Artist?

After Monday's visit from the Israeli girl, I regretted that I had not acted differently. I should have invited her in, offered her a cold drink, perhaps have offered her a bed for the night, before launching into a hopeless attempt to get through her ideological blinkers. But then I thought 'Don't be so naive, she's no artist; she's part of the new charm offensive of the Hasbara. She's not walking around Boars Hill with a sheaf of paintings; she has a minder waiting for her in a car round the corner.'

And then I remembered the strange case of the Israeli 'art students' in 2001. A whole lot of these fake students were caught in America and Canada visiting sensitive addresses and offering to sell paintings obviously made in China. The mystery was never cleared up. So I googled 'Israeli art student' and got 1,390,000 hits! It seems these people are popping up all over the world. Scary!

To add sauce to my week, I had the following e-mail from a chemist of my acquaintance, with whom I had tried to argue the case for justice and peace with Palestinians: 'If Arabs do not change their attitude and will continue with war, they will be expelled from there forever, just because Israel is militarily stronger. After all, isn't it how things are decided in gentile world? If other nations will decide to interfere on behalf of Arabs, Israel would have to use her nuclear arsenal. You should understand that we are fed up with you, guys, and if we have to go down we will, only we will take all of you with us. Remember Gideon? Zealots? Masada? We'll do it again. So, back off or die. There are no more choices.' Weltmacht oder Niedergang!