By William Berkson
One of the fascinations of the Internet is the opportunity to talk with people having hugely different viewpoints, from all over the world.

On the type design forum I frequent, I participated in a discussion of the recent Gaza battle.

Included in the discussion were a Lubovicher in Brooklyn, an Israeli in Los Angeles, a Shiite in Basra, and Sunnis in New York and Japan, an Englishman and a Persian in Canada and a Christian in Australia. They design Hebrew, Arabic and latin language fonts.

One thread was started by the Australian, who noted celebrities in London protesting the Gaza incursion. The other was started by the Sunni in New York, who asked for prayers for his colleague Arabic script designer in Gaza, who was in the war zone--he survived, but ended up losing a cousin and two of the cousin's sons from an Israeli projectile.

On one thread I added my prayers for the safety of the designer, and on the other I argued that peace will not come unless the voices of reason and compassion overcome extremists on both sides.

The ensuing discussion was not encouraging. The Lubovicher argued that "Mercy means to destroy [Hamas], even if the so-called innocent are destroyed as well." That was just the beginning. He went on to quote the end of Psalm 137, "Happy who seizes and smashes your infants against the rock." And he added his interpretation that "If that baby murders later in life, happy is the one who smashes him or her early on." He went on to appeal to the principle that you should kill a pursuer, a 'rodef' before he can kill another, to refer for justification also to the seven nations of Canaan that were condemned to destruction in the Torah and Almalekites.

I argued that this was a complete distortion of Talmudic law, which no competent scholar would accept, and dangerously close to the reasoning of the assassin of Rabin. The Lubovicher was unmoved.

Meanwhile, I had said that I rejected the settlements and Sharon, but I didn't see any criticism of the Arab fanatics on the part of the Arab participants. The Shiite responded with propaganda cartoons from the Arab press against Israel, and also eventually linked to "White Power" sites with long Holocaust denial tirades.

The Sunni in New York expressed a wish that Jews and Arabs live peacefully side by side in the middle east, but also vehemently rejected any Jewish state. He and all the Arab participants regarded the Jews as having stolen Arab land and acquired it by bloodthirsty aggression.

I argued against this, trying to be as balanced and accurate as I could, but to no avail. Interestingly, the Persian who came on the thread told the Arabs that they needed to get over the fact that the Israelis won their state, and stop playing the victim. The Arabs vehemently attacked this.

On Obama's first day, in the morning a Protestant minister at the early prayer service had told a striking Cherokee story.

Here it is, copied from the internet:

An old Grandfather said to his grandson, who came to him with anger at a friend who had done him an injustice, "Let me tell you a story.

I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do.

But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times." He continued, "It is as if there are two wolves inside me. One is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him, and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.

But the other wolf, ah! He is full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is helpless anger, for his anger will change nothing.

"Sometimes, it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit."

The boy looked intently into his Grandfather's eyes and asked, Which one wins, Grandfather?"

The Grandfather smiled and quietly said, "The one I feed."

I said that this was the spirit needed to solve the Palestinian-Arab dispute. The Arab in New York also loved the story. But the lesson he took from it was that fighting the "right way" meant destroying the Jewish state.

So after this discussion, I see that there is white-hot hatred and demonization of Israel throughout the Arab world. And the rest of the world is reluctant to condemn it. And there are also Jewish extremists, with rabid rhetoric. This is a grave problem.

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