Can you at least tell me WHY you won’t respond to mine?

Perhaps you find it combattive. I assure you, I ask questions because I want to know the answer, not to make a point.

I am aware you and I disagree strongly about Obama.
Which is why it is of interest to me what your reaction is to the event I posted about.

ellen

The beauty of youth is their (usually) natural open-ness to the world, open-ness to the other. Views and opinions generally have not become ossified and encrusted, closed off in some oxygen-free cell of the mind as happens so tragically often with (ideologically-uploaded) adults.

For elders and authority figures to twist young people into little storm-troopers as we read of above. To pre-emptively close off young minds, with this intense tribalist poison. It makes the heart ache and bleed.

What I find ironic about your attitude Shirin is you’re quick to highlight the racist nature shown in the videos bye Bluemthal and his crew, but quickly blast MEMRI (who don’t mis-translate everything unfortunately) … I guess it does make it easy to run away from the issues that do exist within Arab society (Another example of this, the aforementioned Iraqi didn’t realize Jews were ‘normal’ people until he was granted Asylum in the US during the 2nd Gulf War. He has major issues with Israel, which always leads to colorful discussions, but at least he’s honest enough to say he’s embarrassed of the ‘Jew hatred’ he was taught in Iraqi schools though the 1980s and 1990s … But it’s something that is rarely discussed, or even acknowledged, in the Arab world …)

“I appreciate the fact that you disassociate yourself with these views and the people who hold them”

I don’t disassociate myself from them. I find the views abhorrent but they’re still ‘my people’ and I ensure they know how sickening their words are when they are around me. It doesn’t do much good to blindly ignore issues within your country – then you can’t really try and fix them ‘within your circle’.

“The fact that the overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews supported the unspeakable slaughter and terror perpetrated by your government in Gaza in December/January”

I supported it too. If you want to twist that into a ‘Israeli Jews are so hateful and a b c (choose whatever words you want) because they want to x y and z (I’ll let you phrase it however you like too)’, so be it. I’m sure if you were in my shoes and I was in yours, it would be the same thing … So I guess I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.