Margaret Attwood Weighs in...

I just knew she couldn't hold back from Israel bashing...

First, she admits she knows nothing about the Middle East...

I’d never been to Israel before, except in the airport. Like a lot of people on the sidelines – not Jewish, not Israeli, not Palestinian, not Muslim – I hadn’t followed the “the situation” closely, though, also like most, I’d deplored the violence and wished for a happy ending for all.

But, then she says something amazing...

I did have some distant background. As “Egypt” at a Model U.N. in 1956, my high school’s delegation had presented the Palestinian case. Why was it fair that the Palestinians, innocent bystanders during the Holocaust, had lost their homes? To which the Model Israel replied, “You don’t want Israel to exist.” A mere decade after the Camps and the six million obliterated, such a statement was a talk-stopper.

First, back then, it was the Israelis who were considered to be Palestinians. Secondly, what a way to present the Egyptian side - bringing in the holocaust! And, lying about the way homes were 'lost'. Lastly, she is surprised when the Israelis question whether her team [Egypt] wanted Israel to exist at all. Seems like a obvious question to ask given her assumptions - particularly since no Arab state wanted Israel to exist.

And, then some wishful thinking:

America, snarled in two chaotic wars and facing increasing international anger over Palestine, may well be starting to see Israel not as an asset but as a liability.

Sounds like she wants the US to get out of Afghanistan, no? And, as for seeing Israel as a liability, well, it sounds like that's exactly what she wants.

And, then towards the end she says:

Then there are people like me. Having been preoccupied of late with mass extinctions and environmental disasters, and thus having strayed into the Middle-eastern neighbourhood with a mind as open as it could be without being totally vacant, I’ve come out altered. Child-killing in Gaza? Killing aid-bringers on ships in international waters? Civilians malnourished thanks to the blockade? Forbidding writing paper? Forbidding pizza? How petty and vindictive! Is pizza is a tool of terrorists? Would most Canadians agree? And am I a tool of terrorists for saying this? I think not.

An open mind??? And, then she wonders about child-killing in Gaza. Hey, Margaret, your mind is still totally vacant.