Challenge at Home: Keeping War Away : Southland: Ties that bind Arabs and Jews to their homelands also can bring the Middle East’s hatreds. Americans seeking scapegoats are a problem, too.

Across the social and cultural experiment known as Southern California--where scores of nationalities from around the world have created a sprawling patchwork of coexistence--an immediate challenge of the Persian Gulf conflict is keeping peace at home.

Among the region’s millions are 700,000 Jews and 300,000 Arab-Americans--Iraqis, Kuwaitis, Palestinians, Jordanians and others. While they are united in concern for friends and loved ones in the Middle East, their common ground abruptly ends there. They watch the war with wildly contrasting self-interests, and in some cases allow centuries of bad feelings, misdeeds and distrust slowly to bubble to the surface.

“Whenever there is a confrontation among countries, naturally the people with roots in those countries feel the tensions,” said Don Bustany, a radio producer of Lebanese descent who is president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee. “War is doing what war does, which is causing a tremendous amount of distress among all kinds of people.”

Nadia Saad Bettendorf, a Palestinian high school teacher who lives in Orange County, was reminded last week of just how close to home the war can come. While grocery shopping in La Mirada, she watched as two Arabic-speaking women were spotted by a couple of other shoppers.

“I feel like kicking their . . . !” Bettendorf heard one shopper fume. The shopper, she said, then followed the two Arab-American women, cursing them as they pushed their cart down a store aisle.

“Everybody is on edge, and that is understandable,” said Bettendorf. “But I hope it doesn’t get out of hand.”

Maher Hathout, an Egyptian-American and leader at the Islamic Center of Southern California, which has many Arab-Americans among its members, warned that the conflict presents “a real test of whether we are serious about American Muslim identity or not.

“We are Muslims, and we are Americans. We are neither Iraqis, nor Pakistanis, nor Egyptians,” he said. “In this hall, you have the Iraqis and the Kuwaitis sitting side by side. We look at the problem from an American Islamic perspective; otherwise the community would fall apart.”

It is a difficult standard. The small Kuwaiti community in Southern California, for instance, supports the United States in the conflict and is hopeful Kuwait will be restored. Some find it hard to control their excitement. Iraqis, however, resent the bombing of Baghdad and blame their Kuwaiti and Saudi neighbors as much as Saddam Hussein. They feel betrayed.

Palestinians, dispersed throughout the Middle East, view themselves as victims once again, but some of them also hold hope. Will this war bring them a homeland at last?

Many Jews are horrified by the attacks on civilians in Israel, causing them to look suspiciously on their Arab neighbors.

On top of all this, many Southern Californians with no connection to the Middle East are angry at being pulled into another distant war. They are eager for a scapegoat. Even local Armenians are anxious about a war that they fear could spill into Turkey and involve Kurds living there. Local leaders estimate that 30,000 Armenians live in Iraq, about half of those in Baghdad.

“If there is bombing going on in Baghdad and Iraq, there are innocent Armenians who are not necessarily in favor of fighting who are going to be victims,” said Berdj Karapetian, executive director of the Glendale-based Armenian National Committee Western Region.

A common belief in God is seen by many as the only glue that can hold together the increasingly fragile collection of Southern Californians anguishing over the Middle East.

On Sunday night, hundreds of Jews, Christians and Muslims gathered at St. Vincent Roman Catholic Church in South Los Angeles for the second of a series of interfaith services that its organizers hope will unite Southern Californians of all nationalities in a quest for peace. Last week, the groups prayed in a mosque, and this Sunday they will meet at Leo Baeck Temple in Bel-Air. “For every drop of Muslim, Christian and Jewish blood that is shed in the ongoing madness, we feel sad,” said Necva Ozgur, a Turkish-American Muslim who spoke at the service. “And when we are sad, we turn our faces to God in agony, but also in hope.”

Rabbi Leonard Beerman, a long-time peace activist and an organizer of the interfaith effort, acknowledged the group’s task grows more difficult with each day of war.

“I think these services are a way of bridging the tension between us,” Beerman said. “I just hope this connection is something that can grow and deepen, and survive the devastation and trauma and tension that a war like this produces.”

Galal Abdelwahab, an Egyptian-American from Riverside, said most Arab-Americans in Southern California worry more about the so-called mainstream society than about Jews, other Arabs or people of faith. Abdelwahab, who was in Los Angeles for a seminar on the gulf crisis at the Islamic Center, said most Southern Californians are ill-informed about the war in the Middle East.

“Maybe our governments are divided in the Middle East, but we as Muslims are not,” Abdelwahab said. “As a minority person, I feel for the Jew. Everyone is entitled to justice. What does it matter whether you are Jew or Arab, you shouldn’t hurt people.”

Muslims without an immediate stake in the Middle East conflict--those from non-Arab countries--say they too have become the victims of prejudice and racism from Southern Californians who have come to equate Islam with Saddam Hussein and Iraqi terrorism. Jahan Stanizai, a Muslim who fled war-torn Afghanistan 10 years ago, said Muslims have been unfairly singled out by friend and foe alike.

“To tell you a sad comment, it is not a polite comment, that I heard from a friend,” Stanizai said. “She said, ‘So what if they are killing the Muslims, all they do is hold their butts in the air and pray.’ Religion is something private to people. How they pray is none of anybody’s business.”

Salam Al-Marayati, an Iraqi born leader of the local Muslim community, blames the FBI for fostering prejudice throughout the country toward Arab-Americans of all faiths. Al-Marayati said that by questioning Arab-American leaders about potential terrorist plans, the FBI has “initiated fear and apprehension.”

Times staff writer Doug Smith contributed to this story.