2nd of series: "nations and people"

See 1st of series for introduction.



Shalom Aleichem and Alekum Salaam are greetings in Hebrew and Arabic meaning "Peace be on you". Next to the hard lines of geopolitical realities, this drawing speaks to the rift that national identities have put between the two Semitic cultures of Arabs and Jews.

Modern historical traumas at the hands of Europeans and violent events between Arabs and Jews have been experienced so separately that their implications for the present and future are a matter of widely divergent perspectives. This separate experience is buttressed by guarded and closed borders and increasingly polarized views of ends and means.

Israel is made up largely of Jewish immigrant/refugees of European and Arab origin. Palestinian Israelis are a significant minority, integrated and segregated in the mode of other class oriented western democracies. Israeli society could potentially be culturally and economically available to Palestinians and Arabs at large (and vice versa), but for modern geopolitical events and pressures.

Arab traditional hospitality to the alien has been disrupted and Jewish social psychology is steeped in the debilitating "Masada Complex" (a sense of being constantly under siege), which Israelis have now successfully passed on to their Palestinian cousins. As seen in the "arab jewish timeline", this is a purely modern disconnect.