I have had more arguments than I can count with American, British, or other European critics of Israel; either in person when I was living in the UK, or in writing over email or Facebook since I moved to Israel. The day after the shooting at Sarona I almost got embroiled in another such discussion but I resisted the temptation to respond to some comments on a friend’s Facebook feed. I knew the experience would be infuriatingly pointless.

Here is how I imagine the conversation would progress, based on past experience. The words of my imaginary interlocutor, replete with straw men and deliberately inflammatory assumptions, are drawn from real comments I’ve heard/read in similar discussions. (My ‘voice’ is in italics):

“It’s terrible what happened yesterday in Tel Aviv, but it’s because the Palestinians feel so hopeless at the lack of a peace process.”

“But it’s Mahmoud Abbas, not Netanyahu, who’s refusing to negotiate…”

“Yeah, well that’s because Israel keeps building settlements.”

“But we did implement a ten-month settlement freeze and Abbas only showed up at the negotiation table in the tenth month. Then he walked away at the end.”

“Well, if Israel’s serious about peace, why doesn’t it just get rid of the settlements?”

“What, like in Gaza?”

“Gaza’s different! Israel put a siege on Gaza. That’s why Hamas started shooting rockets.”

“Other way around I’m afraid. The siege was implemented because of the rockets.”

“Then why do you think the rocket attacks started?”