Dad and the Untold History of Palestine and Israel

I'm publishing this on Dad's birthday, seven years after his passing. It's a kind of tribute to his legacy and character.

Most of my life was spent trying to hide from his overbearing pragmatism and bullying. Dad was very much a practical man with a real world orientation to getting things done. I was a dreamer and an idealist. After finishing school, I couldn't wait to escape to the other side of Canada and make a life there.

Nearly thirty years later, I returned. Dad and I got to know each other again as different people and we became closer than we had ever been before. Things and perceptions do change. We learn things.that were not as we thought or as we were told. Both of us changed and adapted to the fresh reality, and that change of perception provided me with many wonderful years of a relationships with a man who was not only my father, he became a friend and comrade too.

I grew up with the perception of Israel being a heroic underdog project in the face of violent and backward religious zealots. There was endless media that romanticized Israeli courage and innovation - movies like Exodus with Paul Newman - and TV news coverage of Middle East wars that reinforced the idea that God was naturally on the side of Israel.

It was all propaganda, and it persisted as long as TV and movies were monopolized by a handfull of people who had reason to shape public perception in favor of Israel. But now there is the Internet and with it, independent journalists who have the resources to tell a different version of the truth.

In his final years, I was amazed to see how receptive Dad was to hearing my point of view on various subjects, even when they challenged his views. He really did try to understand and sometimes he even came around. True to his nature, that was indeed practical. After all, what's the point of clinging to ideas when doing so in the face of contrary evidence can distance you from the love of family?

Attached to this post is a twenty minute video, The Untold History of Palestine and Israel. If you click on the Einstein meme, you'll be able to see a two minute clip to get a taste of it. It will propably conflict with everything that you thought you knew about the Israelis and Palestinians. We were all raised with Israeli propaganda and shared it as the indisputable consensus of truth. Me too, up until five or six years ago when I started to listen to the other side of  stories. Since then, for me nothing has been indisputable and I've discovered why so many people now say we live in an Empire of Lies.

It takes courage and integrity to listen to ideas that challenge authority and the consensus of all those around you. If you dare even speak of them, you will risk ridicule and shunning from the majority of people who adopt their beliefs on the basis of primitive tribalism, the philosophy of 'Go along to get along.' ... even if that means WW3. 

Dad was a very practical man in his later years. He dropped his ideologies and fixed beliefs in order to hear with his heart.

Watch the whole video on YouTube by clicking here: The Untold History of Palestine and Israel.