Kissing Cousins: Arabs and Jews lock tongues after Israeli book ban

Kissing Cousins: Arabs and Jews lock tongues after Israeli book ban

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norman lebrecht

January 07, 2016

When the Israeli Ministry of Education banned schools from teaching a novel about an affair between a Jewish woman and an Arab man, TimeOut Tel Aviv invited six couples – some of them total strangers – to meet and kiss on camera.

It went rather well.

 

arab-jew kiss

Fanatics will be furious. There’s hope for the rest of us.

(Shame this could never happen in any other place in the Middle East).

Comments

  • Fred says:

    relationships between Jewish women and Arab men (whether muslim or christian), straight or gay have always existed. The opposite (arab women and jewish men) though never happened coz the girl would have been killed at the spot….

    • Max Grimm says:

      How do Jewish women have gay relationships with Arab men? 😉
      I think you should specify location; as it happens, I know a couple where the husband is Jewish (from Netanya) and his wife is Muslima (from outside of Teheran). Disclaimer: While both were born and raised in Israel, respectively Iran, they met, married and reside in Germany, have more of an agnostic attitude towards religion and have the added benefit of very open minded families. While this particular constellation may be rare, I doubt rather strongly that these 2 are the only such/similar couple in the entire world.

  • Robin Mitchell-Boyask says:

    To what does “this” refer? Sloppy writing is really a problem here. All over America and other countries people of sundry races and genders are groping each other. Norman, do you mean it’s a shame that fanatics will be furious only in the Middle East, or that miscegenation can only happen there?

    • M2N2K says:

      Looks to me like a case of sloppy reading: “this could never happen in any other place in the Middle East” is very clear. In fact, it may be the most important point of this post.

  • V.Lind says:

    How can two Semites kissing be miscegenation? The only issue here is political.

  • John says:

    A really good message. Thanks for sharing, Norman.

  • Peter says:

    It sure takes some courage to do this. Much love to all the humans out there. Don’t let the haters win. No tolerance to intolerance. Fight tribalism, it made sense in our evolution in the stone age, it kills us, drags us under water, today. We must free ourselves from these mental handicaps, otherwise our one race will perish, unable to adapt to the realities of the modern world.

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