It does irritate me when I am described as a controversialist and commentator on Israel.

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

What I am against is false optimism: the notion either that things have to go well, or else that they tend to, or else that the default condition of historical trajectories is characteristically beneficial in the long-run.

I am not against Israel, I am against Zionists.

I am against any reconciliation with Israel.

The people whose necks hurt when I write about the Middle East tend to live in Brooklyn or Boca Raton: the kind of Zionist who pays another man to live in Israel for him. I have nothing but contempt for such people.