Only later did he learn that the Tarazis were a prominent Christian family of intellectuals and professionals in Gaza and that his father's cousin, Zuhdi Terzi, was the PLO's observer at the United Nations.

When Tarazi learned of his Palestinian background at 14, his first reaction was embarrassment. He thought immediately of "PLO, Yassir Arafat, every stereotype you've ever heard..."

But that began to change when he enrolled at Andover. His parents stopped hiding the strength of their feelings about Palestine, and Tarazi grew more sensitive to comments like a reference to Arafat's "dishrag headdress" in a letter to the editor of his school paper.

Over his first Christmas vacation from Andover, Tarazi sat down with his parents and insisted on learning the family history. "It was like pulling teeth," he recalls.

Learning about his background encouraged him to start telling the Palestinian side of the story to classmates at Andover. "Whether they agreed was not important," he says. "What's important was that they understood that there Was another side to the story."

An Andover grant to work with Palestinian refugees in Israel strengthened Tarazi's convictions further during his junior year.

Tarazi, then 16, made the trip over his parents' objections. "Why do you want to go back?" they asked. "We brought you to the United States to get away--to give you an education." Tarazi says his father wanted only to raise a family without the pain that went with being Palestinian. "He felt like everything he had worked for had fallen on its face," Tarazi says.

As a Harvard freshman, Tarazi joined a group of seniors in founding SAS and kept up his informal debates with classmates on Palestinian issues. He says some saw him as waging a private crusade or even as anti-Semitic. Sophomore year, he majored in Middle Eastern History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

Tarazi spent the fall semester of 1987 studying in Cairo, where he says he realized Palestinians could count on little help from their Arab neighbors.

Administrators at the American University in Cairo treated Palestinian students as "controversial people who need to be silenced as much as possible," he says. And while many Egyptians were sympathetic to his cause, Tarazi says he also encountered prejudice similar to Western anti-Semitism from cab drivers and restaurant managers. In a dispute over a fare, one driver, meaning to call Tarazi greedy, said, "don't be such a Palestinian."

The Palestinian uprising that is still in progress began that November. Hearing it discussed constantly in Cairo, Tarazi expected public interest in the Palestinian cause would rise in the United States as well. He was disappointed onreturning home. "I realized, it's me: I have tomake people sympathetic," he says.

Another spur to Tarazi's activism was the newsthat a cousin had died in the uprising, beaten todeath by Israeli soldiers. He read about it inThe New York Times.

Soon after, Tarazi won the presidency of SAS byproposing a campus publicity campaign on allegedIsraeli atrocities. The group put up informationalposters that were promptly torn down and defaced,especially in Dunster House, where the masterissued a warning to the defacers.

Tarazi sees SAS as embattled: posters forcultural events and speeches are torn down asoften as political broadsides, he says. That wasparticularly the case in SAS' campaign forQuestion 5, last fall's ballot initiative callingon U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II (D-Mass.) tosupport sanctions against Israel. Tarazi saysposters in favor of the measure were removed sofast that students finally glued them down andcoated them with clear packing tape.

The measure succeeded narrowly, to everyone'ssurprise. "Our goal was simply to educate," Tarazisays. "As Americans, we did not feel comfortablestanding by and watching."