What was going on when I was born?

The 11-year-old Arab girl has freckles on her nose and wears a red ribbon at the top of a long braid that swings to and fro along her back. Her name is Amal Abu al-Jamiyya. Amal means hope. She has never seen a Jew without a gun. In the labyrinth of pathways that meander among the cold concrete houses of her slum, a refugee camp that has been under Israeli military occupation since six years before she was born, Amal sees only two kinds of Jews: uniformed soldiers and civilian settlers, usually when they are running through the camp after children who have thrown stones at Israeli cars and buses.

CHANCES are that one morning in the next month or two - maybe even this week - you will awaken with a sore throat. In most of the nation, winter is unquestionably the sore throat season, and sore throats seem to spread like so many good wishes during the highly social holiday season. Whatever the time of year, a sore throat is the single most common reason for a visit to the doctor. Yet that is no assurance that your sore throat will be properly treated. Recent studies indicate that the true cause of a sore throat is often overlooked or improperly identified, even if the doctor takes a throat culture. As a result, treatment may be misdirected, unnecessarily exposing patients to antibiotics that cannot possibly cure them. In other cases, a new study in Boston has shown, patients may be incorrectly told that their sore throats are caused by viruses and that antibiotics would not be useful. A sore throat is a symptom, not a disease. By itself, it is no more revealing than pain, itch, cough or fever. To choose the proper remedy, you and the doctor must first zero in on the probable cause.

They gather at Bill Fisher's place every Sunday. Several of them bake pies. Sometimes Mr. Fisher whips up a stew. He's 82 and still frisky. The rest of the clan has trouble keeping up with him. Most of the Fisher family members work in Des Moines for the phone company, an institution that has always had a strong umbilical cord to its work force. The Northwestern Bell Telephone Company employs four of Mr. Fisher's daughters - Sandy, Bev, Kay and Lynn - as well as a son, Bill. Kay's husband, Ken, works for the company. His brother, Vern, retired from it. Vern's wife, Freda, works for it. With the final days ticking off before the long-anticipated moment when the Bell System is officially torn apart - the 22 operating companies severed from the mother American Telephone and Telegraph Company - it is clear that the arduous two years of preparation for the dismemberment has exacted a heavy toll on the one million Bell System workers, a corporate family unlike any other in its bonds. And it is one of the prime topics at the Fisher family's Sunday gatherings.

HOLIDAY celebrations come and go, but the one that has always meant the most to me is New Year's Eve. It seems a naturally bouyant occasion, the welcoming in of a brand-new year, and for as long as I can remember, I've marked it by inviting good friends to join me for a special feast. Over the years these dinners have been so festive that I've taken to keeping a written record of the menus, illustrated with watercolors detailing the various dishes, executed by the artist and cookbook author Ed Giobbi. The book is great fun to thumb through, especially now when Recipes are on page C8. I am preparing for this year's dinner.

An article in Business Day yesterday about the Audit Bureau of Circulations misstated the organization's numberof field auditors. It is 80.

The President accepted full blame for the lack of security measures that permitted the terrorist bombing of the Marine compound in Beirut. While acknowledging that the marines were ill-prepared to deal with the Oct. 23 truck bombing that took 241 lives, Mr. Reagan said their commanders ''have already suffered quite enough'' and ought not to be punished. Officials said that a 166- page report by a special Pentagon commission that has not been made public concluded that the entire military chain of command, including admirals and generals, shares blame for failing to take proper security precautions. (Page A1, Column 6.) The American marines guarding the Beirut airport went into their highest state of alert after artillery shells landed near their compound. The alert lasted 90 minutes and, according to a spokesman, there were no American casualties. (A9:1-3.)

The United States Steel Corporation, the nation's largest steelmaker, announced today that it was closing three major plants and parts of more than a dozen others, eliminating 15,430 jobs. Most of the steelmaking facilities at Chicago's 102-year-old South Works complex will be shut, as will the Cuyahoga Works in Cleveland, a wire plant in Trenton and a specialty steel products plant in Johnstown, Pa. The closings will reduce the Pittsburgh-based company's steelmaking capacity by 16 percent, accelerating the shrinkage of the nation's major steelmakers in the face of competition from low-priced imports and the small nonunion producers that have developed in the last decade. The closings, which will be effective next April, followed weeks of efforts by the company to extract concessions from the workers that would make the plants more competitive. The company's decision will intensify the economic hardship of the steelworkers and the steel communities and is another in a long list of problems for the United Steelworkers of America. (Page D4.)

The New York Times today publishes an interview with the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, president of Operation PUSH, or People United to Serve Humanity, another in a series of interviews with candidates for the Presidency. In the interview, Mr. Jackson made these major points: Economy - He believes big corporations get tax breaks without making enough reinvestment; therefore, he would correlate the two.

A. Steven Giannell de Jannell, a psychology professor at the State University here, was outraged by violence - so much so that he devoted his professional life to the study of violent behavior and crime, so much so that he wrote letters to local newspapers denouncing aggression of any kind. ''The people have reason to pause and reflect on the state of our civilization when they hear about a mother charged with manslaughter in the beating death of her 2 1/2-year-old daughter,'' Professor Giannell wrote in an August 1978 letter to The Watertown Daily Times. ''What happened recently is only a sample of an unbelievable high incidence of child abuse that occurs every day.'' 'There Isn't Any Answer' About 10 days ago, the police say, that same Professor Giannell shot to death his 13-year-old son, Steven Jr.; shot and then stabbed to death his 16- year-old daughter, Robin, and then stabbed himself to death. ''The big question is, 'Why?' '' the Rev. Theodore Schulze asked during funeral services. ''What goes on inside people?'' The minister spoke directly to Professor Giannell's wife, Mary, as if no one else were present: ''The answer given to Job is that there isn't any answer, Mary. That might be cold comfort, but all the other answers are dangerous. So let's forget the unanswerable question 'Why?' ''

President Reagan has decided to give notice that the United States will withdraw from Unesco at the end of next year unless the group substantially alters practices that the Administration found objectionable, State Department officials said today. The formal announcement of the decision on participation in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is expected on Thursday. American diplomats have been instructed to inform foreign governments of the decision and key Congressional leaders are also being briefed, officials said.

The Citgo Petroleum Corporation announced yesterday that it had rescinded its previously announced reduction in the price it will pay for domestic crude oil. The reversal was in part a reaction to the increase in fuel prices that has been caused by recent bitterly cold weather nationwide. The Ashland Oil Corporation, which had made the same reduction, by $1.50 a barrel, to $28.50, said it was studying Citgo's action but was not yet ready to again follow Citgo's lead.

''If there is to be blame, it properly rests here in this office and with this President.