We will shortly board a jet airliner to return from our truncated trip to the Middle East. We were scheduled to lead discrete tours to Türkeye (on behalf of the Interpreter Foundation) and Egypt and Israel. For rather obvious reasons, the tour to Israel had to be cancelled. I would have cancelled it anyway, but factors beyond our control took the decision out of our hands: there was simply no way for us to enter Israel; Delta, United, Lufthansa, British Airways, and our own carrier, EgyptAir, have not been landing at Ben Gurion Airport.
I want to say, though, that we sensed absolutely no danger during our travels in Egypt and Türkiye. We never felt ourselves at risk. I heard of at least two pro-Palestinian demonstrations on Sultanahmet Square in Istanbul, but I never saw any trace of them. There was, I read, a pro-Palestinian demonstration in or adjacent to Tahrir Square in Cairo, but I saw nothing of it. I scarcely even heard any mention of the war between Israel and Hamas.
People were as friendly as ever, and we felt very welcome. I doubt that anybody on either of our tours would contradict me in this regard.
One tangentially relevant story: There were an unusual number of very visibly Islamic-fundamentalist men on our flight from Cairo to London. Closed-cropped heads, skull caps, impressively bushy beards, and galabeyas. Several of them were seated near us. Also seated right in front of us were a couple of (apparently) Anglican clergymen, both quite elderly, both wearing purple shirts and clerical collars. One of them was noticeably frail, and he had had a difficult time making his way to his seat. Once he was seated, though, I paid no more attention to him. But then a meal was served, and I began to be aware that he was shaking considerably in trying to deal with some of his food. From back where I was seated, I could not quite see what the precise issue was. But the Muslim fundamentalist gentlemen seated across the aisle to his left also noticed, and he turned and spent the next ten minutes or so helping the elderly clergyman with his meal, opening his utensil package, handing things to him, and so forth. It was not, probably, what many Westerners would have expected from the Muslim man’s appearance, and I found it curiously moving.
We were, it is true, obligated to set up a flight from Cairo to London in order to replace the flights from Cairo to Tel Aviv and from Tel Aviv to London on which we had originally counted, and to reschedule our flight from London to Salt Lake City. The four nights that we’ve been able to spend in London have been a pure bonus, both relaxing and pleasant. “When a man is tired of London,” Samuel Johnson is said to have remarked, “he is tired of life.”
I regret that it has taken a brutal war to shorten our trip, but I must say that I’m not altogether unhappy that the Israel tour fell through. Somehow, it seemed a good idea two years ago to agree to substantial back-to-back tours of Türkiye, Egypt, and Israel without a break between them — efficiency, and all that — but, as the prospect of more than a month of tour-leading grew closer and closer, I began to wonder what on earth I had been thinking (or drinking) when I agreed to it. These tours can be more than a bit grueling.
Third Time’s the Charm Department: On Monday, and again on Tuesday, and yet again on Wednesday, I noted and rejected a pseudonymous accusation against me from a pseudonymous poster who, for roughly a decade, has routinely deployed false public claims to an eagerly credulous audience on what I call the Peterson Obsession Board in the hope and expectation of defaming me and assassinating my character. In this most recent case, I decided to flatly challenge his vague but damning charge.
Well, I’ve finally elicited an acknowledgment from several of his confrères, though not from Everybody’s WC himself. And the reactions are just what I would have predicted: I generally ignore EWC’s malicious confections but, in every case where I’ve bothered to publicly deny or contradict his tales, the response has been silence from EWC and, from his enablers, a rallying around the poor fellow. I’m obsessed with him and can’t leave him alone, his posts have really hit a nerve, I’m moaning and whining, and so forth. Whatever.
Just for the record, though: I have never tried to get anybody fired. I have never conducted a multi-year — or even multi-minute — crusade of defamation, slander, and personal attack against anybody. If I have ever caused any family years of stress, hurtm and frustration, that would be news to me.
I have, it is true, published criticisms of certain published works and, to the extent that it has been relevant to evaluating the written materials, of their authors. Some of them I’ve written myself. In this, I’m simply doing what drama critics and film critics and literary critics and editorial writers and writers of letters to the editor have done for centuries. I express my opinions, as do others. But I have never sought anyone’s firing, or engaged in slander or defamation or personal attack, and I have never sought to hurt or damage anyone’s family.
As for the conclusion reached by Everybody’s WC, that I’m “pure evil,” well, I’m not going to deny it. The characterization could well be entirely accurate. Indeed, it probably is. But if it’s going to be demonstrated, it will need to be demonstrated on the basis of something other than a multi-year crusade of defamation, slander, and personal attack that traumatized a man and his family but nonetheless failed to effect his firing. Such a crusade simply didn’t happen.
I’m forced to conclude that Everybody’s WC is once again lying about me, as it has long been his habit, indeed his passion, to do.
Posted from London Heathrow Airport
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