I lived there for over two decades. I know all too well what Israelis are like and how they relate to one another. There was an entertainment program that I saw on Israel Television one Friday night in which many popular entertainers were featured in a skit in which one woman was acting in the role of being a rather surly, caustic teacher and the other entertainers were acting as students. The teacher was chastising the students using all sorts of bigoted statements that Israelis use frequently. Once the students began singing songs, every song was about how one ethnic group hates the next ethnic group that hates the next ethnic group that ... well, you get the idea. After they had all gone through the whole fucking list, they all chanted in unison the words: "עם ישראל אוהב לשנוא" (the Israeli people love to hate!) They specialize in hatred and hostility; anyone who doesn't conform is a target for all kinds of abuse.

In one of my jobs there, many of the customers were Palestinians, so I had contact with them also. Knowing both sides made me realize: it's like a sibling rivalry! Both have the same character flaws:

Both love to argue

Both think that only they are right

Both never listen to any opposing sentiments

Both radiate hatred

Both always blame the other side without ever considering that they are just as guilty

I could go on and on, but I reached the conclusion that they enjoy too much conflict and never acknowledge the other as being worthy of consideration. I have the feeling that the ongoing conflict is what stimulates them and makes them even more energetic and hostile toward the other. I truly wonder if a peace agreement would last more than a week.

I had more reasons that I was only too anxious to leave; in the end, it was after being held there for 15 years against my will because of a law called the No Exit Order (explained on a website with that name as the URL) that violates international law, I brought an autistic son to get the professional help that Israel did not have to offer. He was very intelligent, but Israelis believed that nobody can be so intelligent and autistic, so they said he needed "discipline," which often translated to mean beating. All the way until the day that I brought him to the US in February 1998, I faced only more and more hostility. On my last full day there, a woman asked why I was leaving Israel after so many years. When I told her that I was doing it for my autistic son, she responded, "You're just a crazy American." I heard that label "crazy American" so often that I might as well have had it branded on my ass!

I have one additional horror story that I think is enough to startle even the most avid supporters of Israel: thanks to a vindictive Israeli ex-wife who was a lesbian who married me to have a sperm donor and an ATM who took out a No Exit Order against me because she knew I hated to live there, I was held prisoner in the country for 15 fucking years against my will that included denying me the right to attend the funeral of my brother in 1996. That is horrifying enough, but what I couldn't stomach was the way many Israelis gave her full support and lambasted me for even considering that I would have the right to leave because of a dead brother! After enduring that, is it anybody's surprise that I will never set foot there again, even to visit my three eldest children and their children who will probably remain there forever as well? I have my wishes for that vaginal blood-fart who held me hostage and did such a dastardly thing to me, but don't think that Jewish Americans showed me any sympathy, either. My opinion on the subject of anti-Semitism would shock many people, but I just say that anyone who complains that someone hates them should look in the mirror to see the reason right in front of his/her fucking face!!!