Stephen Den Beste sent me an e-mail,
she mentioned nonchalantly.
Who am I kidding? I'm completely in awe of this guy.

"I am the guy who writes "USS Clueless", which you've been kind enough to
link to twice in the recent past. (Thanks!)

I know things are horrible in Israel right now, and I know that sometimes it
seems as if some Americans are blithering idiots about it.

I suspect you do know that the majority of Americans strongly support Israel
in this. Certainly I do, as you can tell by what I've written. But it is the
nature of our society that there will always be cranks and always be
disagreement, and sometimes the minority voices are the loudest.

Pay them no mind; they will not be influencing American foreign policy in
any significant way for the forseeable future."

Thank you for your heartwarming e-mail. I know most Americans are with us. Bish has a lot of professional colleagues and clients in the U.S. and he gets loads of wonderful, supportive e-mails.

We Jews have this weird craving for acceptance. I suppose it comes from hundreds of years of groveling to the local nobleman so he wouldn't kick us out, if we were lucky, or, more likely, slit our throats. So if someone thinks we're in the right, we find it hard to believe!

I appreciate the wide range of opinions freely aired in American society. That's the whole point isn't it? We also have that here. I have friends who are so left-wing they think we should find somewhere else to live and I also have friends in West Bank settlements. You often hear Knesset members yelling at each other in the Knesset, cursing and threatening. And then they go out to have lunch together.

But it can get scary that in Western Europe, for instance, we seem to be seen by ordinary people as so very wicked.