le sigh...

I got into a really bitter, nasty fight with my mother during our last usual Sunday morning phone call. What caused the fight? Politics. Mom likes McCain. I like Obama.

Politics and religion, actually. Mom's a neocon, loyal synagogue member, and also a lifelong member of Hadassah. Me, I'm a sworn liberal, and prefer to stay away from most organized religion. Mom is concerned that Obama, because of his Islamic middle name perhaps, will not be a friend to Israel. I get this impression that McCain doesn't know that much about Israel in the first place, anyways. And that's where the argument started, I think.

I've never been to Israel. That place just instills such mixed feelings in me. To list: There's the Israel that welcomed my Polish relatives after the War. There's the Israel that so many Orthodox girls I grew up with moved to when they were 18, to get husbands. There's the badass Israel that still gives me a little kind of triumphant chill, like when I walked pass the fortress-like El Al terminal at Newark a few years ago. And then there's the Israel that shows its darker side.

I don't know how the Neocons have managed to do this, but they've somehow made up this "Israel can do no wrong," agenda. And that's just crap, because of course people (and governments) can mess up sometimes.

The American Left and leftist publications are often the opposite. Their criticisms of the Israeli government are so scathing that it is painful to me to read them. I picked up an issue of Adbusters about a year ago, and every single article, I swear, had some nasty attack against some Israeli policy (and of course, linked all of this back up to the Jews). I used to love that magazine, and haven't read it since.

Time to read up some more on political platforms, I guess. I hate arguing with my close relatives over such silly stuff.