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Where the pen triumphs over the sword


It’s no secret that Jews and Arabs in Israel — indeed throughout the world — struggle to live side-by-side peacefully. Part of the problem may stem from each community’s failure to understand the other. Diplomats have been trying to offer up solutions for decades, and only time — a significant amount of it — will tell whether they succeed or merely fuel the flames further.

In the meantime, Israeli jouralists have come up with their own solution to bridge the gap between Jews and Arabs: Start a magazine that corrects each community’s stereotypes of the other by featuring writers of both Arab and Jewish backgrounds. Launched last spring, Duet has a circulation of 170,000 in a country with a population of 6.1 million people. Not bad for a fledgling magazine. But then again, one has to wonder who those 170,000 readers are. I suspect that most of them are individuals who weren’t resolved in their hatred of the opposing community when they first picked up a copy of Duet. But what about those Israelis — particularly influential politicians and leaders — who perhaps need to read the magazine most and yet potentially lack the open-mindednesshave necessary to do so? How will Duet’s publishers ensure that the magazine makes it into the hands that wield the most influence (and who perhaps need to embrace equality and tolerance the most)?

Perhaps the magazine’s best marketing strategy comes from its pool of writers. Given that Duet relies on volunteer journalists from across the country — instead of a staff of writers — maybe some magic can be worked. As those journalists return to work at their respective media outlets after writing for Duet, perhaps they’ll slowly influence the ways in which the Jews and Arabs are represented in the mainstream media and, in turn, alter the way that the public at-large — even politicians — understands the other community. Smart. Very smart.

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