As I read through the captions and comments on photos of a Palestinian sovereignty rally posted on Facebook, I become increasingly frustrated with the members of my own Jewish community. Under pictures of children, there are numerous comments about these children being “brainwashed” and how awful it is that their parents are teaching them hate at such a young age…

People know. People don’t know. Do I – surely something but not enough, never enough. There has been an abundance of question, since becoming a Jew apart from the Jew I used to think I was, in between Israel, a country that after living through the Arava Institute of Environmental Studies (AIES) I cannot even call by its name – Israel – with out guilt assuming a place among the crevices of those questions, comes the word Palestine now, in between that place and the United States…

There are many terrible answers to the question “where do you stand,” and the worst I can ever remember giving was “in Jerusalem.” Jerusalem? I’ve heard of that place before. An imaginary place. It lies directly between the edge of reality and the end of time. It lies at the centre of the universe. How strange to end up so far away. I’d just gotten off the bus from somewhere that seemed a lot closer.

On September 18, 2005, the Palestine House had a cultural picnic in Mississauga and celebrated it as a fundraiser for Palestinian children. It was a time for getting together with family and friends. I invited an Italian friend and a Barbadian friend to come along and, as I realized later, to “watch.” There were two underlying themes to this event.

Human relationships are complicated because people are complicated, and politics is often complicated for the same reason: we are all complex people with different backgrounds, interests, hang-ups, desires, dislikes and beliefs. Anyone who has spent even five minutes thinking or talking about Israel, the Arab world, and the Palestinian cause inevitably comes face-to-face with these complexities, the simplifications, the oversimplifications, the value laden judgments and the hopes of what could be…

By Josh Scheinert

It’s on the bus driving in from the West Bank where you really appreciate Jerusalem’s grandeur. The Old City creeps up on you from out the window. The sun, reflecting off the Dome of the Rock is almost blinding. Yet, you can’t look away; you don’t want to. This is it, what it all comes down to – so you want to make sure you take in every last glimpse of this city of gold that ignites so many passions.

By David Zameret

In September of 2005 I set out to explore the world. I had finished my undergrad degree the previous April and I was determined to see as much as I could. After nearly four months and twenty-four countries in Europe I flew from Athens, Greece to Ben Gurion Airport, just outside of Tel Aviv.

By Luke Savage

I am not a Palestinian. Nor am I an Arab. I am neither Jewish nor Israeli. Unlike many of the other voices that speak tonight my family did not come from The Old City or the West Bank, or from the bustling streets of Tel-Aviv. It fought the war on the safe side of the Channel, and not in the ghettoes of Warsaw or on the desert battlefields of El-Alamein. Canada is my land and I speak as a Canadian, whatever a Canadian is. S/he could be anybody, from anywhere; fresh off the plane from Dubai, or an Iroquois whose family has fished in the St Lawrence for a thousand years.

Myth – “A popular belief or story that has become associated with an … institution or occurrence, especially one considered to illustrate a cultural ideal.”

The following is a collection of short stories about my own myths and those of others I’ve encountered; those of Jews and those of Arabs; and finally, their causes and their consequences.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, like most others, is adversarial. The issues involved raise a barrier between the two sides (sometimes metaphorical and ideological, sometimes very real and physical). We deal with the ‘enemy’ when necessary, but it’s always impersonal and generalized. It’s never ‘Walid’, always ‘the Palestinian from the village’, never ‘Tomer’, always ‘the soldier at the checkpoint’. No names, no faces, only uniforms and keffiyehs with an increasingly sinister expression. Epithets and stones are hurled over the barrier, and we shake our collectively clenched fist in a gesture of frustration and refusal to just go away…