I was at a party in New York, sitting with three women. They were in real estate. Everyone was Jewish. One had just gone on a trip with our host. "Now I know him so well," she said, "I can tell when he’s going to make a joke. This glint comes into his eye, and I know it’s coming, and then I interrupt him–"
Another woman had the same experience. "It took me a couple of years to be able to read him. It’s always a corny joke–" and we all laughed, knowing him.
I nodded, like I was going to say something too, and they looked at me, and the moment came back. But it was from Gaza. I’d hung out one day with Norman Finkelstein, riding around on a Code Pink bus, a guy I don’t know well at all, and the next morning I got back on the bus and sat down across the aisle, and Finkelstein said, "How are you today, Phil?"
"I’m tired," I said, "I was up late, reading a really good book." I reached into my backpack.
Finkelstein turned to Roane Carey of the Nation with a wicked grin. "Uh-oh here it comes. It’s a joke. Look at his face, I can see it in his eyes."
I got out a copy of Benny Morris’s One State, Two State. Mild chuckles.
I wanted to tell that story at the party. Sometimes you don’t have to know someone, they can be on to you in 10 seconds, because of kinship, because you’re the same generation, the same tribe. But I didn’t. It would have upset people–Gaza, Finkelstein, a nice New York party of privileged Jews. I didn’t tell my story.
