This is a guest post by Robert Davis.

Thanks Chas for agreeing to let me write a guest post on your blog. It was great to meet you last week at the Zionist Federation’s Talk for Israel evening. I found it a very inspiring session. I wanted to write about another inspiring issue which is of particular importance to me…

I am currently frantically training for a triathlon to raise money for a Jerusalem-based charity which brings together Jewish and Arab kids to share each others’ traditions and culture. The project also involves their families. The charity is called CCECH and it is completely non-partisan. I chose this charity is because I cannot see any other way of bringing about an end to the current bloodshed and status quo in Israel and the disputed territories. Education has to be the way forward. I know many Palestinian children are still brought up in schools with text books which demonize the Jewish people. How are they supposed to grow up and able to form a balanced objective view?

If the Palestinians can see and experience first-hand that there are Israelis out there who are ordinary people (rather than the crazy stereotypical portrayals they are often taught at home, school and in the media), then perhaps they won’t be brought up to hate and instead will be able to see a way to live peacefully side-by-side with Israelis in the future with their own state. This isn’t just a one way street of course. I think it is also really important for Jews to be brought up not thinking of the Palestinians as ‘the other’, or being desensitized to their humanity and thinking of them as faceless people with whom they have nothing in common.

Just for the record, CCECH is one of a significant number of charities which helps to change minds and bring Jews and Arabs together, and/or helps both populations without discriminating between them.

That Palestinians are brought up with so much hate is all the more worrying when one takes into account the Pew report in 2006 (i.e. prior to Operation Cast Lead and before Israel’s international reputation sank to record depths) which surveyed people in Egypt and Jordan – two of Israel’s friendlier neighbours in the Middle East. The report showed that zero percent of the population expressed a ‘very favourable’ opinion of Jews and only two percent expressed a ’somewhat favourable’ opinion of Jews. This can be contrasted with an 82 percent who had a ‘very unfavourable ‘opinion and 15 percent a ’somewhat unfavourable’ opinion. The same poll in Jordan found zero percent with a ‘very favourable’ opinion, one percent with a ’somewhat favourable’ opinion and 96 percent with a ‘very unfavourable’ opinion and two percent with a ’somewhat unfavourable’ opinion of Jews.

With statistics like these it would be very easy to say this is a hopeless cause and that there’s no point in even trying change minds. For me, it makes me want to try harder. My triathlon in aid of CCECH, the Jerusalem-based inter faith charity is on 5 June at Blenheim Palace. My aim is to raise £2,500. Please click here to find out more and support me. Thank you for your support.

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