Jewish writer and blogger Phil Weiss recently returned from Gaza. His latest report is stunning:
Over two weeks in the Middle East, I came to the idea that Israel/Palestine has become an epicenter of hatred; and hatred flows out to the outside world from both sides. The insistence that all of Palestine is Palestinian and Israel/Jewish settlement doesn’t exist has resounded in Arab countries for decades; I have heard it in Egypt and Syria. And the insistence that Palestine is Jewish is meanwhile carried by neoconservatives and Zionists into high levels of American establishment, feeding the settler movement. I’ve fought the Jewish hatred of Arabs for years on this site; and I regret nothing I have done to elevate the Palestinian narrative. It is unheard in the United States, where the Zionist narrative is embraced by politicians who parrot a racist mantra again and again at AIPAC–Israel made the desert bloom–as if Palestinians weren’t growing in the desert for millennia.
Yet I recognize from my trip that there are dangers in the Palestinian narrative. It is backward looking, and it is too large in Palestinian consciousness.
Weiss is passionate, angry, humane, critical and detailed. His journalism proves that one can be personal and political.