Last month, on the controversial Palestinian children’s program, The Pioneers of Tomorrow, a cartoon was aired (on the Hamas owned Al-Aqsa TV) ostensibly aimed at teaching kids Islamic values. The cartoon features a conversation between a Palestinian boy and a young Israeli Jewish settler. Through their dialogue and interaction, the Jewish settler learns to question everything negative he had been taught about Palestinians.

The problem is that while the cartoon is designed to empower Palestinian children, it does so through the use of anti-Semitic stereotypes. This is not all together uncharacteristic for the Hamas run TV program: Past episodes of the show, for example, have shown a cute and cuddly rabbit who desires to kill and eat Jews. Yet, unlike previous shows, the message of this cartoon is less than clear: Is Hamas (in its unique way) calling for dialogue with the enemy, or is the organization using dialogue to perpetuate fear and mistrust? Have a look and decide for yourself:

[Below are my comments, along with thoughts from Palestinian and Israeli peace activists Aziz Abu Sarah and Kobi Skolnick.]

Roi Ben-Yehuda: From an Israeli, Jewish and humanistic perspective, this is a disturbing cartoon. The faces of the Jews (who are all settlers) are evil looking: they have angular shapes, scowling eyebrows, and thin mouths. This is in contrast to the rounded facial features of the Palestinian boy, which make him look friendly and unthreatening. Moreover, the film uses some subliminal techniques to carry the anti-Semitic messages home. The opening close-up of the Jewish child, for example, appears (for a second) to have blood spilling from his mouth. While the older brother, with his red eyes and goatee, literally looks like Satan. The physical posture, vocal intonations and actions of the Jewish teacher and father clearly portray them as sinister and diabolical characters. All together, the cartoon depicts the Jews as fearful yet demonic figures who, on the one hand, believe it is necessary to fight against the evil Palestinians, and on the other hand, actually enjoy killing their neighbors. Ironically, this is exactly the type of negative misrepresentation the cartoon criticizes the Jews for originally engaging in vis-à-vis the Palestinians.

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Since taking office this past January, President Obama has pressed for renewed peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. While he has exhorted both sides to make concessions, the bulk of his effort, at least publicly, has been to pressure Israel to respect his demand to immediately freeze all construction in its settlements. The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, rejected the demand saying that freezing construction in Israeli settlements when new apartments, schools, roads, etc. were needed, was tantamount to "freezing life" in those settlements, and therefore "unreasonable."

Ask average, albeit somewhat informed, Americans what feelings or images they associate with Israel, and you're likely to receive responses that range from the extreme positive to the extreme negative but are mostly somewhere in between. Ask the same group about Israeli settlers, however, and you're likely to elicit an overwhelmingly negative response. The word "settler" has become a pejorative term. It is, for many people, including those who are not anti-Israel, synonymous with violent fanatic.

One would have to write a book to adequately address the issue of Israeli settlements, which is much more complicated than most news sources would have us believe. Suffice it to say, we should be troubled that the media use the same word, "settler," to describe, on the one hand, an ideologue committed to a "Greater Israel" and, on the other, a regular citizen of any political persuasion who is motivated by economic concerns. I'd venture to guess that when most people hear the word "settler," they think of the former. But in reality, as David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy notes in his article Beyond Settlements: US Policy Options Going Forward, "80% of [the 285,000] Israeli settlers live in less than 5% of the West Bank -- largely, but not completely, adjacent to the pre-1967 boundaries." Thus, one could argue that 57,000 settlers, the other 20%, stand in the way of a future Palestinian state. But, Makovsky continues, "an equal amount of land within Israel could be swapped in exchange [for the 5% of the West Bank where 80% of settlers currently live], allowing [both Israeli and Palestinian leadership] to claim victory." In other words, 228,000 settlers, the 80% majority, can be absorbed into Israel without any sacrifice by the Palestinians, and therefore cannot be considered an obstacle to the peace process.

