From Fox News to Al Jazeera, your truth is out there!

Date Published: 22-Nov-2012

I’m the meat in a terrible sandwich. Each time there is conflict within Israel and the Occupied Territories, my heart starts to bleed through several holes. My soul gets twisted and screwed until eventually I feel overwhelmed and profoundly sad.

It is during these periods of conflict that I feel more alone than at any other. Trawling the Facebook feed, I read posts from close friends in Galway crying out in support of the beleaguered Palestinian people.

They say we have to stop buying Israeli produce and show maps of how much the Palestinian lands have shrunk since the United Nations recognised Israel’s right to exist back in 1948.

I agree with every one of them, just as I agree with my family who feel an emotional and historical link to Israel that is impossible to justify to non-Jewish people.

Then I think how these friends will be shocked and plainly appalled that their mate, usually so caring and compassionate, can possibly have anything positive to say about Israel.

Then I think of my family, and the fact that they won’t be reading this, because the last time I wrote about these crushing periods of war, they de-friended me from Facebook and sent e-mails saying they didn’t need this type of thing from me. As I do to my Irish friends, I tried to explain to my family that there is no crime in seeing both sides.

During the Apartheid years, it would have been impossible for me to feel the same emotional connection I feel with Israel towards South Africa. As a youth, my weekends were spent marching from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square, crying out for justice for black South Africa.

In the same way, I dream of justice for the Palestinians, but there also exists an incredibly strong irrational need within me to cling to the existence of the State of Israel.

Logic shmogic, my whinging isn’t going to help a jot, but what is really important is to realise how subtle and subversive are the ways that you free-thinking colyoomistas are trained to think.

Somewhere between Fox News and Al Jazeera, your truth is out there.

My brother calls Fox News ‘Israel TV’, seeing their gloss coating of Right Wing truth for what it is, while my sister regularly bemoans the anti-semitism of the BBC. Over here, RTE presents itself as a voice of moderation, but everywhere, subversive insidious bias exists.

Of course your opinions are your own, and you are entitled to every one of them, but never ever make the mistake of believing that you have considered the facts and come to a conclusion.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.