I have moments in my life when I can literally feel my thinking expanding – I can almost hear my old thoughts being torn up and discarded and replaced by new thoughts or a new way of seeing.  I experienced this having lunch with Connor today.

We have just started an absolutely brilliant course, on Coursera, by a Professor from Tel-Aviv University on ‘The Emergence of the Modern Middle East‘.  We were watching this while we ate lunch this afternoon.

I have previously considered myself moderately well-informed on the history of the area, the way in which Western powers just divided the lands up into countries with no thought to the people living there, the completely artificial imposition and creation of the State of Israel supported by the U.S. to block the perceived threat to their interests in the Middle East from the Soviet Union etc.

I now realize…