by A nice lady at work was signing out for the day and tells me she is off to join the Stop the Palestine Aggression march (whatever it's called) in the city, I mentioned that there'd been a week-long protest outside the BBC offices, with people chanting - "shame on you BBC". The lady then goes on about how the BBC are telling the Jew's side only and supporting anti-Palestine bias. I suggested she might be in error and that the broadcaster's reporters are embedded with those people. But that only served to twist her face up in anger - "those people being attacked are Muslims, Muslims only think of peace", she said.
"What, all of them?", I offered, but that didn't seem to help and as I read her mind (formulating a new attack) I quickly said, "you know, I'm not over there but it seems to me that whatever people claim to be, there will always be horrible people causing problems for everyone who actually seeks a quiet life" - that seemed to shut her up a little.
I was quite impressed with how quickly she flashed red. And the default notion that all people of this one faith are inherently good, and anyone who crosses them is inherently evil ..well, it wasn't surprising really, but I well knew that if I engaged this person I'd have crippled her argument all too easily, and then have some dubious complain raised against me.
I think I did ok.
