See Only What You Intend to See
Phil Weiss is back home from a very quick trip to Israel. Israel is "the world's worst country", he says (twice).
During his trip he managed to see only the things he intended to see: Palestinians who hate Israel's occupation, but none who hate Jews. Israelis who demonstrate against the occupation, but none who see complexity. Masses of Israelis (he seems not to have talked with any of them beyond a passing grunt) who are blind to reality and can't see the Truth, but none with a feeling of history. He saw cardboard figures galore, as he and his readership always do, but no real people. He is fully bereft of compassion for real people, but full of derision for the caricatures he imagines them to be. And he came away greatly heartened, because a handful of Jews, some Israeli and some American, see the world as he does, and this vindicated his conviction that the Zionist project is ending. He's a contemporary of the greatest moment in millennia of Jewish existence, and all he can generate is spite.
Somewhere deep down I feel for him. A bit. It can't be pleasant to be Phil Weiss.
During his trip he managed to see only the things he intended to see: Palestinians who hate Israel's occupation, but none who hate Jews. Israelis who demonstrate against the occupation, but none who see complexity. Masses of Israelis (he seems not to have talked with any of them beyond a passing grunt) who are blind to reality and can't see the Truth, but none with a feeling of history. He saw cardboard figures galore, as he and his readership always do, but no real people. He is fully bereft of compassion for real people, but full of derision for the caricatures he imagines them to be. And he came away greatly heartened, because a handful of Jews, some Israeli and some American, see the world as he does, and this vindicated his conviction that the Zionist project is ending. He's a contemporary of the greatest moment in millennia of Jewish existence, and all he can generate is spite.
Somewhere deep down I feel for him. A bit. It can't be pleasant to be Phil Weiss.
Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations
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