![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/tablesett-400x250.png\")
\n<\/p>\n\n<\/p>\n
I went to an anti-Israel dinner party. It did not go as planned.\n<\/p>\n
A true classic textbook response to a group of antisemitic partygoers, written by Nachum Kaplan\n<\/p>\n
They described it as \u201ca safe space for difficult conversations.\u201d What they really wanted was an Israeli who would sit quietly and confess.\n<\/p>\n
I knew the evening was in trouble when the hostess described the table as \u201ca safe space for difficult conversations.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Nothing good has ever followed such words.\n<\/p>\n
A safe space for difficult conversations is usually a space in which everyone is free to express precisely the same opinion, provided they do so using slightly different therapeutic vocabulary. Disagreement is welcome in the way vegetarians are welcome at a barbecue: theoretically, warmly, and without any intention of accommodating them.\n<\/p>\n
The dinner was being held in an immaculate apartment overlooking the city. The furniture was Scandinavian, the lighting was flattering, and the books had been arranged not alphabetically but morally.\n<\/p>\n
Palestinian-American academic and literary critic Edward Said sat beside French psychiatrist and political philosopher Frantz Fanon. American philosopher Judith Butler leaned against a large volume on decolonizing architecture. There were several books about Israel \u2014 none by Israelis, historians, military analysts, Arabic speakers, Hebrew speakers, or anyone who had recently burdened themselves with the region\u2019s chronology.\n<\/p>\n
The apartment belonged to Oliver and Beatrice, who had invited 12 people for what they called \u201can evening of food, friendship and necessary conversation.\u201d I had been included, I later realized, as the necessary conversation; the one in need of \u201ceducation.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Beatrice greeted me at the door with the expression of a person welcoming a recently rehabilitated extremist. \u201cWe\u2019re so glad you came,\u201d she said, touching my arm. \u201cWe were worried you might feel uncomfortable.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been to family weddings,\u201d I replied. \u201cI\u2019ll survive.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The other guests had already assembled around a huge island bench. They held champagne flutes and spoke in low, solemn tones about suffering in places they would never visit.\n<\/p>\n
There was Julian, an international lawyer who specialized in commercial leases but had recently developed strong views on the laws of armed conflict. Nadia worked in branding and referred to herself as a storyteller. Marcus was a documentary producer whose documentaries had never been produced. Eleanor taught postcolonial literature and had perfected the academic art of converting adjectives into accusations. Simon was in finance and considered himself politically courageous because he had once criticized capitalism at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.\n<\/p>\n
There was also Theo, a surgeon, who knew nothing about Israel but knew it with clinical confidence.\n<\/p>\n
I was introduced around the room. \u201cThis is our pro-Israel friend,\u201d Beatrice announced. I gently corrected her that I was not \u201cpro-Israel\u201d but an actual Israeli, which caused a murmur. It was a curious introduction. Nobody else was introduced by the country they were expected to defend. There was no \u201cThis is our pro-France friend\u201d or \u201cMeet our controversial supporter of New Zealand.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Apparently, Israel was no longer a country. It was a personality disorder, and not a borderline one.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cHow brave of you to come,\u201d Eleanor said.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d she replied, glancing around the room, \u201cI suspect you may be in the minority.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cMinorities are sacred,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m sure I\u2019ll be protected.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The first course was served on plates that looked handmade because they had been expensively manufactured to resemble imperfection. It was some kind of compressed beetroot construction accompanied by a smear of something apologetic.\n<\/p>\n
Oliver raised his glass: \u201cTo honest conversation.\u201d Everyone echoed him. I should have left then.\n<\/p>\n
For the first 10 minutes, the conversation was restrained. We discussed schools, property prices, artificial intelligence, and whether the city had lost its soul. Then Nadia placed her fork carefully beside her plate and sighed: \u201cI just don\u2019t understand how anyone can still defend Israel.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
There it was. Not raised, exactly. Released. The room grew quiet. Heads turned towards me with the benign anticipation of people waiting for a laboratory animal to perform a familiar trick.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is it that you don\u2019t understand?\u201d I asked.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of it,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n
This was at least honest.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe occupation. The apartheid. The genocide. The colonialism.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Four accusations, delivered with the rhythmic confidence of a wine list.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are different claims,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cAre they?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYes. Words retain separate meanings even when discussing Israel.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Julian smiled and said, \u201cI think what Nadia means is that the entire structure is indefensible.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat structure?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe structure of oppression.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cCould you be more specific?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
