Alison Weir's differences with me remind me of a meeting I had the other day with a Jewish Arabist. I'm disguising some facts about him to protect his identity, still I wanted to convey some of his thinking. He worked on Israel/Palestine for a while then left for another field of Arab life because it was too exhausting. He had "lost my analytical center of gravity." One day he would be with Palestinians who are arguing against Jews and he'd want to stand up for the Jews–yes, I got the feeling, maybe a little as a Jew. Another day he would be with Jews talking about Palestinians and have to stand up for the Palestinians. He lost his analytical center of gravity. Beautiful words. I said to him, I sometimes feel I've lost mine too. Of Israelis, he said: They are like a dog that has been beaten; they don't respond well to the slightest provocation, it gets ugly very fast. Then he said: he has talked to Jews on the left in Israel, who said, we can't get anywhere here because of the American Jewish community supporting the rightwing in Israel. My friend disputed them; said, you live in a democratic country, stand up. But still, they blamed American Jews. They believe in the Israel Lobby more than Walt and Mearsheimer.
My conclusion is that the discourse is completely broken in the U.S. There is no dialogue between the conversations about this issue, no consensus, no unity. Alan Dershowitz is in the cloakroom and Norman Finkelstein is in the street, and never the twain doth meet. Lies are put forward by the American government regularly: Joe Biden's suggestion last night that it was the Palestinians who somehow have to make the concessions. When actually, when you delve into this, you understand that the reality is different, that Israel has been expansionist for more than 60 years and yet has been portrayed as the victim throughout. You develop enormous sympathy for the Arabs, as Jimmy Carter has, and Alison Weir, David Bloom, myself.
I say again that it is necessary to heal the Jewish narrative of victimization, because it controls the American conversation about these issues. We've all lost our analytical center of gravity.
