Maryam
I have received a very nice e-mail from the lady who wrote that unfortunate article I discussed, yesterday. I'm quite ashamed that I suspected her of manipulation. This is obviously not the case.
Among other things she wrote: "I wrote my article several months ago, (although it was only published last week,) during the occupation of Jenin and shortly after own own country was shocked by the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I wrote from my heart as I grappled with national news as well as the information I was receiving from the peace activist group Gush Shalom in Israel. The information I was receiving about Jenin was more than I could bear. It broke my heart. It also broke my heart to hear of the suicide bombing at the Bar Mitzvah when that occurred.

[...] Although I was raised as a Catholic and now follow a sufi path, I married a Jewish man and am raising my 4 children Jewish. My older two children have made their Bar and Bat Mitzvah. I live in a community that is highly polarized about the conflict in Israel. My children have to deal with having a Muslim mother and a Jewish father so I have had to stretch myself to be able to see both perspectives in order to help them make sense of the widely disparate points of view they have been exposed to. What I see is that there are two histories. There is the history from the perspective of the Jewish people and there is also the history from the perspective of the Palestinian people. Same time period but different history. I can certainly understand your situation and the perspective from which you write..."

Fair enough. I don’t need everyone to hold my view. But it’s nice for someone who holds another view to be able to listen to my side of things.