Last night I met an old boyfriend at a cafe. Four years after our very messy breakup, we're sort of becoming friends. I have forgiven him for marrying the woman with whom he cheated on me, and for the fact that her name is Mona (and mine Lisa). The fact that he lives in Scandinavia, and visits Israel only once or twice a year, probably helps: our meetings are just pleasant catching-up sessions, with some reminiscing thrown in. Also, I have to give him credit for one thing: he really taught me how to speak Hebrew - but not intentionally. He was the first Israeli I met - this was when we were both living in New York - whose English was actually worse than my Hebrew. The day he said to me, "Ehhhhhhh, you didn't waz der last night, waz you?" was the day I said, "You know what? Let's speak Hebrew."

Two years later I arrived in Israel with the vocabulary of a gum-chewing, ecstasy-swallowing Tel Aviv club girl. My speech was dotted with so much slang that I raised more than a few eyebrows among my educated Israeli friends. Reading novels in Hebrew and watching hours of heavy Hebrew-language documentary films on Channel 8 fixed that situation pretty quickly. I still search for words sometimes - okay, frequently - but mostly I forget which language I'm speaking.

Old boyfriend was raised on a leftist kibbutz, but living in Europe has effected a remarkable change on his political opinions. He went on and on about the way Israel is demonized in the Scandinavian press, and how the Israeli left are a bunch of pussies who are feeding into the distorted view that Europeans have of Israel. He was practically frothing at the mouth when he mentioned Amira Hass and Gideon Levy.

That's the way it goes in a democracy, I said. It's called freedom of expression.

Oh fuck democracy, he said, You don't know what it's like to open the newspaper and see political cartoons showing Israeli soldiers eating Palestinian babies.

And you know what? he said, I have lots of Arab friends in [the country he lives in] and they hate their governments more than we do!

So what? I said. You can hate your government and love your country. What's your point?

You! he said. You're just another naive leftist. You don't understand that we live in a jungle, that power rules.

And on and on - cliche after cliche.

Old boyfriend, I said, You've become a reactionary. You've forgotten how to think.

And you, he said, you think too much.