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tolerance in israel/palestine


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In Israel/Palestine there is a religious and ethnic intolerance whose consequences are ruthless, violent, and seemingly endless. Despite the apparent hopelessness of the conflict, there are individuals working on both sides to build a lasting peace. They believe that the first step to peace is tolerance. These brave individuals meet in the desert once a year to overcome deep-set prejudices. The experience is eye opening. By simply sharing a meals, music, dancing, and conversation, they realize that their so-called enemy is actually their friend. Participants leave the meeting on the road to tolerance. If tolerance can begin in even a war-torn region, it can begin anywhere.

Still, the lesson of this film encourages us to move beyond tolerance. We must do more than merely tolerate one another. We must realize that we are responsible for all those in our power to effect. Tolerance is about attitudes; responsibility is about actions. Peace begins when attitudes change, but its longevity is measured by the actions of our days.
sarahadina

3 responses // tolerance in israel/palestine

  • The killing of at least 19 Palestinians overnight in the Gaza Strip by israel,
    Media critic Ali Abunimah documented the killings in a letter of protest to NPR (1/8/02), starting with 13-year-old Rami Khamis Al-Zorob, shot in the head on December 13 while playing near his home in Rafah, Gaza. Most of the deaths cited by Abunimah were of unarmed civilians; six were minors, ranging in age from 12 to 17.
    (1/6/05) Morning Edition aired a correction of sorts: "We could have given more context for his statement. We said it was in response to violence, but did not specify that the violence was an Israeli tank shell that killed seven Palestinians." What the correction still left out was that the Palestinians were all children, ranging in age from 10 to 17.
    Days before the advertisement appeared on April 8, the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights had been arrested while participating in nonviolent civil disobedience against Israeli demolition of houses. "Palestinian homes are being systematically bulldozed all over the West Bank," said a bulletin from Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia. "In this case, there isn't any pretense of 'security interests' or 'military targets.' The houses destroyed yesterday and today belong to ordinary Palestinian citizens whose only crime is the wish to have a roof over their heads."

    But the portrayal of Israel as the innocent victim in the Gaza conflict is hard to square with the death toll in the months leading up to the current crisis; between September 2005 and June 2006, 144 Palestinians in Gaza were killed by Israeli forces, according to a list compiled by the Israeli human rights group B'tselem; 29 of those killed were children. During the same period, no Israelis were killed as a result of violence from Gaza.
    In the three weeks leading up to the Hamas raid, three separate Israeli missile strikes killed 20 innocent Palestinians and injured dozens more. One incident, the shelling of a family on the beach in Beit Lahiya, garnered much U.S. media attention at the time, but the very same media seemed unable to recall it only a few weeks later.
    fair reporting at
    Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), the national media watch group
    john_cali
  • This video removes the entire colonial context of the Israeli state, it's disappointing that history is erased. Peace can only be achieved when historical injustices are addressed, which in this case is the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, as documented / illustrated best by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe...

    <a href=" http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=1110... ethnic cleansing of Palestine.</a>
    christoff
  • Its too bad that all the millions of individual people in Israel and Palestine are lumped into two entities....Israel and Palestine.

    It's like saying I am responsible for all that Bush does and approve of it because I am an American.

    We need to get past that. I am not someone who knows much about the conflict but I know that entities in all the involved countries have good and bad policies and are dealing with both radicals as well as good people who want to live their lives....Israelis and Palestinian people who don't approve of everything their governments do.
    CarolynGillis

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