“It’s easily the most contentious piece of real estate in the world. And there’s no hope — none — of ever talking about it without pissing somebody, if not everybody, off. Maybe that’s why it took me so long to come here, a place where even the names of ordinary things are ferociously disputed. Where does falafel come from? Who makes the best hummus? Is it a fence or a wall? By the end of this episode, I’ll be seen by many as a terrorist sympathizer, a Zionist tool, a self-hating Jew, an apologist for American imperialism, an Orientalist, socialist, fascist, CIA agent, and worse. So here goes nothing.”
Anthony Bourdain, from the 2013 “Jerusalem” episode of Parts Unknown.
I was raised in a non-denominational church — that’s code for ‘we are Christians, but we don’t like the rules of any Christian sect, so we’ll make our own and also choose to be radical fundamentalists’ — making my view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict quite skewed for a long, long time. We were taught that Israel was the Holy Land, the Promised Land, the Land of Milk and Honey, and that every true Christian should go there at least once in their lives to walk in the footsteps of the heroes of the faith.
Oddly, it sounds very similar to the Muslim Hajj, but I digress…
We were also taught that the Jews were the chosen people of God. To speak ill of the…
