Perceptions of the Other
Ibtisam Mahameed
Interfaith Encounter Association, Middleway
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ Religion itself is guided by the Bible and the Koran, but when a rabbi-- for example Ovadia Yosef-- calls the Arabs snakes and cockroaches, this is not written in the Bible, these are his own expressions. I don't blame the Bible. He is a representative of his religion but he also represents himself. If he is responsible for his personal expressions then I blame him as Ovadia Yosef, and not his Bible. The same is true about a sheikh who curses someone. The Koran didn't tell him to curse. This sheikh represents himself, not my Koran. We should separate between the laws of the Koran and the Bible and the expressions of people who play with religion.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Shlomi Daskal
The People's Voice, Realistic Religious Zionism
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ The most difficult thing is to convince the Israelis that there is a Palestinian partner. That’s the most difficult thing. They don’t believe it because there’s a problem: The media in Israel airs only negative things, just as I see the Palestinian media covering a lot of negative affairs here. I believe that the Palestinian and Israeli societies are a mirror image of each other and that identical processes are taking place in both societies. They can’t believe there’s an Israeli partner and we can’t believe there’s a Palestinian partner. That’s why convincing them that there’s a Palestinian partner is the most difficult thing.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Yoa'ad Shbita
Building Bridges for Peace, Reut-Sedaka
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ All the Arabs work at McDonald's! Why? Discrimination? When I go to ask at a shoe store they ask me, "Are you done with military service?" It's not only Tel Aviv, it's all over the country. I do work at McDonald's now. Once this old lady came in and heard two other employees speaking in Arabic, she still didn't realize I was an Arab. She came up to me and said, "Tell me, do they hire Arabs here?" And I said, "Of course." She said, "Shame on you! They're wiping us out and you give them work!" I didn't answer her. Didn't know how to answer her! What to tell her! Should I argue? Fight? I didn't know what I should do! She's an old woman and I'm sure she was alive during the Holocaust. Why? Why do you think this way? You're the ones who should have learned, you went through more than anyone else. It's so sad, as though people never learn anything!” [Source in Complete Interview]
Abigail Jacobson
Hands of Peace
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ I'm an open person and always ask lots of questions; I want to get to know people I meet, but that isn't the same for someone else from a different reality, a different culture, whose experiences differ from mine, and they could understand me to be threatening.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Yafit Gamila Biso
The Olive Tree
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ People think that I go there and push because I love Arabs too much, that I like being among Arabs too much. No. I do love being with Arabs, but I'd like to pay them friendly visits, not fight their battles. I'm driven to show them and prove that there are people in Israel who really want peace and truly care. There's nothing I can do with the older ones because they've been to Israel already and they know what Israelis are. I care about the young children. I collect used toys and go to a kindergarten and gather 100-200 children and speak to them in their own language, in Arabic, and give out the toys. I tell them that the toys are from people in Israel, from Jews, Israelis, that this toy is from a child who gave it up so that they could have a toy, because maybe they have a little more than them. It does something. I came across villages that had never had contact with Israelis apart from soldiers, and it matters. It changes opinions.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Gila Svirsky
Coalition of Women for Peace, Women in Black
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ I said, "Look, I have to see for myself." I started to visit the Territories and meet with people and talk to them, and go into their homes and see that they also have flush toilets and they're reading from recipe books and sharing novels with each other. It was an unbelievable experience for me, and then I began to think more seriously about politics, and began to involve myself more. I realized there was a big curtain of silence and concealment behind which an occupation was festering. Little by little I began to devote myself to addressing that.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Wafa Srour
The School for Peace
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ When people ask me why I bring students to meet each other, I tell them that in my own experience participating in such encounters has strengthened my sense of identity. Palestinian students grow up hearing that Israeli students are stronger, better, and smarter than they are. When they meet Israeli students, however, they discover that they are not as they are portrayed in books and so on. When I came face-to-face with real Israelis, it caused me to reflect upon myself.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Adi Dagan
Coalition of Women for Peace, Machsom Watch
