Leftist Jewish newspaper writer from gaytown gets a taste of Leftist anti Jew

[mord]

http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/61191/mending-fences-this-israel-hater-wouldnt-even-share-my-yard/    










 

Thursday, March 17, 2011 | return to: columns, the column


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Mending fences? This Israel-hater wouldn’t even share my yard
by dan pine

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It’s a cozy two-room cottage, like something out of a Jane Austen novel (that is, if Jane Austen had lived just east of elevated BART tracks).

For years, Robyn and I have rented out our backyard cottage in Albany. Having tenants is part of the backbeat of our lives. We’ve grown used to having them living with us, occasionally bumping up against them in the kitchen and, less occasionally, sharing a glass of wine with them as the sun goes down.

dan pineTurnover comes with the territory. So when our latest tenant last month announced she was moving out to get married, Robyn started the search for a new occupant.

The first person to express interest was a polite, Lutheran 20-something named Joanie. One afternoon, while I was away at work, Robyn gave her a tour of the cottage.

Then the two of them got to talking.

Turned out Joanie studies international diplomacy and conflict resolution at a local graduate school. Turned out she had lived in Egypt, learned Arabic and had traveled all around the Middle East.

Robyn mentioned to her what I do for a living. After learning that her prospective landlord wrote for a Jewish newspaper and was a supporter of Israel, Joanie took the conversation in a new direction.

“She told me she’d once entered the West Bank from Jordan,” Robyn told me later. “Not only did [the Israeli border guards] grill her for hours, what upset her more, she said there was a Palestinian woman about to give birth and they wouldn’t let her go. She said it was one of the most traumatic experiences of her life.”

Joanie expressed indignation over the separation barrier between Israel and the West Bank, as well as the archaeological excavations under way in Jerusalem and other parts of the Holy Land.

Robyn countered, asking her what she thought about Palestinian terrorists blowing up Jewish kids in discos and pizzerias. Joanie’s ready response: Both sides commit atrocities.

When I heard Robyn’s report, I bristled, thinking we should definitely cross Joanie off the list. But Robyn said she had otherwise seemed very nice, and might make a good tenant. I then considered an outlandish notion: Taking her in might present an opportunity for meaningful dialogue. Isn’t that what we all want?

Apparently not.

The next day, Robyn received an e-mail from Joanie that read, in part: “I would not be comfortable paying money to someone who supports Israel, in essence condoning the same kinds of violent and systematic aggressive policies that isolated and ultimately hurt Jews in Europe — this time in Palestine (ghettoization, ID cards, property confiscation, fascism) as I do not want my finances supporting that regime more than tax monies already do.”

Fascism? Really?

She only needed to say she wasn’t interested in the cottage. Instead Joanie went out of her way to make caustic political points. It struck me as both absurd and borderline anti-Semitic. At first, I was too mad to feel wounded, but in truth, her vitriol stung.

There is something monumentally hurtful to me knowing that Israel — a country I love, and which I believe to be a powerful force for good in the world, despite its flaws — is so reviled.

I usually see that revulsion in the form of rallies overseas or, occasionally, in downtown San Francisco. Most of those protesters strike me as either misinformed morons — the left-wing version of tea party members — or garden-variety Jew-haters. But they always seemed a safe distance away from me.

Joanie, on the other hand, sat on my couch, in my living room, and accepted Robyn’s hospitality. And then she spewed. As Robyn said later, “I don’t think she’s going to make a very good mediator.”

There were other more mundane reasons not to rent to Joanie. So it almost certainly wouldn’t have worked out, no matter what.

But despite her anti-Israel venom, or maybe because of it, I still wish I could have had a shot at overturning her prejudices about Israel. I wish I could have led her to see the whole story. The true story.

I wish, despite it all, we could have shared that glass of wine.


Dan Pine can be reached at [email protected].

Comments
Posted by walt kovacs
03/17/2011  at  05:40 PM
never rent to a liar

how many times are israel haters going to use the same worn out story about women about to give birth being stopped at check points?

lay odds that she is a member of the ism…renting to her wouldnt have changed her mind about anything
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