Naaaa, Naaa, naaa, naaa, naaaa, You don't really exsit!

When my students are mad at each other they often pretend that they don't see or hear whomever they are angry with. I've often had kids cross their arms and turn their back when someone they are angry with is talking to them. Girls often do the,"I'm not inviting you to my party deal..." Sometimes I can't help but feel the same is happening on national scales here in the Middle East.

I remember sitting with my friend Moti one day while in Israel and saying the term"occupied territories" when referring to the West Bank and Gaza, to which he replied, "Here we call them 'liberated territories' ". I also remember going to Arab towns with Israelis who deliberately wore tight and reveling clothes. "This is Israel" They would say. "This is a secular country and they have to understand that. They want to have their customs validated, then they need to go to an Islamic Nation." I chalked these incidences up to " The Israeli Sabra attitude" that I saw all the time until I was in the Dead Sea Museum here in Jordan last week reading an exhibit.

"The Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea are moving north in relationship to the shores on the western side by a distance of 0.5 cm every year." one exhibit said.

The next exhibit said,"You are standing on the Arabian plate that is moving northwards compared to the Palestine Plate on the other side of the Dead Sea."

Another exhibit was a 3-D map of the area. Jordan was outline and labeled as well as the countries of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. There was also a large blank area directly to the west of Jordan.

Na, na, na, na, na.... If I don't call you by your name, if I leave your flag out of my poster, if I say you are liberated as opposed to occupied, if I ignore you customs, if I don't label your country on my map, then I am not accepting your right to exist and therefor proving my right to exist???!!!

I remember being a child during America's "Cold War" with Russia. I was quoted the number of ICBMs each county had and the number of times they could blow the whole earth up. I was told about Russian leaders taking their shoes off and banging them on the desk in front of the whole UN. I was told of men, little more than young boys, with fingers on the bombs being pointed towards NY, or LA, or Kansas City. I was told about the threat of communism, and I remember being petrified of the Russians. But I knew they existed. I not only knew they existed, but I believed that the only way to ensure our safety was to work with them. So I wonder about all the children here in the Middle East that are being raise in the atmosphere of hate, fear and non-acknowledgement. I wonder about the collective psyche of all the nations of the Middle East raised refusing to accept even the existence of the other. How do you work with someone to promote peace when you don't even accept their right to exist?