He leaned back. He had expected moral submission, not follow-up questions.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe occupation of Palestine.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich territory?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
There was a pause.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cPalestine.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, you said that. Which territory?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Palestinian territories.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cGaza?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously Gaza.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael withdrew every soldier and civilian from Gaza in 2005.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean the occupation ended.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat would have meant the occupation ended?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cFreedom.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
It was an excellent answer because it had no content and therefore could not be disproved.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael removed its military, dismantled settlements, expelled its own citizens from their homes, and left Gaza under Palestinian control. Shortly afterwards, Hamas took power, murdered its Palestinian rivals, and converted the territory into an armed base. What part of that sequence is Israel\u2019s colonial occupation?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Eleanor lowered her wine glass. \u201cYou\u2019re framing it in an extremely selective way.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m using dates.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cDates can also be ideological.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
This was new to me. I had not realized the calendar had been colonized.\n<\/p>\n
The beetroot was cleared away. Beatrice intervened with the smoothness of someone preventing an argument over inheritance. \u201cI think there are different truths.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are different perspectives,\u201d I said. \u201cThere are not different dates.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Marcus nodded sympathetically, as though I had made a revealing error. \u201cThat sounds very Western.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe belief that events happened in an order?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe obsession with linearity.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cHistory is frequently linear, Marcus. One event happens, and then another event happens. Even documentaries tend to respect this convention.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
He smiled tightly. The second course arrived: sea bass on a bed of something green and politically sustainable. Theo, who had been silent until then, cleared his throat: \u201cSurely the core issue is that Israel was created by Europeans on Arab land.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
I looked at him. \u201cWhich part of that sentence would you like to examine first?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s simply historical fact.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, it\u2019s a slogan wearing a waistcoat.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
He blinked.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Jews who established Israel were refugees and indigenous people returning to their ancestral homeland. Many were already living there. Others came from Europe because Europe had spent centuries persecuting them and then attempted to exterminate them. After Israel was established, hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled or fled from Arab and Muslim countries. Today, a large proportion of Israeli Jews descend from communities from the Middle East and North Africa.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Theo frowned. \u201cBut Zionism was a European colonial movement.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cColonial movements generally have a mother country.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cBritain.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cBritain fought the Zionists, restricted Jewish immigration during the Holocaust, and eventually left due to Jewish insurgency. Israel was not established as a British colony.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was enabled by Britain.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cSo was Jordan. You seem less emotionally agitated by Jordan.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s different.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Naturally. Everything is different when the Jews are involved.\n<\/p>\n
Simon entered the conversation: \u201cBut surely you accept that the Palestinians had their land stolen in 1948.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cSome Palestinians lost homes during a war. As did some Jews, such as the 850,000 expelled from Arab states.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cA war started by whom?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. Israel declared independence after accepting partition. Arab armies invaded. Palestinian and Arab leaders rejected partition and chose war.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause the partition was unjust.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is a position. It does not reverse who started the war.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re being pedantic.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m describing the difference between invasion and being invaded. Civilizations have occasionally found that distinction useful.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Nadia shook her head.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is why these conversations are impossible. You keep retreating into facts.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
