Someone sent this article (I don't love the title, but it's not mine) to me, which was shocking but also not shocking at the same time. It explains a lot. I have a distinct memory of watching a Palestinian spokesperson on TV with my parents back in the 1990s and together marveling at how easily she told what we knew to be blatant lies, wide-eyed and looking at the camera while it panned from her to children dressed in rags and sitting in the dirt of a refugee camp. How she so carefully, deliberately, and convincingly portrayed herself and the others there as victims of bloodthirsty colonialist oppressors, spinning a narrative that left out facts I knew to be true, and included others I had never heard before. I remember the chill I felt thinking that this was what was being presented to the world by the journalists who were eating it all up and broadcasting it far and wide. I was in Israel in 1990-91, 1992, and 1993, but the Israel she was talking about was worlds apart from the Israel I knew; and yet this was the Israel that my friends in Ottawa, my peers across Canada, would encounter. And from then on, it was the only one they would know.
I'm going to let Gary Wexler's article stand in for a proper blog post today. I'm back in Florida and have spent much of my time so far answering emails from some of you and from a lot of strangers all over the place, from Tel Aviv to Toronto, from California to New Jersey. Almost all of them have been kind, supportive, and grateful. I now know that my blog is being read by many more people than just the original few dozen to whom I sent the link, and I'm making peace with the fact that my private thoughts are public. As I mentioned previously, I will be moving the blog to a more secure site, hopefully this week, and will post the link here for anyone who wants to keep reading.