Put your own house in order before you start judging Muslims and Jews
I am Jewish. I lived in Haifa Israel during the war of Israel independence. My father had a store for leather goods and many of his clients were Arabs. Every Saturday my father and I went to downtown Haifa, my father spending time with his Arab friends and clients while I (14 years old) played soccer with the Arab kids.
As the political situation heated up my father and many of our Jewish neighbours had a kind of agreement with our Arab neighbours: If Arabs win we come to live with the Arabs. If Jews win our Arab friends and neighbours will come and live with us. We cleared space in our home bought flour, sugar, etc.
Following the war in Haifa in which Hagana won, my father rushed to downtown Haifa to bring them to our home if they needed to. They were nowhere to be found. We discovered leaflets which can be found in Haifa museum which called for Arabs to leave immediately. There were also radio messages to the same effects. There was no ethnic cleansing. On the contrary, Haifa was always a mixed city where Arab and Jews lived harmonically.
Years later a man dropped to my father’s store and gave him an envelope with the money that one of his Arab customers owed him. The money came from Lebanon.....Two years later a lovely letter came to my father in which one of his Arab friends from Texas requested a letter of recommendation which, of course, my father granted.
You have to understand that as a person who lived in Israel and had daily contact with Arabs in my school and university there was never any animosity. There were actually some inter-marriages. Some of my Arab friends hold high positions in Israeli government.
It is also devastating for me to see persons express their opinion without being there in Israel. Blowing out of proportion adversarial relations between Jews and Arabs by journalists is not conducive to peace.
In Ireland, I understand, there were some poor relations between Catholics and Protestants and I saw in Belfast the large barrier which separates them. How can you judge about Muslim and Jews while your house is not in perfect order?
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