Split Personality
I have exchanged a few more e-mails with Maryam Hand (I can't work the archives. If you want to read my former postings on this, just scroll down the page). They have been very nice e-mails. But somehow these e-mails have exhausted me more than a month’s intense blogging.

This blog is not a discussion. You don’t like what you read, you go read something else. I reckon all three of my non-family-member readers are basically pro-Israel.

The exchange with Maryam brought me back down to Earth. I was forced to face a fact, which although isn’t news to me, I have been repressing – most pro-Palestinian Westerners are decent, well-meaning people (even if they’ve got their facts a bit mixed up). I know quite a lot of them, for goodness sake. And I’ve been avoiding them like the plague.

These are insecure times. I need to be around people who see things as I do. I feel safer this way. Pro-Palestinians terrify me. I’m terrified they will succeed. The funny thing is that I believe that if they could see what I can see, they would be terrified too.

Most of them really believe that the Palestinians will make do with the territories, and that if they get their little state all hostilities and violence will cease. I can’t blame them. I believed this too, until I was force fed with evidence to the contrary.

But not all pro-Palestinians are benign. The really scary ones are the ones that think that Israel should just go away. We’ve stolen Arab land and we’ve got to go. Evaporate. That’s probably why they make us out to be wicked. It makes their argument so moral, us being the ultimate evil.

Take a look what this woman has to say. She’s no lady, she’s a linguist (Oh, no! not linguists again. What is it with these people?). I had been reading her article and jotting down lots of witty comments. It really tired me out. I finally packed it in and pushed it out of my mind.

Coming back to it, I see that everything I wrote is just petty. The problem is not with the details, it’s with the basic assumption. This woman sees Israel’s intentions and actions as inherently evil. This, funnily enough, doesn’t prevent her from living and working in Israel. She is a professor at Tel Aviv and Utrecht Universities (Fred Lapides, who supplied me with this latest manifestation of this woman’s political prowess also supplied me with an e-mail Reinhart@post.tau.ac.il, which is a Tel Aviv University address).

When I read Maryam Hand’s article, I intuitively sensed a receptive ear that I could write to. With regard to this woman – well, I see no point in writing to her. She’s nothing but a poisonous witch.

Delving deeper, I found her home page, generously supplied by Tel Aviv University (and my tax money?). And what do I see here? “Thesis Supervisor, Prof. N. Chomsky”. Aha! So there you have it. I knew it! It’s a plot! He’s brainwashed them all. Here you will find some chapters in this woman’s book, due out Sept. 2002. And here’s a whole load of her articles. I haven’t read them, although they all look just as horrible. I’ve had enough of her.

Give me the Maryam Hands of this world. God save us all from the Tanya Reinharts.