Don't know much about the Middle East...

But I can't be accused of not trying to make an effort to learn, in my own way.

Here's my one story about it, which I posted to exmo-social in February of 2005:

It was 1996. Rabin had recently been assinated and hardliner Netanyahu had just been elected in Israel. I was a grad student at Rutgers.

One night I went out drinking and partying with two of my girlfriends, both Jewish, in the Arab quarter of New Brunswick, as we loved to do!! Those were the days!!!

It was an interesting experience for me to participate in a discussion of the recent Israeli election with these Jewish girls and their Arab (Lebanese Christian) boyfriends. We were all disappointed about recent events because of course we all wanted peace, and it looked like things were going in the wrong direction.

At one point one of the guys said something negative that to me seemed mild (I don't remember what it was), but one of my two girlfriends took offense and belligerently said "It's attitudes like those that make me glad he got elected!"

I remember thinking "OMG, I don't think you want to be saying that here..." It was night and we were in a closed cafe, just us three girls and the cafe's owners and their friends (all Arab guys) and we were all drunk!!!

My other girlfriend -- the one who was a grad student in Mathematics like me -- smoothed things over. She talked about how Jews and Arabs are really the same people, and should work together rather than letting the west gain advantage by playing them off each other. We all agreed with that, and peace was once again restored to our little microcosm.

Then we talked about something else!!!