25th March
Eilat, Israel.
In order to share a taxi with Ghassab back to Aqaba, where he was meeting another group of tourists to guide around Petra, we made an early start, arriving in Aqaba by around 9am. After waiting at the visa office on the Jordanian side for around 15 minutes, I paid the exit fee of about £3.50 and walked back to the Israeli side of the crossing.
After having been carried around in my pocket for the last six months, my passport is beginning to look suspiciously dog-eared, with the photo page becoming slightly delaminated, and an air bubble appearing over my photo. This caused some doubt in the mind of the first border guard I presented it to, but not enough for serious delay. After a few minutes I was in the main security area, and after about ten minutes of questioning I was allowed to enter with a new 3-month tourist visa as desired.
After being ripped-off by the taxi that took me the short distance from the border to Eilat centre, I had some breakfast then walked down to the beach area, to see what Eilat had to offer.
Perhaps I am not the best judge, but it seemed a nice enough resort town - they have made the best of some appalling sixties and seventies architecture, and the beach area is well done. It is certainly better for the absence of Daily Mails and ‘English Breakfasts’ on sale that are an all too common site in many other Mediterranean holiday spots. After calling the coach company to rearrange my return coach, I had around 5 hours to wait so I went to the only bookshop I could find and bought a newspaper (not the Daily Mail) and a book (worse than the Daily Mail).
Having recently read Norman Finkelstein’s demolition of Alan Dershowitz’s work, and in the interest of reading a broad range of material, I found Dershowitz’s latest book tempting. After finding a quiet spot in one of the many beachfront bars, I began reading, taking care to shield the cover from view lest someone might think I actually take this sort of thing seriously. I’m not going to comment on the specific contents of Dershowitz’s book except to say that after reading Finkelstein, I honestly thought that he must have been exaggerating Dershowitz’s faults. To my disbelief, I realised that Finkelstein was correct - Dershowitz’s work is so atrocious both in terms of academia (glaring factual errors as well as a substantial dose of deceit by omission) and in moral judgment, that at times I found myself muttering under my breath ‘What! You can’t say that!’
I recommend taking a look at some of his work, possibly alongside a critique by someone such as Finkelstein – you will not find a clearer example of ludicrous propaganda parading as academic enquiry. It reminds me of something I read once on the subject of Israel and Palestine that pointed out how normally sane people can go totally insane whilst discussing this issue. I can’t vouch for Dershowitz’s sanity on other subjects, but on this one he is as off-the-map as I have seen.
