Richard, you can count me in as a non-Jewish supporter who regularly voices his ardent, pro-Israel positions. Not only am I politically center-left, but I'm not even religiously right wing (I was baptized, but do not count myself as a Christian)-and that makes me rare. I feel comfortable stating that I am vastly more "pro-Israel" than even most of my Jewish friends-except those in Israel-and I have quite a few.

Basically, it comes down to what I believe is a suicidal betrayal of our own value system. To morally support those who are so diametrically-violently-opposed to our way of life and all that we consider civilized is nothing short of insanity. Particularly so when we invoke those civilized values as the very basis for our condemnation of the side which shares and is trying to defend them.

I didn't start out thinking this way, though. I might have if I'd met Richard before my senior year at Boston University, and knew that he was interested in this subject, not to mention Jewish (I took one course from him called "Reading in History" which was designed to teach critical thinking. Based on one particularly good quip he lobbed at me, I actually thought he was Catholic! We never discussed Israel and I didn't see him again until a few years after I had graduated.)

I majored in history and focused all my courses on the Middle East and international relations. I won't say I swallowed everything from the accepted discourse-hook line and sinker-but I'm fairly confident that I'd made some crude comparisons between the treatment/genocide of Native Americans and the Jewish fight for existence in Israel. I remember regularly battling what I perceived as right-wing jewish extremists on NYTimes Mideast forums. I'm quite sure that I did not understand anything of the real Arab-Muslim motives. I thought the conflict was about land, at least primarily, exacerbated by Israeli mistakes and maintained through an endless cycle of violence etc. etc... you know the cliches.

Having been awed by the film Lawrence of Arab when I was 12, I was particularly enamored with Arab-Muslim culture and I wanted to study in an Arab country for my last semester. As it turns out, the only program B.U. had in the Middle East was in Israel. I took the opportunity, thinking that I'd at least be able to use it as a launching pad to see other parts of the region.

By the time I had come back from 6 months in Israel and a few weeks worth of travels through Jordan and Egypt, I had an Israeli flag in my bag. Over the course of my brief studies and travel there, I came to realize that 1) contrary to popular belief, the Israeli "side of the story" was not being taught in university and 2) The most important factors at work in the conflict-the fundamentally, existentially important factors-were virtually unknown to most outside observers and commentators. I'm talking about things like the deceptive, existential threat posed by "right-of-return" advocacy, among others. I took a class at Haifa U. from Dan Schueftan (sp?), who introduced me to a rather blunt, but realist point of view. In his class I read Dan Kurzman's Genesis 1948-a real eye opener that exposed me to a more realistic and factually based narrative of Israel's birth (not framed as just another example of whites pushing out the Indians). It all started really coming together for me when I rode on a bus by a bunch of IDF activity on the Dead Sea. I didn't know what it was until I saw the news that night, where it was explained that the IDF has found a large cache of weapons which had been floated across the sea from Jordan under cover of darkness. I wasn't shocked or scared by it, but I did realize how persistent Israel's enemies are, and how little the Jewish nation can afford to let down its guard.

Compounding all of these observations were my impressions of the incredible chasm between Arab and Israeli culture. In the accepted Western discourse it is often assumed that Palestinians, indeed Israel's neighbors, are poor and "backward" because of hardships imposed on them by imperialist or otherwise unfortunate Western politics. It's not voiced so blatantly, but Israel and the West are usually assumed to be culpable in some fashion. I was SHOCKED at how effective Israeli society was and how fundamentally broken Arab society was-at least by my American standards. In Cairo I witnessed disorder, disrepair, and lots of trash. It was the trash that really got me, because no one seemed to care. Giant piles of it rising up to the second story outside apartment buildings. Dead donkeys-partially decayed-lying in the street or near canals connected to their only source of water: the Nile. Children stomping though junk and trash, no less under the supervision of their parents or uncles, and near the Pyramids of Giza at that. I saw inefficiency everywhere: the lack of trash pickup, the apathetic behavior of bureaucrats at the borders, the number of times people tried to scam me out of my money, the lack of traffic regulation despite an overbearing police presence, the way everyone seemed so resigned to the will of Allah, the extreme number of men who were not working, rather residing at cafes while "their" women worked-a great many of them apparently at home.... etc. etc. I remember being blown away by all this because, for the first time, I realized that culture is something more than just a cool affectation. It really matters and it can make or break your society. Upon my return to Israel I suffered a kind of reverse culture shock. It wasn't Germany, but it close to the opposite of Arab. And in the wake of this epiphany, I also realized that it was highly likely they "did it" to themselves. After that, it was about jealousy (I didn't know about honor-shame then, but I was starting to smell it).

After that semester in Israel I graduated, worked for a year, and finally became an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy. All my subsequent experience, personally and professionally, has basically confirmed that I was right to reverse my original perspective. Last year I wrote a 300 page thesis on how it is that people, indeed whole societies, have come to believe what they do about Israel, that is, how it is that there are so many strongly held and poorly founded believes about the conflict. I describe it as "cognitive warfare" and feel passionately enough about it myself-I'm trying to get it published.

So there is your explanation. Probably more than you were looking for!