I went to the screening and discussion of A Roadmap to Apartheid. I’ve read a couple of National Geographics on the topic, so I know something about the tensions between Israel and Palestine in a way that many Americans might not.
While the film was interesting, it seemed to leave out a lot about the Palestinian hostilities on Israel. My friend who has been to Israel told me that Israeli parents were afraid that their children would get hurt or killed by the Palestinians on the way to school. I can understand that fear will lead people to do irrational things.
Also, I have a relative who lived in South Africa during apartheid. While I’ve never met her, I heard that she’d felt that apartheid was better for all concerned, and that the black South Africans were inferior and needed that system. The film didn’t address whether there were similar attitudes in Israel. I would have been interested to know (I should have asked this question at the end
A Road to Apartheid did bring up some important points. I thought that it was interesting that most suicide bombers are Palestines who lost their homes. I guess if you lose that much, there’s not much more less to lose. It’s really sad how fear and misunderstandings can cause so much death and misery. I wish that people would learn to live together and cooperate.
I don’t think that the solution is to get rid of Israel or anything. I think that either the Palestinians should be paid to relocate to somewhere else, or Israel should get out of the Palestine lands. Palestinians should be given citizenship somehow, either as part of Israel or as part of another, functioning country. Both peoples feel like they own the rights to the land, and whatever is done should take that into consideration. Maybe I have too much faith in human kindness, but I believe that we can get along.