I stared at her. It remains one of the finest accusations ever made against me. \u201cI apologize,\u201d I said. \u201cI had misunderstood the purpose of the discussion. I thought we were talking about history, not selecting affirmations.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Beatrice laughed a little too loudly. \u201cMore wine?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d I said. \u201cBring the bottle.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
By now, the evening\u2019s rhythm had become clear. Someone would make a sweeping accusation. I would ask what they meant. They would become offended by the question. I would provide a fact. They would accuse the fact of lacking context. Then they would replace their original claim with another, equally expansive one. It was like fighting fog, except the fog had postgraduate degrees in verbosity.\n<\/p>\n
Eleanor leaned forward. \u201cDo you at least acknowledge the power imbalance?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
She looked surprised. \u201cIsrael is considerably stronger than Hamas.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cExactly.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat does not tell us which side is morally right.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt tells us who has power.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, but not whether that power is being used defensively or aggressively.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cBut power is the issue.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, conduct is the issue. A large man attacked by a small man with a knife is not morally required to lose.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat metaphor is grotesque.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cHamas invaded Israeli communities, murdered civilians, kidnapped families, and fired rockets. You raised the power imbalance. I am explaining why comparative strength does not determine moral status.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re justifying disproportionate violence.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat would proportionate violence look like?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
She opened her mouth, then stopped. Julian rescued her. \u201cInternational law requires proportionality.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does. But proportionality does not mean matching casualty numbers. It concerns whether anticipated civilian harm is excessive relative to the expected military advantage of a particular action.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
He stiffened. \u201cAs an international lawyer, I\u2019m aware of that.\u201d He was not an international lawyer in that sense. He negotiated office leases.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThen why did you allow Eleanor to use it incorrectly?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
He smiled with the strained patience of a man being contradicted in front of attractive people. \u201cThe broader legal consensus is clear.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich legal consensus?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe international community.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd who is that?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United Nations, human rights organizations, legal scholars.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cGovernments with opposing interests, activists with funding models, dictatorships with votes, scholars who disagree with one another, and institutions that discovered an inexhaustible administrative fascination with one tiny Jewish state.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t dismiss the United Nations.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI can dismiss Libya judging human rights, Iran lecturing on women, and authoritarian regimes passing moral judgment by numerical majority. Voting blocs do not become ethical authorities through repetition.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is incredibly cynical.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. Cynicism is pretending that an institution\u2019s composition has no effect on its judgments.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The sea bass had gone cold. So had Beatrice. Oliver attempted a change of subject: \u201cHas anyone seen the new Rothko exhibition?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI find Rothko colonial,\u201d Marcus said.\n<\/p>\n
I could not tell whether he was joking. The reprieve lasted less than three minutes. Theo returned to Gaza.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if everything you say is true, which I\u2019m not conceding, how can you possibly justify the number of civilians killed?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t celebrate civilian deaths.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat wasn\u2019t the question.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, the question was framed to imply that civilian deaths prove an absence of justification. They do not. Civilian deaths are tragic. They can result from unlawful conduct, lawful conduct, enemy tactics, military error or some combination of all four.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat sounds like evasion.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the opposite of evasion. It is refusing to treat every death as evidence for the conclusion you arrived at before dinner.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Nadia\u2019s voice became soft. \u201cI think you\u2019ve lost touch with your humanity.\u201d This was said by a woman who had spent the evening compressing Israelis into a geopolitical abstraction and Palestinians into decorative victims.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cMy humanity is intact,\u201d I said. \u201cIt is simply not reserved exclusively for the people your social circle has decided are fashionable.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
She recoiled.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is so unfair.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYes. Imagine being unfairly characterized by someone who knows nothing about you. How distressing.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Beatrice placed a hand on Nadia\u2019s arm. The table had divided emotionally, though not intellectually. There was me, and there was a collective organism composed of linen, indignation, and inherited silverware. Dessert arrived. It was a deconstructed tiramisu, which felt apt. The evening had also been deconstructed, though unlike the tiramisu, it had not improved in the process.\n<\/p>\n
