I had the opportunity of working with the gestalt therapist, Fritz Perls. It was amazing to see the kinds of change that he could facilitate in a person in a short period of time. I have often thought that something like a gestalt therapy session could work wonders for global problems that have an ethnic overtone. Thinking now about the Arab world and the English speaking world. It has always seemed to me that the Arabs must be really mad about the lack of respect they get at the world negotiating table. Seems they are regarded by the western world as being a bit too big-lipped, a bit too brown, a bit too sensual or impulsive. I don't know how they regard the westerner, but I would assume they regard him as a bit too uptight and tight-lipped and arrogant. I'd love to see an Arab and an Englishman together in a session run by Fritz Perls. Course he's dead now so this is all just pure fantasy.

I'm trying to get around to saying that I think the biggest part of the problem between the Arab world and the Western world is that each culture is repressing a part of itself and projecting it onto the other and that, if they were both to reclaim those projected parts and integrate them into their cultural personalities, the problems would perhaps not be solved, but would certainly be of an entirely new nature and I would think more easily solved.

So how do the Israeli and the Arab see each other? What aspects of their selves are they denying and projecting on the other? I would guess that the Israeli would consider himself more intelligent than the Arab. Which must seem ridiculous to the Arab considering his stellar intellectual history. But I don't know either culture well enough to venture any further guesses.

I really do feel strongly that we need to be exploring this aspect of things. I feel that there is a lot of truth to be discovered there, a lot of easy and health-promoting adjustments that could be made that would have a profound effect on the status quo. And that, without these adjustments in understanding both of self and other, political solutions are going to be of no consequence.

Sami Awad "gets" that peace in the Middle East must involve Jews and Arabs living together as one, not Jews and Arabs living apart in two separate states.

If, in America, the descendants of lynched blacks and the descendants of whites who lynched blacks can share the same state --- if, in South Africa, the daughters of Afrikaners and the daughters of black South Africans can live together in one state -- there is no reason that Palestinians and Jews can not, also, live together in one state as equal citizens.

What is the difference between the Middle East and the now reconcilied states of America and South Africa? The difference is the presence of oil, which has led outsiders, for purely selfish reasons, to arm and instigate continued violence between Jews and Arabs.

The previous US adminstration was correct in protesting Iran's military support of Hezbollah. Unfortunately, their position was purely hypoocritical because it ignored American military support for Israel.

Just imagine if America had armed and financed the Afrikaners as we now do Israel. South Africa would still be an nuclear armed Afrikaner state and Mandela would have long since died on Robben Island.