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ What needs to change is the perception of "us" and "them," Jews versus others. We need to use civic concepts, and this does happen quite often in practice. I have Arab friends and I feel we are close in terms of being Israeli. I feel there is a lot in common with Israeli Arabs - a certain closeness. We really do live in the same place. Culturally we share a lot, but on the level of consciousness there is a very large barrier between "us" and "them."” [Source in Complete Interview]
Orly Noy
All For Peace Radio
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ I had the funniest experience. A couple of weeks ago Adele asked me if I knew an Israeli settler who speaks Arabic. She really, genuinely wanted to listen to what the other side had to say, which I thought was really commendable, it was really nice of her, because I wouldn't speak with these people on my program, for sure. But she was willing to fairly listen to the other side. So I said, "I'll do it by the book. I'll call the Yesha spokesman, and I'll ask him." This is the craziest person I've spoken with for a very long time. I introduced myself very politely and I said, "I was wondering if maybe you could connect us to somebody from your organization that speaks Arabic and can speak with us." He says, "Are you from a terrorist radio?!" That's what he said. I was shocked, I couldn't speak, and I said, "Do I sound like a terrorist to you?" And he said, "Well, the fact that there are Israelis that cooperate with these terrorists, it's none of my business." And I said, "Okay, get out of my ear." It was so immature.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Ihsan Turkiyyeh
Arab-Hebrew Theatre in Jaffa
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ One time they [Palestinian students] said to one of the Israeli actors, "Go home, go home, go back to Romania, what are you doing here, you are making peace? What peace are you selling us, go to Romania!" I came and I said to them that I should intervene. I said, "Okay, he was born here, but it's not his fault that he was born here." I felt the same when I was raised in Lebanon, I was very attached to the place where I was raised, although my parents came from another country. So sometimes I feel like I am in the same situation, you know, a little bit. There is what you call a very small moment where I felt I was in the same situation as the Israelis whose parents are from different places in the world, that they are like me when I was in Lebanon, with my mother and father being Palestinian.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Ester Golan
Interfaith Encounter Association
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ I was 10 years old [when Hitler came to power], and although there was a big beautiful synagogue in that town there wasn't a Jewish school, so I went to a Christian school. One day the teacher came in, I sat in the front because I was so little, so he said, "There's no room for Jews to sit in the front, you have to sit in the back." That wasn't so bad, but I was 10 years old and children still played in the yard at the break, and nobody spoke to me anymore from that day on. They went to their Hitler Youth, and the girls to a different group. The Jewish community did all it could to compensate us for that by having more activities for youth in the synagogue, and we went to a Zionist youth movement.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Inas Radwan
Building Bridges for Peace
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ Yes, [I met someone I wouldn't otherwise have met--] a settler. I don't know where she's from exactly, but she's from around Jerusalem or Bethlehem, not around Jenin. Both of us were shocked the first time we met. She was always around me, making sure that we are alike. She would ask me questions like, "What do you eat for breakfast?" I would say, "Hummus and yogurt…etc." She would ask, "Do you have bread and meat?!" You can never imagine how she was asking those questions... She would always sit next to me and touch my clothes, asking me about everything, she was afraid of me. She was exploring me like a child exploring something new.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Ibrahim Issa
Hope Flowers School
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ Two years ago we had a visitor here, maybe 1 1/2 years ago, who spoke to a child four-year-old and he asked him if he likes the Israelis, and he[the child] said, "no I hate them." And the visitor said, "how could the child say that in this school!?" I said, "it's fine, the child is here just a few months and his father is unemployed, was shot by the Israelis and his neighbor's home was, just a few days ago, demolished. So what do you expect from this child? To jump and say, give me a hug?" That's not the way we teach here.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Michal Zak
The School for Peace
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“It's a long and painful process. It's not simple. I don't think it was any one thing. I think it was dealing with and facing all kinds of very basic assumptions, and coming to terms with the fact that there's a big gap within the Israeli left-wing, and I'm a by-product of it, something that's very much about declarations and liberalism, "we're so good, we're so very in favor of all kinds of things…" But in applying it to daily life, to working in a communal and equal routine, it's very difficult. You need to let go of some basic assumptions that you may not even know you have. For example, the issue of thinking we're better, that we're actually better than they are, culturally or ethically - I never thought I had those assumptions, but to be honest, that's how we were. These beliefs were ever-present when I was growing up. It's very hard, it's a harsh and painful awakening.
