “When the DFLP came to get me from my boyfriend’s house, they didn’t break into the house. All they had to do was come in as for a visit and say they were there to take me back. It’s like the mafia, you don’t refuse.”

While being kept hostage, an Associated Press reporter approached Debra and “helped” her call home. The reporter phoned the house and Debra’s father picked up. The reporter said cryptically, “Little lost girl in Lebanon.”

“Thank God my dad answered the phone,” Debra said. “At least my parents knew where I was.”

While in captivity, Debra discovered from reading their books and newspapers that the Palestinian Arabs had never governed Israel.

When she shared this observation with someone, he said, “Never say that to a Palestinian.”

At one point in her captivity, Debra was placed with a group of women in Beirut.

The journalist from the Associated Press had asked her to keep a diary. In the middle of the night, she saw someone come into her room to steal her diary, and then replaced it.

Debra soon realized they were going to try to claim she was a spy and kill her. She had to leave immediately.

When Farhad went home he realized Debra had been taken hostage in Beirut.

Debra’s fake Lebanese ID

Farhad’s aunt had a house in Beirut. Debra was being hidden in the DFLP headquarters. Farhad contacted DFLP and somehow convinced them to let Debra leave and go back to his home in Tyre.

Debra explained, “He had some type of leverage with them and had incredible powers of persuasion.”

Escape

They went back to Tyre together and made an exit plan. Because the airport was shut down, the only way to escape was by harbor which was too risky. When the airport miraculously opened, Debra dressed in a full hijab with only her eyes peeking out and left late at night for the airport.

Debra had to marry her boyfriend in Lebanon so he could acquire a visa to get back into the US. If he stayed in Lebanon he would have been killed.

After the wedding and some bribery, they were given the visas and papers with the proper stamps that made them legitimate. The newlyweds left and made it to Greece, and eventually arrived in Texas, where they lived together.

Returning to Texas was a major culture shock for Debra. When people complained about their minor inconveniences, she felt numb. She said, “I had just returned from a war zone and frequent brushes with death.”

In Texas, Debra began to process her experiences in Lebanon. She had been passionate about fighting for the Palestinian and Communist causes but her continued research showed her that the Palestinian cause was built on a lie and that Communism doesn’t work. She felt her foundation had been pulled out from under her.

“I still loved my husband and tried to convince him that what he believed was not correct.” Her words fell on deaf ears. They lived together somewhat harmoniously because they were both working and in school full time and barely interacted.

The Final Straw

After five years, Farhad suggested they have children “for the Palestinian cause,” meaning to bear children who would give their lives for Palestinians. Farhad made it clear his intentions were to raise a family who would fly back to Lebanon and fight or have children that would try to indoctrinate Americans against Israel. Essentially he wanted his future children to do anything to fight for the Palestinian cause.

Farhad’s worldview remained in line with most of the people they had interacted with in Lebanon. “When we first arrived in Lebanon, I was taken to a camp for DLFP. A nine-year old kid came in and said he wants to be a fighter. His mother came by later to bring him home. They say, ‘No, he’s already enrolled.’”

That was the final straw for Debra and she finally divorced Farhad. He tried to convince her to stay but Debra was adamant. For several months post-divorce Farhad would follow her to the grocery store or whenever she went out, but she eventually moved to another city and he didn’t pursue her further.

Hitting Rock Bottom

Once she was on her own, Debra’s life took a bad turn. She started dating another guy who was into drugs and then Debra got into drugs herself. She was so addicted to cocaine that her weight dropped to 85 pounds. She had officially hit rock bottom.

Desperate for change, she prayed from the depths of her soul, “God, if you are real, please take this from me. I can’t stop this myself. I need you to take this addiction from me.”

Debra described that the next morning, she woke up with no compulsion to do drugs that day. “Somehow, the desire was gone.”

Debra was flabbergasted. That moment gave her the strength to walk away from her boyfriend and start over. She moved back in with her parents, determined to turn over a new leaf.

“But I had zero emotions. I remembered thinking that even if my mom died, I would have no wherewithal to have any emotion whatsoever. I was so numb inside, it was as if I had died. That was profoundly painful.”

Debra started attending an evangelical church and began to heal. She was offered a job in Norway, and met a Danish man there. They got married, and adopted a little girl from India.

Together, they attended another church where a man named David Lund was the Lutheran pastor.

“In Norway, in the winter, the sun never comes up. So all there was to do was study the Bible. The pastor took us through the five books of Moses and supplemented the study with a text from Joseph Telushkin, a Jewish commentator. He wanted his participants to see the Bible through the original lens of Judaism.”

The Bible made a lot of sense to Debra, “The Bible states that God is One and that there is no other. It also mentions not to add to or subtract from the Bible.” She thought, Well, lots of people are adding to the Bible here, and how do you smash three gods into One?

When Debra spoke privately to the pastor about her questions, he didn’t seem to have any answers for her.

Jewish Odyssey

A few months later, Debra and her husband decided to move back to the U.S. for the resources to help their special-needs daughter. There, they attended a new church but at that point, nothing was resonating with her. As she continued reading her Bible, she felt that God wanted her to convert to Judaism. Debra was inspired to pray again.

It was a long process, but ultimately they converted as a family and today are living their lives as Jews.

“Okay God, I have the feeling you want me to convert to Judaism. But number one, that’s scary to me because I only know one Jew. If that’s the case, God, You are going to have to make that clear to me and I will need two forms of verification that are independent of each other. And one of them needs to come from my husband.”

One evening shortly after, Debra was talking with her husband and he said, unprompted, “Judaism might be interesting, maybe we should take some classes…” Her daughter also seemed interested in Judaism. It was a long process, but ultimately they converted as a family and today are living their lives as Jews. They have been married for 32 years.

After her conversion, Debra discovered that her mother was a rabid antisemite.

“While lighting candles one Friday night, my mom spat out, ‘I hope Yasser Arafat wins.’”

She wasn’t fazed by her mother’s hatred. “Truth is divisive in a world of lies. That’s why Jews are targets—because we are bearers of the Torah, which is the truth and light of the world. Those who want darkness will attack. They want to extinguish that light.”

Although Debra’s story resembles the plot of a thriller novel, she actually lived through all this, undergoing much darkness until she found the light.

*Pseudonym is being used