Holy Land Interview: Arab-Israeli Family

This is clip #7 of a 10-part series of interviews I did while producing our public television special Rick Steves’ The Holy Land: Israelis and Palestinians Today. Considering the impact of American policies on the daily lives of both Israelis and Palestinians, this is my attempt to introduce you to some people in both camps whose voices might otherwise not be heard.

We met this Muslim family in Haifa, a modern Israeli town well-known for a younger generation where Jewish and Arab Israelis live and work in relative peace. They were happy to let me join them at their restaurant table and discuss the reality of being an Arab Israeli (as opposed to an Arab living in the West Bank).

Comments

2 Replies to “Holy Land Interview: Arab-Israeli Family”

  1. This is a noble effort. I hope it will help shed light. Thanks for asking about legal and de facto equality for Arabs/Jews in Israel. This family leads a comfortable life. Will you be talking with a family that is not doing as well, or that has been uprooted to make way for settlements?

  2. Rick,
    Thank you! This is such a great program! It is really helping me in a big way to better understand the reasons for the problem and maybe some possible hope for some kind of resolution to the seemingly never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
    I wonder if it might be a good idea to do a similar program here in the states, with interviews of both people on the ”right” and on the “left”. Maybe we could all begin to better understand each other and start working towards finding ways to get along and at least tolerate each other. Like the Palestinians and Israelis, we here in the USA once were able to live together relatively comfortably regardless of our differences. I fear that now we in the USA are at a point of such strong decisiveness and feelings of hatred (on both sides), that it seems we may soon wind up in the same quagmire that the Israelis and Palestinians are experiencing. We are now talking about building a wall along the Mexican border—how many years did we bash the Russians for the Iron Curtain??? How soon before we build walls between our cities and the countryside? I hope I am wrong, but the similarities seem very real.
    Anyway, Happy travels to all!

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