” [Source in Complete Interview]
Rami Nasrallah
International Peace and Cooperation Center (IPCC)
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ During my experience at the Hebrew University, as a Palestinian student from Jerusalem who did not know a word in Hebrew but learned the language and received a PhD, I started to understand who this enemy is. I used to think that the enemy was the soldier that checked my ID at the checkpoint. I used to think that the enemy was the settlers. I discovered that there is a civilian side to the Israelis that we might reach an understanding with. The time I spent at the university changed my view generally and my perception of the Israelis. We, as Palestinians, really don't know at all who the Israelis are. We know the Israelis as the soldiers at the checkpoints, we know them by the Hebrew words used in the streets, but do we know the Israeli civilian life? No. That was the motivation for building a comprehensive relationship among civilians.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Ester Golan
Interfaith Encounter Association
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ [It's important] that we get to know each other and take responsibility for each other, because we live in the same country, go to the same schools, go to the same university, the same places of work, and don't know anything about each other. And the less you know about each other the easier it is to hate each other. But once you get to know each other there is no room for hate. Hate dissolves, and there is a possibility of respecting each other. The respect for the other grows and gets deeper when you encounter the other, when it's not something theoretical but practical.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Yehuda Stolov
Interfaith Encounter Association
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ When I first encountered a Muslim prayer session I discovered a prejudice I never even knew about: that I associate Muslim prayers with violence. This is because I never encountered a Muslim prayer in reality. I'd only seen it as portrayed on television, where it's always footage from the Ashura in Iran with close-ups of the blood, or people leaving Friday prayers at the Temple Mount and starting uproars. That's what I knew about Muslim prayers prior to actually seeing it. I never encountered the gentle or spiritual aspects of this prayer and I wasn't even conscious of it, and this is something I only realized in retrospect.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Kitty O. Cohen
Folklore of the Other: The Institute for the Study of Religion and Communities in Israel
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ This work contributes in that it reduces prejudices; it breaks down the wall of prejudice that lies between Palestinian and Israeli children and between their communities. As a result of the exhibitions, the children’s siblings and parents shared their pride and met in good spirits. This helped as well. The other child -- Jewish or Palestinian -- no longer was an enemy but a friend they loved to meet. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Ibtisam Mahameed
Interfaith Encounter Association, Middleway
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ If I go to Tel Aviv in this outfit [the traditional Muslim woman's attire], I will feel unwanted. They will fear me and wonder what is in my bag. I also get checked more because of my dress, especially before getting on a bus or in a train station or just walking on the street. Once I was waiting at the lights and there was a woman who walked away from me, she thought I might do something. I felt her fear and felt sorry for her so I tried to comfort her with a smile. I was just waiting for a minute for the light to cross the street. Those are things you face on the streets, it is not written on my forehead that I am a peace activist, so everyone looks at me the way they want. I still become afraid when I pass a Jewish street or neighborhood. You never know how the other will respond.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Ester Golan
Interfaith Encounter Association
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ You have to be able to live with yourself and the other. The same way that I want to live with myself, he has to live with himself. So this encounter with the other enables us to see the other and to respect the other for what he is. He doesn't have to think the same way as I do, doesn't have to believe the same way as I do, but if I encounter him and I get to know him, I can respect him and hope that he does the same to me. And I think that the encounter with the other-- and living side by side-- is something that is irrespective of political decisions; whatever great hardships are caused by politicians should not prevent me from being able to encounter the other in his otherness.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Ayelet Shahak
Association for the Commemoration of Bat-Chen Shahak, Bereaved Families Forum
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ I remember the first meeting of the Bereaved Families Forum, close to twenty Israeli bereaved families gathered in Jerusalem, and Yitzhak Frankenthal, who was the advisor and the organizer, turned to us and said that tomorrow all of us that were gathered there would go to meet with Palestinian bereaved families. I remember that there were some families there that were really shocked by the idea, and they actually quit, they didn't continue with us anymore. To me also it seemed very scary and not really right to go to Gaza. Yitzhak tried to explain that it wasn't scary, that he had already gone a lot of times. He had arranged it, and there was a group that wanted to meet that was already expecting us. I got up and said that I was afraid. Yitzhak then understood that he had to do some preparation with us. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Itamar Shapira
Combatants for Peace
