I appreciate your calm, lucid and logical response to the people who made accusation. Now some advice as someone who spent too much time trying to argue with people on this blog.

Don't waste your breath or your time on them.

This isn't even truly about Israel and Palestine. It's about being in your bubble and not wanting it punctured by any detail that doesn't fit your narrative. Let me give you one key example I found on this blog. One writer who I will not name wrote a very long and angry article calling Susan Sarandon a priveleged white rich celebrity for taking the side of Palestine in this conflict. In their next article, they wrote a long and angry article about Juliana Marguiles for taking the side of Israel in the conflict. In neither case did this person care about the conflict at all - they just wanted to use that old leftist creed that whatever opinion a person of privelege has on an issue is the wrong one.

The same will always be the same with every issue that surfaces on the Internet. On this site I find it particularly prevalent on the left, but there are idiots everywhere. I think many of the people on this blog only want to hear opinions that completely and fully meet their own. And any position that has the slightest sign of nuance - as both your original article and this one do - is automatically a sign of hate speech or corruption by the Other. aND those who write articles about these same subject refuse to acknowledge any point of view but their own as correct. I learned this the hard way. I spent months trying to encourage a lively debate with some of the most blatant doomporn and contratrian writers on the internet. I took an approach, for the record, not unlike yours in engaging with them. There were many who were willing to applaud me but no one in engaged or even bothered to respond.

My adivce to you is to do what took me awhile to learn. Those who leave harsh and brutal criticism on your columns, simply unfollow them such as the reader who accused you twice of war crimes. Engage with the other. Try to build your own audience of those who will listen to you or debate you. Don't give up trying to reach them, but don't expect them to do anything but condemn your points of view. I Want to Believe (X-Files fan) but I've been in this morass to long. And keep up the good work