A central function of this website is informing Americans about what is happening in Israel/Palestine and then pressing them to engage so as to change the political conditions here and there. In that effort, yesterday I posted a statement from a reader (and donor) who had bought the pro-Israel story till she visited the West Bank, and the scales fell from her eyes. She’s been checking in to our site since. But she doesn’t think the internet will do the trick. She responded to the comments on her last statement:
For what it’s worth, I know that Ramallah and Bethlehem are bubbles–that’s why we stayed there. Seeing what life is like in the oases of the West Bank–where people go to get a break, where all the expats live because it’s relatively peaceful/safe–only made the shift of view/seeing the light/conversion experience stronger.
And while I agree with Annie’s post that what is happening on this website and others is fantastic, what worries me a little is that before I visited and saw with my own eyes, I’m not sure that even reading reports like the ones here would have changed my mind. I had my own relatives to talk to, after all. The “arguments/discussions” I had with some of them, spouting what I now recognize as hasbara rhetoric, are rather embarrassing to recall.
But until you’re there and see the settlements on EVERY hillside, see the Israeli-only roads with bulldozers pushing over 1000-year-old olive trees to make way for another lane, see that ALL the roads out of Bethlehem are blocked with piles of rubble and see an old man riding a donkey over and around the roadblock, the Israeli narrative is just really powerful.
