Wow, those must have been some badass Jews!

I had a WASPy friend at college in NYC in the early 1980s who told me that although people often mistook her for Jewish because of her looks, she was really glad not to be, because Jews are blah blah blah. (I think it was "neurotic" and "too intense" – trailing off into "well, you know!") It was one of the few times I heard an American say something obviously anti-Semitic. Now 20 years later that friend is married to a Jewish guy and writes about race and ethnicity. I am sure she doesn't even remember saying what she said when she was nineteen.

I lived in Egypt for a year in 1983, took up with an Egyptian from the elite, and married him; at some point in that brief marriage I wrote a short story set in Alexandria that I could not publish today as is. The crowd scenes of Arabs on the docks are Orientalist, "essentialist", mocking and full of a kind of tourist-guide superiority that makes me shudder now. I would not want my Arab-American literary colleagues to read such characterizations of the Arab street. My view then was shaped by my own callow Americanness and the sheltered, elitist world of the Egyptians I knew, who were all children of diplomats, cabinet ministers and financiers. My middle class/upper middle class background showed like dirty underdrawers.

People change. Unfortunately, since 9/11, American culture overall has regressed – the improved attitude towards Arabs I saw in the 90s has given way to stereotyping and prejudice much worse than any I ever faced in the 1970s. It's now socially acceptable to fear, despise and vilify Muslims and Arabs in many "elite" and civilized circles. But I think this too shall pass.

Doris Lessing once wrote that Americans are subject to fevers – and they do pass. She was talking about the 1950s and McCarthyism – the same applies to the current anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hysteria.

Not everyone does. My in-laws experienced slave labor camps. Most of my wife's father's family were exterminated.

In the long-term, our experiences (not all as nice as yours) are not yet the norm.

There is NO guarantee that dissenters will speak to defend when the racists again come knocking. More likely, they will be afraid to or just not inclined to.

They don't have such universalistic attitudes. Consider that the Ku Klux Klan evolved from populist movements in the states.

You know, "Jews are capitalists", er "Jews are communists", er "Jews control the media", er "Jews control the banks", er "Jews killed Jesus", er "Jews rejected Allah when Allah gave the law to Moses by their worshipping the golden calf".

One can hope that the values of mutual decency are so deep that they sustain, that neither politics nor religion nor economy can deter Americans from adopting the values of universal decency.

In particular, the agitation that is suggested by discussion of "disloyalty" (misinterpretation of your discussion of "dual loyalty"), illustrates the dilemma.

Boy, THAT'S for damned sure. Just look at today's amazing story of the Rafah wall falling, all seven miles of it. As (not 'like') when the Berlin wall fell on 9 Nov 1989, the inmates behind it just wanted to come out and shop.

I love this quote: "An off-duty Hamas security officer who identified himself as Abdel Rahman, 29, said this was his first time out of Gaza. 'I can smell the freedom,' he said. 'We need no border after today.'"

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080123/D8UBH63G0.html

Of course, the lesson learnt by Mr. Rahman is that the U.S., Israel and the Quartet were his jailers; the Gazans found a little liberty by taking matters into their own hands with some people power.

All the tendentious blather about "democracy" from the U.S. and Israel rings hollow after they nullified the results of Gaza's democratic election and implemented a cruel siege.

What a cool coincidence, that Gaza Liberation Day happened to fall on Martin Luther King day in the U.S. There is a God! And he just told us that zionism is racism. As ol' Moses used to say … LET MY PEOPLE GO!