Hi Souheila,

I read carefully your friend's advice and I am not surprised. As a guy who lived for 55 years in polarizied Jerusalem this is an understandable and regular reaction. We Palestinian and Israelis have for too long been in a deadly embrace. As for myself I have demonstrated against occupation and specifically against the settlements since 1968! So after 40 years of active opposition in Jeruslaem I moved to SF to have a break. For me, the Palestinian issue is very central to any dialog, and for me the eye to eye level is key to any real understanding.

In Jeruslaem I worked a  lot with Palestinian journalists and started the web site www.amin.org. I also started a dialog of the deaf project that was supposed to connect Palestinian and Israeli deaf children through the internet. Hopefully your friend knows that 99% of the people in the Middle East can hear, but only 5% are listening...

The war of information that goes on about Gaza includes a lot of propaganda and denial of wrong doing. It was a classic case of disinformation when the Israeli Army launched a 3 day investigation to find out if Israeli soldiers performed war crimes in Gaza. Of course, it found out and published a statement that Israel's Army is the most MORAL army in the world.

The Hamas also engaged in its investigation about Palestinian pro-Fatah prisoners and how they were treated.  This investigation is a spin on facts that everyone knows. Mistreating pro-Fatah supporters in Gaza has been established before.

So the competition of spin and denial is an ongoing feature of all people in power and movements that claim moral superiority. Disinformation and the work by the Ministry of Truth on all sides is a given. The power of spin and PR

are always evident. But you cannot fool all the poeple all of the time.

There is such a gap of misconceptions between Iran and Israel. Add to this the fact that I think both Iran and Israel manipulate the USA in different ways. Thevmedia has halped fuel the situation through a lot of stereotype reporting. As I see both Al-Alam and IBA,no effort is being made to show some more clear thinking. It all has become a mix of national and religious emotions and preaching to the crowds. The more you fulminate against the other side you win points. So there is a long way to go before any real breakthrough can be achieved.