The hillside below us is a terraced vineyard, or was until the bulldozers came. There's a sharp smell of sage and recent rain, and the steady grind of heavy machinery. It is a cold day; a Palestinian man with a black stocking cap pulled over his headscarf stands in the stiff breeze, his face blank, watching as the two big shovels push aside greenery and the stone walls that support the terraces and leave a wound of red clay.

"Gawd," I said, with my morning mix of disgust and voyeurism at a news item I wish I'd never seen and would surely read. Thus compelled, I clicked on the New York Times headline, "Essay Linking Liberal Jews and Anti-Semitism Sparks a Furor." Here we go, I thought: Another right-wing American Jew with fantasies of his alternative life as an Israeli paratrooper is trashing liberal Jews for voicing criticisms milder than what an Israeli ex-paratroop officer might express over lunch with old army friends.