ABSTRACT
Modern individuals such as the authors of this chapter tend to shy away from being identified primarily in terms of their group identity. Yet whether we like it or not, as Jewish Israelis we are often perceived by our Arab-Israeli/Palestinian neighbors as representations of the “oppressive” majority, the Jews of Israel. This initial perception has no necessary grounding in who we are, what we think and what we do as singular individuals. Considering our own tendency to situate these very same neighbors within our own “Arab-Israeli/Palestinian” frame of reference, we are intimately cognizant of group-oriented categories accompanying the relation to others. Can this mutual reification of persons in terms of single-frame categories be replaced with a more inclusive relation to the being of an “other?”
