A phrase you hear often from those advocating a fairer policy on Israel/ Palestine is “If Americans only knew.” One American journalist who has become a full time advocate has adopted it to define her organization.

Well, Americans are at long last beginning to know. I suspect a lot of congressmen and women will be talking in the next few weeks to their colleagues Brian Baird (D-WA ) and Keith Ellison (D- Minn.) who have just returned from a courageous trip to Gaza . Baird described the physical destruction and human suffering as “staggering.” He didn’t have to dwell on the fact that the exercise in brutalizing a civilian population was accomplished with the most advanced American weapons.

Not every American can travel to Israel-Palestine to see for himself. But the conversation about what goes on there and America’s role in it is beginning to open up, after way too many years. I would put two Congressmen independently visiting Gaza and talking about it afterwards on a par with Bob Simon’s path-breaking Sixty Minutes segment. The American conversation is beginning to move, at long last.