For the Children: How the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Must End

“ Robert, I ask you, what did we rise against Israel[the Arabs] for, if not to put an end to the murder of children?”

“To put an end to Jews[Palestine]!” the king growled.”

Before this summer, I was unabashadly pro-Israel. It was not a hard stance to have. When the government of one side states in its charter that it wants to commit genocide and the government of the other is democratic and upholds western values that I hold dear, the choice is quite clear. Yet as I spend more time in Israel, and hear from the many different ethnic and religious minorities that inhabit its land and the occupied territories, I have come to realize that it doesn’t matter who has the moral high ground. Being right doesn’t stop people from hating you. And as long as there is hate, there will never be peace.

I am not the first person to have realized this. In fact, during the MISTI seminar that took place this past weekend, I heard from many groups here in Israel that are fighting for reconciliation and peace. MISTI-MEET brings around 150 Israeli and Palestinian high-school students together for a three summers to learn computer science. MOONA does a similar thing in the north of the country but between Arabs and Jews that are all citizens of Israel. The speakers that reached my heart, however, were two…