Anti-Arab Racism and Incitement in Israel (tags)
For more on this subject, the excellent documentary "Lessons In Hate" is required viewing. I thought it would find Palestinian schools disseminating hateful material, as the Israeli line goes. However, the producers found that, whereas Palestinian schools teach the reality of the conflict (what the Zionists refer to as 'spreading hate'), Israeli curriculum disseminates Revisionism to Israel's children, breeding misunderstanding and perpetuating hatred. This is designed, of course, to allow the Extremists who design this curriculum, to fool its population into allowing it to perpetuate its war to eliminate Palestine.
In one of many reports and accounts of economic life in the Gaza Strip that I have recently read, I was struck by a description of an old man standing on the beach in Gaza throwing his oranges into the sea. The description leapt out at me because it was this very same scene I myself witnessed some 21 years ago during my very first visit to the territory. It was the summer of 1985 and I was taken on a tour of Gaza by a friend named Alya. As we drove along Gaza's coastal road I saw an elderly Palestinian man standing at the shoreline with some boxes of oranges next to him. I was puzzled by this and asked Alya to stop the car. One by one, the elderly Palestinian took an orange and threw it into the water. His was not an action of playfulness but of pain and regret. His movements were slow and labored as if the weight of each orange was more than he could bear. I asked my friend why he was doing this and she explained that he was prevented from exporting his oranges to Israel and rather than watch them rot in his orchards, the old man chose to cast them into the sea. I have never forgotten this scene and the impact it had on me.