(Almost) Catching up with the present

Shalom Shay, thanks for reading and for taking the time to comment. The book I was quoting from is "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" by Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian and former senior lecture in political science at the University of Haifa. I'd highly recommend the book, by the way, but it's also quite sobering at the same time. So no, it's not an "SS book", as you suggested, and I'm not quite sure what you mean by that, by the way. If you mean a book about the atrocities committed by the SS, I've read a lot of those, along with a lot of others about the Third Reich, WWII, Hitler, his henchmen, various concentration camps, etc. I've done so to learn and educate myself about the history of the country I happened to be born in, and because the information is out there and easily accessible. I thought this would make it easier for me to come to terms with what happened, instead of spending my entire life in denial and ignorance. Also, thanks a lot for your "short history lesson", I wasn't aware that random elderly men playing sheshbesh in a random little café in Jaffa must invariably be Iraqi Jews, but maybe so. Is that the part that makes me unsophisticated and uncosmopolitan, or is it reading and reflecting a book about Israeli history in Israel written by an Israeli? Would it be more sophisticated and cosmopolitan to spend all my time in Tel Aviv, get drunk, party all night in the clubs, and when somebody says Palestinian, to ask "What's a Palestinian?"? It's obvious from your comment that I'm not as sophisticated as you, who has visited lots of countries in the world, who always tries to find the good thing in people. But for your information, yes, I may be a bit of a nudnik sometimes, a schlemiel even, but I went to Israel with open mind and open heart, I talked a lot to all kinds of people, but more so than that I listened to what they had to say, and I was welcomed with open arms by my hosts and most of the Israeli people in turn. I loved the trip, it was a great experience, and I would go back any time, if only for the hummus. What you wrote, on the other hand, sounds like the shtuss of an am ha'aretz trying to stir up a shlemozzl. Gut Shabbes, Jens