The stuff of conflict

Below are some comments posted under an Economist video about Israeli settlers titled Little by little.

 What a hypocritical one-sided approach! The report is empty and inadequate, it looks like a propaganda advert, not like a proper journalist work. 

Unbelievalbe how mainstream Econonist allows a pure one-sided Palestinian propaganda piece. Why dont they show blood-thristy animal terrorits pieces that are they mainstain of Arab and Palestininan prograpanda? Why dont they show how many Palestinians lie in bed in Hadasahh hospital.
This piece was so blatant (even taking photos from the official palestinian (AFP)press office that at least everyone who now reads anything from "POMEGRANTATE" knows not to even expect a semblence of objective journalism, but instead petrodollar Arab PR.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2013/05/jewish-settlers-and-palestinians#comments

Of course, there were comments posted containing the opposite view, which reminded me of Avi Shafran's latest article at CrossCurrents regarding people with differing opinions.

It’s a story I tell a lot, since, well, its point comes up a lot. Blessedly, my audience, at least judging from its response, hadn’t heard it before.

The psychiatrist asks the new patient what the problem is. “I’m dead,” he confides earnestly, “but my family won’t believe me.”

The doctor raises an eyebrow, thinks a moment, and asks the patient what he knows about dead people. After listing a few things – they don’t breathe, their hearts don’t beat – the patient adds, “and they don’t bleed very much.” At which point the psychiatrist pulls out a blade and runs it against patient’s arm, which begins to bleed, profusely.

The patient is aghast and puzzled. He looks up from his wound at the slyly smiling doctor and concedes, “I guess I was wrong.”

“Dead people,” he continues, “do bleed.”

I interrupted the laughter with the sobering suggestion that it’s not only the emotionally compromised victims of delusions, however, who see the world through their own particular lenses. Most of us do, at least if we have strong convictions. And the yields of those sometimes very different lenses are the stuff of conflict.
Read more: http://www.cross-currents.com/#ixzz2SgZ9mfII