Fast forward.

The second invasion of Iraq started on my birthday in 2003.

For at least three years I checked the news every chance I got to see how many Americans had been killed that week in Iraq and Afghanistan. America. The evil empire with its puppet master, Israel. I remember buying ‘The Israel lobby’ in a Belgian book store. Must have been around the time it was first published, somewhere between 2007 and 2009. I didn’t finish the book, but the parts I read confirmed my idea that the US Congress is controlled by Israel. It took me until Putin invaded Ukraine to rediscover one of the authors of the book, John Mearsheimer. When I first started listening to some of his lectures on YouTube about Ukraine I didn’t even realize I had bought a book from the same man more than ten years earlier.

In 2009 I fell in love with a Belgian-Iranian girl, Maryam, who was studying to be a gynaecologist.

We lived together and were extremely close. Her Iranian parents sending me death threats because I wasn’t making enough money to be dating their first born possibly drove us tighter into each other arms, but that’s a story for a wholly different book.

At a certain point she did a short internship at an organisation called ‘Healthcare for the people.’ A collective of Belgian physicians who agree to earn a salary equal to that of a factory worker and insist that healthcare should be entirely free. Am sure I will eventually tell you a little bit more about this organisation.

I don’t remember the exact details, but a physician there told her about some other healthcare related organisation in the West Bank. The two organisations were friends. There was also a connection via a Belgian NGO called Intal. This was an organisation that organized activities to support Palestine. They sold all kinds of products, including Palestinian beer. It was called Taybeh. No idea if it’s still being brewed and sold. I do still have one of the sweaters they sold. Commie red with a slogan in black letters reading ‘Globalize solidarity.’ Let me check my wardrobe to see if it has Che Guevara’s face printed on it.

Ok, it doesn’t.

Don’t trust your own memory.

That’s why am being very careful about whatever I write here. The Tweets exchanged between me and Moshe I copied verbatim from Twitter and I resisted the urge to just do it from memory.

This is certainly one of the points I want to make: we should question our recollection more, we should question our opinions more, we should question our interpretations of information or input we consume with way more scrutiny. You, me, everyone.

I don’t know when I heard the term ‘echo chamber’ for the first time.

I do remember that it immediately alarmed me.

I could immediately envision the existence of such a thing. A bubble where we comfortably simmer, pur, experience riveting highs and lows, and treat ourselves to the thrill of having our preconceived notions of reality confirmed over and over again, preferably by voices louder and with more reach than our own.

Maybe that is one of the things that motivated me to contact Moshe. To avoid accusations that I am comfy in my ever so cosy echo chamber where you can find lapel pins of the Confederate flag and the Palestinian flag. Hey, I will identify with almost any underdog (there are some notable exceptions). We will get to that.