Five years on

Today is my fifth Blogiversary. Five years ago, on April 22, 2001, I wrote these words:

This site will undergo many style changes in the upcoming months, as I have no real idea what I’d like the end product to look like. What I do know is that I’ve spent several years in the industry and know the difference between a point, a pica, and a pixel. I know that the Internet is a wealth of information and misinformation, and anyone can discover just about anything online if s/he looks long enough. I know that my mindset has undergone many changes in the last few years, and will doubtless undergo more as I get older. Growth is change. Stagnation, to me, is worse than death. If I cannot change, just dig me a hole, throw me in and cover me with dirt.

Five years ago, on April 22, 2001, Glenn Reynolds wrote these words on Instapundit:

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That’s right, my blog is a pre-Instapundit blog. When I started blogging, Glenn was still writing letters to the editor and haunting the Slate readers forums. As a matter of fact, I was toying with the idea of naming this blog “Instapundit,” but since he was a friend of mine and he begged me for the name, I let him have it.

Okay, no, that’s not a true story at all, except for the part about my blogging months before Glenn started.

I spent some time yesterday reading my posts from 2001 — all of them. I cringe at a few of the things I wrote, and I smile at some of the others. There was quite a lot of Bush-bashing, and I was farther to the left than I am today. Israel as a topic did not come up once in 2001. Most of my posts were more in the line of a journal: Personal anecdotes, humor, talking about my cats, with a little bit of politics thrown in. In fact, I rarely mentioned my Jewishness or anti-Semitism, until the day Daniel Pearl was murdered. That was a watershed event in my life. Scroll up towards the more recent posts on that page when you read it, and you will see the changes begin. And continue. And coalesce. That last link was the beginning of the ending of my relationship with bloggers from the left. Here, the breach solidifies.

And then came the Netanya Massacre. And my complete turning away from those that excuse terrorism in any way.

It was the beginning of what is now known as my No Israel-bashing policy. I simply do not have the patience to answer the same accusations and lies, over and over again, while those accusing the Israelis of atrocities excuse all atrocities against Israel because of that all-powerful “occupation” — always coming to a dead halt when you point out to them that Yasser Arafat was organizing Fateh and committing terrorist attacks on Israel years before the “occupation” began. They never seem to have an answer to that, so the subject is hurriedly switched to, “Yes, but–” and related to something that happened recently.

If you really want to know what drives this weblog today, you can see its development in those early 2002 posts, particularly in the discussion with Mike Golby, who tried to tell me how wrong I was to be angry about Jew-hatred, and who used his life in South Africa as an example of how much he knew about the Israeli situation. I think you can see from there how quickly it spiraled downhill. The final nail in the coffin of my relationship with the left blogosphere was the San Francisco State University anti-Semitic mob attack on the Hillel students who were demonstrating for peace. At that point in time, I split completely from my circle of bloggers, who were and remain mostly left-leaning, and who have presumably not changed their opinions on Israel any more than I have. Their insistence on trying to get me to say that both sides were at fault mystified me then; it mystifies me still. The Jewish students were rallying for peace; the Muslims threatened them verbally and physically, stopping them from leaving without a police escort. It is an example of the Jewish experience in a nutshell: The hatred is there, everywhere we are, no matter what we say or do. I had rarely experienced Jew-hatred in my lifetime. I’ve written about the few times that I have.

But I have experienced it many, many times since I became a blogger writing about Israel and Jewish issues. There are the kinds of anti-Semites who will tell you that they don’t hate Jews, and yet, they email you treatises on all the wrongs “your people” have done, dating back literally thousands of years. They send you links to anti-Semitic websites, and when you tell them those what those links are, they respond that the information is true, regardless of the source. I once had a correspondent write to me after I wrote a Hanukkah post and ask me what he, a descendant of Greeks, should think about my celebrating a holiday that was a defeat for them. When I pointed out that he should be ashamed that his ancestors prevented mine from freely worshipping as Jews, he had no response. They generally do not when you confront them with facts.

There are the kinds of anti-Semites who actively hate you, and tell you so, unasked, of course. The mere existence of my weblog is reason enough for them to spew their bile. There are the newest anti-Semites, the Muslim anti-Semites, who will go on and on about Israeli atrocities — or they would, if I let them. I have been deleting those comments fairly consistently; I don’t need to give them a soapbox that I pay for, and my readers don’t need to read their poison. I probably get less anti-Semitic hatemail and comments than some. I’ve noticed that what they really want is to yell at someone who won’t fight back, and as my regular readers have noticed, I really like a good scrap. And as far as I can tell, the average Jew-hater is not very bright. It’s a very uneven battle, generally.

It’s interesting that my weblog has found such a home on the right side of the blogosphere, and such disdain on the left. I am still a feminist, still pro-choice, in favor of gay rights, for affirmative action, progressive taxation, and many, many other Democratic and left-side causes. But the left simply won’t have anything to do with me, because I am an unabashed and unashamed Zionist and supporter of Israel, as well as the war on terror. I will never make excuses for terror. Not ever. So the lefties call me a conservative and assume that I am a Republican. Many on the right seem to think the same thing, at least, the casual righty readers do. My longtime readers know very well where I stand on the issues. One term that has never been used to describe me is “wishy-washy.”

I used to put up a list of posts I considered the best of the previous year. But this year, I think I’ll let this essay stand. You can go back and skim my archives if you like — there are the new ones easily accessed via the sidebar, and the old ones, where you can scroll down to the bottom of the page, start with The First Blog, and go on from there. If you want to learn more about me as a person, then the first year’s posts are where you will find that information, scattered here and there. But if you want to learn more about Israel’s treatment in the world, anti-Semitism, and my take on current events and politics, stick with the Meryl: The Later Years.

Either way, though, you can’t go wrong. I’ve been blogging for five years, and show no sign of tiring. It’s getting to be a habit with me.

Further reading:
First anniversary post
Second anniversary post
Third anniversary post
Fourth anniversary post (I never did get around to writing a real anniversary post last year.)