Simon took a spoonful and said, \u201cI just think the answer is a ceasefire.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich ceasefire?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cA permanent ceasefire.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Hamas remaining armed?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cA ceasefire has to start somewhere.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has started many times. Hamas has broken ceasefires, rearmed under ceasefires, and used pauses to prepare the next attack.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cSo your answer is endless war?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. My answer is that war ends when the aggressor can no longer wage it or decides the cost is unbearable.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is barbaric.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is how wars end.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, wars end through dialogue.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cSome do. Others end at Berlin, Hiroshima, Appomattox or the collapse of one side\u2019s military capacity. History is not a conflict-resolution workshop.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Eleanor shook her head slowly. \u201cThis language of victory and defeat is deeply dangerous.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cSo is losing wars to people who want to kill you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYou reduce everything to security.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause dead people have limited opportunity for moral growth.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Julian placed both palms on the table. \u201cThis is precisely the problem with Zionism. It elevates Jewish safety above Palestinian rights.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. Zionism holds that Jews require political sovereignty in their ancestral homeland because history has repeatedly demonstrated the fatal consequences of outsourcing Jewish safety to other people\u2019s goodwill.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat sounds ethnonationalist.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cSo do Palestinian demands for national self-determination. Yet you describe one as liberation and the other as fascism.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cPalestinians are oppressed.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cOppression does not render every political demand legitimate, every tactic permissible, or every historical claim accurate.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYou always have an answer.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The complaint was almost childlike.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d I said. \u201cI have read about the subject.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
That was when the evening finally abandoned the pretense of discussion.\n<\/p>\n
Nadia accused Israel of pink washing. Marcus said hummus had been culturally appropriated. Eleanor said Hebrew had been weaponized. Theo wondered whether Jewish trauma had become \u201ca form of inherited aggression.\u201d Simon said Israel should simply trust the international community. Julian referred to Hamas as \u201ca resistance phenomenon.\u201d Beatrice said both sides needed to listen to women. Oliver opened another bottle.\n<\/p>\n
The stupidity was no longer arriving in individual portions. It had become a tasting menu.\n<\/p>\n
I tried, for perhaps the final time, to restore order. \u201cHamas is not a weather system,\u201d I said. \u201cIt is an organization with leaders, doctrine, funding, weapons, strategic objectives and agency.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cAgency under occupation is complicated,\u201d Eleanor replied.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything becomes complicated the moment Palestinians might be held responsible for something.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is racist.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, racism is treating adults as morally incapacitated children because you find accountability aesthetically uncomfortable.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The table went silent. We had reached the blunt phase. I continued: \u201cYou claim to support Palestinians, but you refuse to expect anything from Palestinian leaders. No compromise. No restraint. No democratic standards. No protection of civilians. No abandonment of eliminationist ambitions. Nothing. You reserve all moral agency for Israel and all moral exemption for its enemies, then call this compassion.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Eleanor\u2019s face hardened. \u201cYou are deliberately misrepresenting us.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I have listened to you for two hours. You know less than nothing about the conflict. You do not know the wars, the borders, the offers, the withdrawals, the ideologies, the internal divisions, the legal terminology, or the chronology. Yet each of you speaks with the serene confidence of a tribunal.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is insulting,\u201d Theo said.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is meant to be.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Beatrice gasped softly. I had broken the central rule of elite dinner conversation: One may be ignorant, malicious, sanctimonious, or absurd, but one must never be impolite enough to notice.\n<\/p>\n
Oliver tried to intervene. \u201cLet\u2019s keep this civil.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been civil,\u201d I said. \u201cThat is the problem. Civility has allowed nonsense to masquerade as seriousness all evening.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Julian scoffed. \u201cSo anyone who disagrees with you is ignorant?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. Plenty of knowledgeable people disagree with me. None of them are at this table.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The tiramisu suddenly became intensely interesting to everyone.\n<\/p>\n
