Finding common ground with Jihad

February 12, 2007 - 11:08 AM by Sarah

Israeli Mom is on the Skype directory, and was chanced upon by a 19-year-old from Gaza, named Jihad. They’ve started a dialogue.

I was trying to think of ways to comment on this story, but realized no matter what I say, someone will disagree with me, because everyone who reads this will see exactly what they want to see. So, here it is, speaking for itself, and you are invited to go to the town in the comments section.

Here’s the salient exerpt from her post:

Jihad is a 19 years old student and an avid supporter of Hammas, the kind that opposes to Israel in every way, and is certain that Allah intends for the whole of Israel, not just the West Bank or Gaza, to be under Palestinian control. To him, it’s the will of God, not something that is even debatable. He loathes the PLO and admires the Hammas. He gets his news from Hammas resources and says he won’t even check on international news sites because they are all “controlled by America” and hence prejudiced against Israel. He even justifies suicide bombers as freedom fighters.

It’s a fascinating dialogue, to both of us. He says he never realized there were Jews in Israel that want peace and is fairly surprised. We talk almost daily, not always for very long. Surprisingly enough, we are reaching some common ground sometimes. I won’t go into details, out of respect to the privacy of our chats, but just wanted to report here about this little dialogue that we have forming, between two people that are only 100 km’s away from each other, yet are worlds apart in so many ways. It is a surprisingly friendly dialogue too.

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