Laurel's Final Thoughts on Peace Summit

All of the opinions were diverse and very different from one another. Obviously, depending on what your role-play character's opinions is, you were probably going to take sides with him or her.

There was an even number of people on each side when we shared our ideas, so some of the votes were really close and then some of them weren't. Some of these ideas I could not see happening such as the idea to merge the two countries into one, but how would this be possible for two countries that hate each other to suddenly be neighbors by choice?

Some of the other ideas were helpful. For example, the idea to give an equal amount of our tax dollars to each country but only for non-violent purposes. People who don't live in Israel can't completely understand, but what my class has been doing for the last ten weeks is to understand better. Now that I learned about it, I almost wish that I hadn't because whenever I think about how depressed those people must be, not being able to go to the places that we take for granted such as mall or grocery store without worrying about being shot or blown up, it makes me feel guilty that I'm not doing anything about it.

Some parts of this devastating conflict are portrayed poorly by our media because the message is always that the Palestinians are terrorists and they want to kill everyone. Unfortunately, the people that came up with the idea to attack the World Trade Center just happened to be Arab. It's a racial stereotype just like Americans being obese and wearing cowboy hats or African Americans being NBA players and criminals. Terrorism shouldn't be classified as an Arab stereotype. Is should just be classified as a horrible thing that should never happen.