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ When an Israeli talks to Palestinians he can talk about his side and show his perspective, that he, the Israeli, was also once a fighter, “like you”, that’s what he will tell the people he’s talking to. If I talk to Israelis or at an Israeli school, I will be addressing children who want to be heroes and serve in elite units. Maybe our speaker served in an elite unit and can say, “I’m not sure that you will be such a hero there. ” A kid can listen to him, or to me because I’m not his mother… I’m allegedly a macho male that represents the consensus. This enables us to tap into the feeling of “I want to be just like him”. This is a person that a kid can listen to. Because the Israeli and Palestinian speakers come together, kids will also be able to listen to the enemy, see him -- see this dangerous and horrible person that is usually crucified by Israeli society.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Michal Eskenazi
Young Israeli Forum for Cooperation
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ When you meet, people need to unload all their prejudices; everybody unleashes slogans and only afterwards can you begin to talk; this is a process. This was my first time. [Israeli] people who attend our conferences meet with a Palestinian for the first time, so this process repeats itself. People come, let everything out and then they begin to talk matters over. During that conference, after people had unpacked everything, I couldn't understand why they [the Palestinians] were still so angry. I mean, we were there and we had come to talk, so why was it so important to get all this out? Though I knew and understood, it struck me suddenly that I was witnessing the actual people firsthand. I was seeing, before me, people who pass through checkpoints every day, people for whom the checkpoints are now the core issue for debate or even of the whole conflict-- it's their daily routine. These people, who endure this reality daily, were explaining it to me and I needed to make the connection -- them going through this and not just figures in articles.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Yehuda Stolov
Interfaith Encounter Association
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ We address relationships between communities through discussions that purposefully set aside the political issues that are disputed. We attempt to establish relations as an interaction that is both positive and profound, and which assists people in overcoming prejudices or even hate. It constructs mutuality, recognition, and respectful and friendly relations. When this process is sufficiently advanced and we'll be able to establish that hundreds of thousands of people underwent this, then we will be able to hold talks regarding issues that are disputed politically, with the ability to solve them in a manner that will be sustainable.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Yehuda Stolov
Interfaith Encounter Association
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ I think the Jews believe that the Arabs can't be trusted, and that they only understand the language of force, that dialogue conveys weakness. That's obviously not true. I think the Arabs have the same prejudices. They also believe the Jews can't be trusted, that they'll cheat them if given the opportunity, that force can change their approach. The matter of force is pretty amazing. Both sides are wrong big time because force only causes the other side to become entrenched in its prejudices.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Ester Golan
Interfaith Encounter Association
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ According to what [Father Emile] Shoufani says, if you want to know the other person, you have to know all of the other person, and if you want to know the Jew, my identity has several components, as everybody's identity has several components, and my components are: Zionism, Judaism, Israel and the Shoah [Holocaust]. So if you want to know me, you have to know also me and the Shoah, not just me and Israel, not just me and Judaism, not just me and Zionism, but me and Shoah, Israel, Judaism and Zionism [...] So [Shoufani] considered it something that had by-passed the Palestinians, that they had not experienced. But living with so many people who were directly impacted by it, and because it has become part of Judaism at large, he had to know it. That is what made him decide that Auschwitz stands for something which is not Jewish, it's inter-religious, it's inter-national, it's inter-disciplinary; it represents something which humanity did, humanity in its darkest and most dreadful situation. [If] he wanted to just get to know Judaism, he could have come to synagogues, but that wasn't the point because that he has [access to] here. [The point was] to encounter that extra element that encompasses my identity and every other Jew as well. And I think that is exactly what happened.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Professor Sami Adwan
PRIME (Peace Research Institute in the Middle East)
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ Being in prison, however, made me think in a different way. I realized that denial could not help me, or anyone else for that matter. What had the potential to aid understanding was not avoiding or ignoring the other, but rather discovering, speaking with, and coming to know him. For Palestinians, and for me as one of them, it can be difficult to differentiate between an Israeli as an occupier and soldier and an Israeli as a civilian. It is difficult to differentiate between the settler and the soldier, and so forth. This causes a problem for Palestinians and for me, personally. If I talk with an Israeli, is he the same person who was once a soldier arresting me or demolishing my home with a bulldozer? Or perhaps he is a settler or a former soldier or a soldier-to-be? It is this diversity, this range of the different faces of Israelis, that makes it difficult for Palestinians to understand precisely what you mean when you say 'Israeli.'” [Source in Complete Interview]
