# Journalist changes his mind about Israel/Palestinian conflict after being there **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 16, 2017, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-changes-his-mind-about-israel-palestinian-conflict-after-being-there/779961 "2017-02-16T04:07:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-changes-his-mind-about-israel-palestinian-conflict-after-being-there/779961/21 "2017-02-17T13:32:49Z")
It probably wouldn’t be hard to find people who say they were unabashedly pro-Israel before visiting the area and seeing how Palestinians are treated, and now are vigorously pro-Palestinian rights and denounce The Occupation. I tend to distrust accounts that relate these dramatic shifts of opinion. Maybe it comes from seeing too many posts from people who describe how they were confirmed skeptics about woo or conspiracy theories, but a personal experience/compelling article turned them around 180 degrees. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-changes-his-mind-about-israel-palestinian-conflict-after-being-there/779961/22 "2017-02-17T13:36:28Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > I do. I’m fairly liberal and live in a fairly liberal place, and basically everyone I’ve talked to about the issue feel that Israel is generally in the wrong on this issue. Yeah, I live around Toronto, a fairly liberal place, and with the rare exception of the odd conservative and most Jewish people (but not all) basically everyone thinks Israel is an evil apartheid (that’s a frequently used word) regime. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-changes-his-mind-about-israel-palestinian-conflict-after-being-there/779961/23 "2017-02-17T14:03:09Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > Dude we get it, you’ve been to lots of countries. Not the point. This is not about me, it is about people who get paid to know what is going on, and I’m not one of them. Nearly all of America’s major news sources do not have a single paid staffer outside the USA. If necessary, they hire a free-lancer to file a report, somebody who is a staffer for a news organization elsewhere. When Bush started bombing Iraq, the US news networks did not hava a single staffer on the ground in the whole Middle East, we used BBC people. Until we had a chance to vet in trusted embedded stenographers to follow generals around with microphones. In short, Americans get their world view from desk reporters stateside who have almost no overseas exposure. They just review dispatches from people who know what is going on around the world, and then rewrite it to make it reflect the bias of current US foreign policy. There are a lot of people who have been to lots of countries. But American journalists are not among them, and I find that embarrassing fact worthy of comment, particularly in the context of this thread. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-changes-his-mind-about-israel-palestinian-conflict-after-being-there/779961/24 "2017-02-17T14:17:55Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Nearly all of America’s major news sources do not have a single paid staffer outside the USA. That seems strange to me. Even NPR has reporters abroad. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-changes-his-mind-about-israel-palestinian-conflict-after-being-there/779961/25 "2017-02-17T14:24:52Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > When Bush started bombing Iraq, the US news networks did not hava a single staffer on the ground in the whole Middle East, we used BBC people. I don’t think [Wolf Blitzer](http://edition.cnn.com/2003/fyi/news/03/22/iraq.war/) works for the BBC. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-changes-his-mind-about-israel-palestinian-conflict-after-being-there/779961/26 "2017-02-17T14:39:17Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I don’t think [Wolf Blitzer](http://edition.cnn.com/2003/fyi/news/03/22/iraq.war/) works for the BBC. Named for the war. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-changes-his-mind-about-israel-palestinian-conflict-after-being-there/779961/27 "2017-02-17T14:51:19Z")
From the OP’s link (bolding mine): > [@](#): > > Ban Ki-moon, for example, who at the time was the head of the United Nations, said in January 2016 ‒ as the streets of my neighborhood were stained with the blood of innocent Israeli civilians ‒ that it was “human nature to react to occupation.” In fact, **there is no justification for killing someone, no matter what the political situation may or may not be** , and Ban’s statement rankled me. Excluding violence as a legitimate means of responding to injustice gets you to some interesting places. For instance, the American Founding Fathers, by that standard, were unjustified in killing British soldiers who were there to enforce the political status quo. Or even if the object of the North in the Civil War had been to liberate the blacks from chattel slavery, this standard would have decreed that fighting a war to do so would have been wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-changes-his-mind-about-israel-palestinian-conflict-after-being-there/779961/28 "2017-02-17T14:57:44Z")
I’m pretty liberal but tend to come down on the Israel side of things. But 90% of my liberal friends (including my wife) are firmly on the Palestine side of the argument and I hear a lot of disappointed “I wouldn’t have expected that from you…” remarks when I argue the other side. I guess the silver lining is that I can argue that perspective without them being able to fall back on me just adhering to conservative/Republican stereotypes. But in my experience there’s a lot of liberal sympathy towards Palestine among the rank-and-file. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-changes-his-mind-about-israel-palestinian-conflict-after-being-there/779961/29 "2017-02-17T16:51:50Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > He’s not exactly writing that. He’s basically stating : “it never occured to me that Palestinians could actually hate Jews until I began to fear for my wife’s life. I believed that Palestinians were totally innocent guys oppressed by the evil Israelis, and no that I’ve been personnally chased by Palestinians thinking I was a Jew (really, who would have thought that such a thing could happen?), I begin to realize that it’s the innocent Israelis who are victimized by the evil Palestinians. Since most people must be as stupid as I am, I need to tell you all”. > > He was a Manichean idiot before, and seems on his way to stay so, except with the opposite point of view. I know tons of people need a simple narrative with a good side and a bad side, but I would expect (probably mistakingly so) a bit more nuance from journalists. None of what he says he discovered while living there should in any way be surprising to anybody who opened a newspaper during the last 30 years, while never setting a foot in Israel. His big, extraordinary revelation seems to be that hate of Israelis and Jews is deeply entrenched in Palestinians, to the point that they would murder random people. What a shock! Secondary revelations are that people don’t like to think that they might be stabbed when they take the bus, or that an event happening in Israel gets more coverage than the same event happening elsewhere. No, really? I was fully convinced that Sri Lanka got exactly as much coverage as Israel. > > And that palestinians hate Israelis isn’t in any way incompatible with them being on the receiving end of unjust policies, rather the contrary, both way. But he seems to have been struggling and to still struggle with this strange concept that not everything is black and white, until he’s hit on the head with some dark grey. He is not Manichean. He says that both sides have really good points, he totally understands the palestinian desire to return to their old homes, and he doesn’t know what to think. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-changes-his-mind-about-israel-palestinian-conflict-after-being-there/779961.md?page=1)