{"id":49296,"date":"2013-06-09T09:09:20","date_gmt":"2013-06-09T17:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=49296"},"modified":"2013-06-09T09:09:20","modified_gmt":"2013-06-09T17:09:20","slug":"a-scary-bus-ride-from-beirut-to-damascus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=49296","title":{"rendered":"A Scary Bus Ride From Beirut To Damascus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On June 7, 2013, Dennis Prager said: &#8220;I went to Syria in my mid-20s, but I didn&#8217;t announce. When they asked religion, on one of the Arab countries visa application, and I wrote, &#8220;Orthodox.&#8221; While I wasn&#8217;t an Orthodox Jew&#8230;<br \/>\n&#8220;This was a life-changing moment. I was on a bus from Beirut to Damascus. I was seated next to a man, the first Iraqi I had ever met. I talk to everybody. I love talking to strangers. This is why I didn&#8217;t think it was necessarily a good idea to invade Iraq.<br \/>\n&#8220;I said, &#8216;Sir, could you summarize the Iraqi people in a sentence?&#8217; He said, &#8216;No problem. Iraqis are the most barbaric people in the world.&#8217; You can imagine how I felt. That was chilling. But it got worse.<br \/>\n&#8220;He then said, &#8216;What&#8217;s your name?&#8217; I said &#8216;Dennis.&#8217; He said, &#8216;What&#8217;s your last name?&#8217; I said, &#8216;Prager.&#8217; And he said, &#8216;What are the origins of your last name?&#8217; I knew what he was getting at. I said, &#8216;It&#8217;s a German word, which means from Prague. I assume I have German and Czech ancestors.&#8217; He said, &#8216;Maybe so, but I think Prager is a Jewish name.&#8217; There are many Pragers who are Jewish and many who aren&#8217;t, but he was obsessed with finding out if I was a Jew.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On June 7, 2013, Dennis Prager said: &#8220;I went to Syria in my mid-20s, but I didn&#8217;t announce. When they asked religion, on one of the Arab countries visa application, and I wrote, &#8220;Orthodox.&#8221; While I wasn&#8217;t an Orthodox Jew&#8230; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=49296\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dennis-prager"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49297,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49296\/revisions\/49297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}