Kitty O. Cohen
Folklore of the Other: The Institute for the Study of Religion and Communities in Israel
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ At the beginning they didn’t want to meet each other. They were afraid. “The others are different from us, they dress differently, they talk differently”. The Palestinians knew the Israeli as a soldier with a gun, the Israelis knew the Palestinian as someone who plants bombs on Ben Yehuda Street and on buses. Those were the mutual images, the perceptions they had of each other. Quite understandably so: this was on the news, this is what happened. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Gila Svirsky
Coalition of Women for Peace, Women in Black
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ We're in a climate that is in great fear of Palestinians, and a belief that they don't share our worldview. President Katsav, our current President, said shortly after this intifada began, "We are dealing here with people who are not only not from the same frame of mind as we are, they are people who are outside our entire realm of being, they don't even act like they come from the planet earth." Those were his words. And that's the message that Israelis get. Palestinians are aliens who don't share our values, they're aggressive, primitive, cruel, etc. So it's very hard when your President and Prime Minister and the entire government are saying things like that, and you're trying to say, "Look, they are people just like us." Nobody hears that message.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Yafit Gamila Biso
The Olive Tree
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ To this day I'm in touch with boys for whom I was the first Israeli they could even understand and speak to. I spoke to them in their language and explained things to them. At first they were under the impression that I was Arab, so I stood up to them. I said, "No, I'm not Arab, I'm Jewish-Israeli. I do speak Arabic, it makes both my life and yours easier, but I'm Jewish-Israeli. There's nothing you can do, you can't make me an Arab. You must accept me as an Israeli Jew. Then I'll be with you all the way then. If you continue insisting that I'm Arab, I'm not here."” [Source in Complete Interview]
Gila Svirsky
Coalition of Women for Peace, Women in Black
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ I had an invitation to somebody's home to meet a Palestinian friend… I had never before had a conversation with a Palestinian. The woman was a professor of sociology at a Palestinian university. There was nothing in the previous statement that made sense to me. Palestinian professor? Palestinian woman professor? Palestinian who studied sociology? Palestinians have universities? And I walked in the room and sat down, and she was completely like me. She was articulate in English, she had a very cautious, temperate, and humane woman's analysis of the situation, about how her family is suffering under the oppression of the occupation. I had never before heard that said, or met a Palestinian.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Ibtisam Mahameed
Interfaith Encounter Association, Middleway
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ If you talk to someone that was an extremist in his own beliefs, you can feel that he starts to change his understanding. They call this "ants' work." I can't change the whole universe at once, but I can change a small group. If one person comes to work with me, he will be like my messenger. When he talks with his family he can tell them, for example, that not all Arabs are the same, they are not all terrorists. He will believe in our cause and he will defend it, he will support me. At the same time I will be planting hope. What is hope for me? It is changing this situation to a better one, for a Palestinian state to be established, to have rights and to live in peace so that our Palestinian brothers will not suffer any more.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Professor Sami Adwan
PRIME (Peace Research Institute in the Middle East)
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ I believe that providing Palestinian and Israeli students with an opportunity to be exposed to the other's narrative - to come to know how the other side thinks and how they live their lives - has an essential role to play in changing Palestinians and Israelis' perceptions of each other. A Palestinian or Israeli who reads the story of the other is not the same person he or she was before doing so; facing the other's story increases one's understanding of one' own story and own reality, regardless of whether this understanding is positive or negative. At the same time, one comes to appreciate the multiple dimensions of the other's story.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Professor Sami Adwan
PRIME (Peace Research Institute in the Middle East)
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ I was imprisoned in 1993 in "Ansar Three" prison in the Negev [...] My imprisonment affected me in many ways. During my studies in the United States, both for a Masters degree and a Ph.D., I never took a class in which I knew there were Jewish students. If I knew that some of the students attending were Jewish, I would avoid the class or drop it. I simply did not want to study with Jews. I had no interest in that. In the seventies and eighties, our concept of Jews in general, and our experience with Israelis in particular, was as follows: they are the reason for my suffering, my misery, and the situation in which I find myself; they are the reason why the world has neglected me, the reason for the misery I experience every day when I go to school, etc. For this reason, I felt better about withdrawing from any course in which Jews were present.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Ihsan Turkiyyeh
Arab-Hebrew Theatre in Jaffa
