Jonathan Kraft

This is Sheikh Jarrah, a small neighborhood in East Jerusalem that has become a hotbed of unrest over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We visited Sheikh Jarrah last week while on a tour of East Jerusalem, conducted by ACRI, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. I won’t go into the history of the conflict in Sheikh Jarrah because it is so nuanced and controversial, but see the Wikipedia entry on the neighborhood for more detail. Also of interest might be the website of the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement, an organization of Jews and Arabs alike who protest against Jewish settlement in the neighborhood weekly. Of these protesters includes a man by the name of David Grossman, a very famous Israeli novelist whose son died in the 2006 war in Lebanon.

Anyway, I present this information and the video below, made by human rights group B’Tselem in collaboration with The Guardian, because I think it is a very good representation of the conflict and how it affects daily life. Take a look at the video and make up your own mind as to who is in the right and who in the wrong; there are many sides to this issue, as with all issues here.