YISHAI FLEISHER BLOG
January 11, 2015
Hello friends, I’m writing to you from Snowy Jerusalem. Unlike the bloodied streets of Paris, Jerusalem seems serene. The snow blanket has an amazing quality of uniting all that it covers with one color, one texture, and the ability to soften the hard edges. Indeed, Jerusalem is beautiful and unified in the snow, and that, more than anything else, explains the excitement over the precipitation. Of course, this was all before the dread of the Paris terror attacks set in…Recently Vice News, came to my neighborhood on the Mount of Olives and asked me to talk about how I saw the future of the Arab/Israel conflict and Jewish existence in this part of Jerusalem. The video crew spent almost 3 hours at my house in which we discussed, at length, the issues of coexistence and the vision of a strong State of Israel that is able to provide minorities with a high-standard of health, education, and upward mobility. However, when the final version of the Vice News report came out, the title said it all. “A City Divided: Jerusalem’s Most Contested Neighborhood.”
While Vice let me have my say, they colored the atmosphere of the video with frightening music and, of course, frightening footage to match. Vice, and their ilk, are happy to highlight the conflict, the violence, the discord, and the seemingly never ending hate, but they are unwilling to show the decent lives that both Arabs and Jews have in Jerusalem, far superior to the other regional capitals of Baghdad, Cairo, and Damascus. They cut my description of a hopeful future because they are not interested. Vice were searching for facts to match their thesis and not the other way around.
ArchitectGuy on Israel 