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ It was difficult, it was difficult [the first time I worked with Israelis]. Because you feel like every word they say to you is because you are Palestinian, you are not Ihsan. This is very humiliating. And when you become liberated from this idea, when I talk to you as an individual, it's not like I talk to you as from where you belong, from your group. This is the main problem of the Palestinians and the Israelis. They talk to you in the name of your group. But you have to talk to me as a person. I learned this, to talk to a person as a person.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Adi Dagan
Coalition of Women for Peace, Machsom Watch
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ When I started going to checkpoints, one of the reasons that I did it for two years was the desire not to refer to the Palestinians as 'them,' and to maintain relationships with individual people. In today's state of affairs it's so easy to turn people into the collective 'they' and to believe that all this is taking place somewhere else when actually everything is very close by. We have to continuously keep in mind that it's not something that's taking place far away from here. It's happening to people like us. We can't think about it in abstract terms.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Rami Nasrallah
International Peace and Cooperation Center (IPCC)
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ Understanding them doesn't mean we have to love them. I don't want to love the Israelis or for them to love us, but there are interests. If we are strong as a society and as an economy, we can be part of the equation, if we are not strong we can't. Therefore what attracted me was how to learn from the Israelis how to build myself, how to enhance our collective intellect and qualifications and how to deal with issues not only based on sentimental considerations. Their return to this land was not based only on sentimental values; they had a complete agenda. Regardless of how this agenda affected me and of the tragedy it caused the Palestinians, it was an effective program. If we want to deal with the Israelis as equal counterparts we can't do it without absolute knowledge of the Israeli side.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Adina Shapiro
Middle East Children's Association (MECA)
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ Politically, I happen to disagree with the settlers. But I have an affinity with them, these are people I went to school with, people that taught me, I have family there… it’s not something that’s detached. I have respect for certain things that they do and disagreements with other things. But sometimes the way I hear the way that they are referred to or demonized, is the same kind of demonization of other things I could be upset with.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Walid Salem
Panorama
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ A new misunderstanding I discovered is that Palestinians are violent by nature. I discovered that the Israeli and international public think that we are a violent society. This belief is connected to the view that Islam is the religion of death - that it regards death as holy. These conceptions are wrong. Islam is a religion that regards life as holy. According to Islam life is given as a gift by God and man doesn't have the right to harm that gift. When a person kills another person he harms a gift given by God. There is a misconception among the international community that Islam believes in violence and killing. We have a misconception about the Israeli society that all of Israeli society is soldiers and settlers, and therefore targets for killing.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Helmi Kittani
Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Development
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ I am a businessman and I seek to advance business projects, but a long time ago I arrived at the conclusion that it is impossible to succeed in business projects if we do not simultaneously address the psychological and societal aspects. With regard to Arabs and Jews, in the beginning of my activities, in 1993, I approached Jewish businessmen and told them it was worthwhile for them to invest in Arab villages and towns. The Jews said, "Can we enter Arab villages and they won't through stones at us?" And the Arabs said "You want us to give our land to Jewish partners?" When we began those projects and showed them that we are all partners in this country, it became clear that the devil is not so evil.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Kitty O. Cohen
Folklore of the Other: The Institute for the Study of Religion and Communities in Israel
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ In Palestinian schools the “other” is the Christian, and sometimes the Jew is mentioned, not always positively, but Israel doesn’t exist, Tel Aviv doesn’t exist, the state doesn’t exist on the maps, in the curriculum. In the paintings of the children, they exist side by side. This is the marvelous change that occurred during those three years when they worked together, in a sustained project. There was a change, an educational process. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Eliyahu McLean
The Sulha Peace Project, Jerusalem Peacemakers, Middleway
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ Tich Nhat Hanh says, "I am the pirate and I am the rapist and I am the raped. I am the criminal and I am the police…" I really try to hold the whole picture, and that includes the experience of the hilltop youth and the right-wing settlers, and the experience of the disenfranchised refugee and the Palestinian who supports Hamas. That seems like an almost impossible place to be politically-where does that leave you? But I think that's where my spiritual roots come in, to somehow be able to hold all of that and then to organize meetings, events, projects that somehow connect to that.” [Source in Complete Interview]