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Recent actions in Hebron by the right-wing Jewish settlers have brought great disgrace to the nation of Israel and the Jewish people. Simply put, this week showed us the dark side of the union between religion and nationalism. Our religion and our nationalism.

The settlers call it a "price tag":  Every time Israeli authorities act against the interest of the settlers, the latter will respond by exacting revenge on nearby Palestinian residence and their property.  Much like Japanese Macaques monkeys who when attacked by a powerful and high-ranking aggressor exact revenge on one of his less powerful family members, the settlers are displacing their frustrations on the Palestinians with the hopes of deterring the Israeli government from taking future actions against them.

But judging by the Bulworthesque response of Prime Minister Olmert, the settlers monkey-like actions have backfired:   

"As a Jew, I'm ashamed of the sights of Jews firing at Arabs in Hebron. I have no other definition for what we saw but a pogrom. We are the sons of a nation which knows what a pogrom is, and I'm saying this after much thought. I have no other way to put it.”

This is not the first time that Olmert has described the actions of settlers in the territories as pogroms. By using the word ‘pogrom' Olmert joins those who at times see a moral and historical equivalence between violence committed against Jews in the Diaspora, and violence committed by Jews against non-Jews in Israel and the occupied territories. This may seem like a non-issue, but in reality it is an unusual and potent choice of words for a prime minister to use. 

The other interesting disclosure in Olmert’s statement is his admission of shame. Shame is an appropriate response. Shame is an outward directed emotion, it is social and ethical, it means that we feel bad because others see our improper behavior (or those who represent us). But shame needs to be adjoined with another emotion: Guilt. Guilt is internal, it is moral and individualistic, it is our conscience bitchslapping us for actions we know to be wrong. 

We are not guilty and shameful because we pulled the trigger, burned down and smashed people's property, or cursed and spit in their faces.  No, our guilt is the guilt of the enabler. Our shame is the shame of the idle witness. The hill-top youths may be the out of control monster that Dr. Frankenstein of the Yesha counsel created, yet it is we, everyday Israelis, that supported (directly or indirectly) their experiments and operations. 

Of course shame and guilt have their up side. Aristotle understood shame to be a “quasi virtue”, because there is still a great deal of qualitative difference between the person who acts wrongly and feels shame and one who does not. Likewise, an Ethiopian proverb states: “A man without shame is a man without honor.” To the point that he is sincere, the fact that our Prime Minister is expressing shame is a good thing. It shows that he, and to the extent that Olmert speaks for Israel as a collective, we, care about how we behave and how we are perceived.

One can hope that these feelings don’t just function to make us feel superior to the thugs that perpetuated and supported these crimes, but also wake us from our moral complacency regarding the occupation as a whole.

A hero of mine is the Ha'aretz reporter Avi Issacharoff, who, with other journalists, stopped a Jewish pogrom against innocent Palestinians in Hebron. His harrowing report is here, and Dion Nissenbaum has more detail.

I've written about these Hebron settlers before, and have catalogued their extremism. But it needs to be said over and over again: They are a disgrace to Judaism. As the late, great Rabin said of Baruch Goldstein and his degenerate supporters: "You are an errant weed. Sensible Judaism spits you out. You placed yourself outside the wall of Jewish law. You are a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism."

• Obama should be able to disclose his small donors list.

• EU urges Israel to curb settlers violence. 

• JTA looks at Obama and McCain advisers. 

• Zack and Miri Make a (yawning) Porno. 

• Obama kicks unfriendly reporters off campaign plane. 

According to Ynet, Israeli settlers in the West Bank are producing three times the amount of offspring as those on the other side of the green line. As the Israeli government has taken action to decrease the number of outposts, the number of caravans in the area has increased to accomodate for the growing population.

Peace Now, an organization committed to establishing peace in the Middle East, compiled the statistics, which also attributed the growing birth rate to the number of Orthodox families moving to haredi communities in the West Bank.