While an ever-growing number of Israelis are embracing extremism:
A small number of young men soon to be drafted into the IDF from Hesder yeshivot around the country gathered at the Jerusalem Theater on Monday evening to hear speakers from the national-religious camp espouse the virtues of fulfilling “the commandment of war.”
The event, the first of its kind, was organized to salute young religious men about to be inducted and attracted just over 100 youths.
Some Palestinians are extending the hand of friendship and understanding:
Every Friday, the West Bank village of Ni’lin is home to some of the most violent clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian, Israeli and international demonstrators.
Each week, activists from the village’s Land Defence Committee stage demonstrations at the Separation Barrier which cuts off as much as half the village’s farmland and water from its inhabitants.
As a reporter for a Palestinian news agency in Bethlehem, I too travelled to Ni’lin, but last weekend beheld a spectacle perhaps more remarkable than these weekly Barrier protests: Villagers had set up an exhibition to coincide with the United Nations-declared International Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January, an exhibition organised by Ni’lin’s Popular Committee Against the Wall.