I turned to Julian. \u201cYou invoke international law without correctly explaining proportionality.\u201d To Theo: \u201cYou call Israel a European colony while apparently unaware that most Israeli Jews are not descendants of colonial Europeans.\u201d To Simon: \u201cYou recommend trusting an international system whose guarantees have repeatedly proved worthless when Jews were under threat.\u201d To Marcus: \u201cYou think history is non-linear because you once watched an experimental film.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
He looked genuinely wounded.\n<\/p>\n
To Nadia: \u201cYou believe emotional intensity is a substitute for knowledge.\u201d Then to Eleanor: \u201cAnd you treat every fact that complicates your worldview as a form of violence.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Beatrice stood. \u201cI think this has gone far enough.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cSo do I.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
I placed my napkin on the table. \u201cBut before I go, let us clarify what happened here. You invited one pro-Israel guest into a room of people who share the same politics and called it dialogue. You introduced me by my position, then treated me as morally suspect for holding it. You recited accusations you could not define, cited history you did not know, invoked laws you could not explain and became offended whenever asked for evidence.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Nobody spoke.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are not courageous dissenters. You are the local branch office of an international consensus assembled from newspaper headlines, dinner-party fashion and the intoxicating pleasure of condemning Jews for surviving incorrectly.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is outrageous,\u201d Beatrice said.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. Outrageous was Theo suggesting Jewish trauma produces aggression while sitting beneath a painting his family probably bought from a refugee.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Theo looked towards the painting. I had no idea where it came from, but by then accuracy had become less important to everyone, so I decided to participate. Simon stood as well. \u201cYou\u2019re becoming hysterical.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cHysterical? I am the calmest person here. I am merely no longer cushioning the information for people who consider contradiction a hate crime.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are proving every stereotype about pro-Israel people,\u201d Nadia said.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYou mean Jews? Which stereotype? That we eventually lose patience after being lectured by people who discovered the Middle East six months ago?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re impossible.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. I\u2019m inconvenient. There is a difference.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
I picked up my jacket. The room watched me with the shocked resentment of aristocrats who had just discovered the footman could read. At the door, Oliver made one final attempt at magnanimity: \u201cI\u2019m sorry you didn\u2019t feel heard.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI was heard perfectly well. That is why everyone is upset.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe may simply have to agree to disagree.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. You may have to agree to read.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
He folded his arms. \u201cDo you genuinely believe you\u2019re the only person here who understands the issue?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cI believe I\u2019m the only person here who has made the vulgar effort.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Beatrice opened the door. The conversation, she said, had become unsafe. I thanked her for the meal.\n<\/p>\n
Outside, the night air was cool and gloriously free of moral vocabulary. I walked home reflecting on the strange burden of being \u201cpro-Israel\u201d in polite society. One is expected to arrive with evidence, history, nuance, empathy, military expertise, legal precision, and a detailed alternative strategy for every available course of action. The other side need only arrive with adjectives: colonial, genocidal, apartheid, brutal.\n<\/p>\n
Each word is placed on the table like a royal flush. No definitions required. No chronology necessary. No awareness of competing claims. The accusation itself is treated as evidence, while any response is proof of callousness.\n<\/p>\n
The ignorance would be less irritating if it were accompanied by humility. Yet ignorance among the educated rarely travels alone. It brings status, vocabulary and the confidence of belonging to a moral majority. Its possessors do not merely lack knowledge. They regard knowledge as faintly disreputable, particularly when it interferes with the emotional clarity of their conclusions.\n<\/p>\n
By the following morning, I had received three messages. Beatrice said she was \u201cholding space\u201d for me but needed time to process my aggression. Nadia said she hoped I would one day reconnect with my compassion. Julian sent an article from a newspaper columnist who had never visited Israel.\n<\/p>\n
I replied only to Beatrice, thanking her again for dinner and apologizing for my tone. It had been unnecessarily restrained.\n<\/p>\n
Thank you Nachum for this amazing Essay!\n\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I went to an anti-Israel dinner party. It did not go as planned. A true classic textbook response…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[37709,10725,16929,2492,16930,37],"class_list":["post-246653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-adl-anti-defamation-league","tag-anti-zionism","tag-antisemitic-violence","tag-antisemitism","tag-definition-of-antisemitism","tag-israel"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117084330903303000","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}