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These enemies have faces - -

By Trita Parsi & Roi Ben - Yahuda

These enemies have faces
26/08/2008 05:30:00 PM GMT   Comments (93)     Add a comment     Print     E-mail to friend
(photobucket.com) The looming Iran-Israel confrontation has a seemingly deterministic quality to it.

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The looming Iran-Israel confrontation has a seemingly deterministic quality to it.

** This article, which appeared on Aljazeera Magazine last month, is being republished because the original edit may have misconstrued the authors’ ideas.

By Trita Parsi and Roi Ben-Yehuda

TEL AVIV – The looming Iran-Israel confrontation has a seemingly deterministic quality to it. Listening to the politicians, one gets a sense that powers beyond our control are pulling us toward a 21st-century disaster. Yet a great deal of the force propelling us into confrontation is fuelled by ignorance and dehumanisation. Israel is demonised as "Little Satan," while Iranians are portrayed as irrational Muslim extremists.

Indeed, mutual ignorance of our respective societies plays into the hands of the hard-line leaders who are calling for blood and destruction. They manipulate and distort; above all, they do everything to prevent us from recognising that the enemy has a face.

Not that either of us is naive enough to believe that mere knowledge of one another will offer a miraculous solution. We do believe, however, that mutual understanding will go a long way toward allowing us to feel empathy and compassion for each other, and to sound off at those calling for bloodshed and war.

Here are some essential things Iranians and Israelis should know about each other:

1. Israel is a vibrant yet incomplete democracy

On his visit to the United States last fall, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad famously stated that there are no homosexuals in Iran. Well, in Israel there are plenty of homosexuals, and they are the only ones in the Middle East who have an annual gay pride parade in their capital city.

Democracy in Israel means that every citizen and group (Jewish or otherwise) has the right to express him/herself and assemble in public. Also, that every citizen is equal under the law, has voting rights, religious freedom, access to education, health care and economic opportunity.

Undoubtedly, Israel's democracy is still a work in progress. The fusion of religion and state has limited people's rights and freedoms (for example, Israelis of different faiths cannot legally marry one another in the country), and the de-facto secondary status of Arab



    
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