So you are doing the same thing as the Palestinians.

I don’t agree that’s true. The IDF, with all my criticism of it, still doesn’t try to kill innocents. Soldiers don’t join the army in order to kill Arabs but in order to defend against terrorists attacks on innocent people.

The difference between terrorism and an army isn’t the amount of funding. The difference is the tactics. Terrorism targets civilians. The IDF does not. It happened several times in the past and always the people responsible were trialed.

Civilized people consider this racist/bigotry. Ya group millions of people as one. Good luck with that. Ohh and thieves and murderers calling the victims enemy for wanting their land back sounds kind of funny to me.

Jina, First of all, I wasn’t justifying the Israelis – I was trying to explain why people in Israel think the way they do. Racist? Well that’s just the plain truth the way they see it. The way to resolve it isn’t to hate them but to spread the information and show that there are many Palestinians that are good people. As obvious as it might seem to you, Israelis are many times surprised when they find out about a Palestinian that did a good deed.
The problem is that this information is something people don’t like to know because it’s in too much contrast with everything they grew on. It’s like Neo (from Matrix) choosing the pill to truth and not comfort – many people wouldn’t make the same choice.

Jina again, I haven’t murdered or stolen anything from anyone. I don’t serve in the army. Am I safe today in Israel from suicide bombing? Do you really believe it’s justified to suicide bomb on civilians? Launch missiles at civilian cities and villages?

2)In schools we are taught a very one sided version of history. Probably more self-criticizing than the Palestinian teachers’ version (according to reports I saw in the news) but still not enough in my opinion. Students are encouraged to be patriots and join the army as fighters to sacrifice for the country. Raising suspicion in the state’s actions will not encourage those teachings.

So you are doing the same thing as the Palestinians. Only issue you seem to have is the way in which you fight. Palestinians are taught to become suicide bombers/terrorist, you become soldiers (of course soldiers to me are also terrorists when they do what the IDF does). Too bad Palestinians don’t have a super power to back them up, if they did then they will also have soldiers, gunships and fighter jets and you can both kill each other in a more conventional way and none can be terrorists. Correct?

3)After all this, when the Israelis finally meat an Arab-Israeli in work or in an article about something other than suicide bombings, he tells them he is first a Palestinian (an enemy in their eyes) and then a Israeli.

Civilized people consider this racist/bigotry. Ya group millions of people as one. Good luck with that. Ohh and thieves and murderers calling the victims enemy for wanting their land back sounds kind of funny to me.

I definitely think hearing all sides of an issue is important, but in my mind there is a serious and distinct difference between dialogue and debate. The origins of the word debate come from the Latin battere, meaning to beat down. Though we don’t mean ‘to beat down’ in modern times when we refer to debating, I think the origin of the word is telling. Debating with people is really about getting them to shut up because you have been able to win by being smarter, wittier, or quicker. I feel like this type of ‘beat down’ is exactly what happened in some of the responses above.

In contrast, I think engaging in dialogue opens the possibility of greater understanding. I’m not trying to just be semantic; I think the terms and the ways of engaging in conversation are quite different. To me, when you are actually in a dialogue, you enter it from the position of trying to understand the other person and release, as much as possible, any prejudices. So you begin by wondering about the other person and why they feel a certain way instead of trying to beat them down and ‘win.’

I hope I don’t sound too pedantic, but I just wanted to bring it up for consideration. I honestly haven’t checked out the site ‘rules’ for discussions, but I personally hope to use this forum for conversations that resemble dialogue rather than debate.

Thanks again, everyone! I’m looking forward to posting more.

I am encouraged and inspired by this discussion among Middle East youth (according to the Website name, I assume you are youth). I’m older now, so won’t be participating actively, except for this comment to let you all know that it’s a very good thing that you are taking advantage of this opportunity to make contact with your diverse localities and opinions. Getting to know each other is a first step to creating understanding and reconciliation among us all. The world needs more of such person-to-person meetings.

You might be interested in another person-to-person initiative constantly being expanded via Len and Libby Traubman’s site:
http://traubman.igc.org/global.htm

“An enemy is one whose story we have not heard.”