There's this YouTube channel where something rather interesting is being done by a man named Corey Gil-Shuster....I'm not sure if he is well known to anyone here. This is an interview in which he tells a bit of his story.
http://www.sharnoffsglobalviews.com/...y-gil-shuster/
He is from Canada originally, and became an Israeli citizen in 1995. He had been going in a different direction with his career aspirations, but then he became massively interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and returned to Canada to acquire a Master's in Conflict Studies, with a specific focus on that conflict. He is working toward a PhD in Palestinian culture and conflict.
One of the things he noticed when talking to people, in person or online, was that otherwise perfectly intelligent people frequently have no idea of what's really going on there, of what people are really saying doing or believing, or of what the situation actually is. There is a massive amount of misinformation out there, and he got tired of going back over it with people again and again. So he created a YouTube channel and started a rather interesting project. Initially, he would come up with a couple of basic questions, then approach people at random and ask them those question. He would do this with a series of different Palestinians, and then some different questions with a series of Israelis. He seems to speak Hebrew, English, and Arabic fairly well, but he usually works with a translator anyway. This quickly developed into a project where questions are viewer-submitted, and then he selects a few of them and goes with his camera to talk to people.
This is his YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/user/coreygilshuster If you follow the link, you should be able to get an immediate idea of the range of questions he asks. A couple of the first vids you'll see there say "Palestinians: Jews always break their agreements." So he's going up to a series of Palestinians and asking them if they believe Jews always break their agreements, and what do they think of that. Another one that's right there says "Palestinians: Israel has no culture." In that one, again, he's asking random Palestinians about that type of statement. Some of the questions are more specifically targeted though, for example he might be locating specifically Arab Jews and then ask them a question about Sephardi Jews or about Arab Muslims. If you go down a bit to where the Popular Videos are listed, you can see that the same question is sometimes posed to both groups in separate videos- Jews, how much do you hate the Palestinians, and Palestinians, how much do you hate the Jews? Another popular one asks What do you think of atheists? Again, this one is asked of both groups in separate videos.
Almost all of these little interviews are done with random people that are complete strangers. There's only one exception I can think of, and that involved a conspiracy theory that no one had ever heard of other than the person asking the question. For that one, he did talk to a couple of random people who were quite confused, and then he talked to a couple of legitimate experts on the matter and they had also never heard of that conspiracy theory, but they were able to give a lot more detailed information about the issue.
I'd like to see what people think of this as you're taking a look through it. I was surprised by a few things, mostly by the range of different responses that people may give. It's been eye-opening, I frequently need to pause and open another tab on my browser so I can look up some of the things they're talking about, and on occasion some of these vids are just hilarious. There was one that I watched recently where he's asking Jews about why they stole hummus from the Arabs, and the only reason he asked is because one of his viewers submitted that as a question to be asked. That one was quite funny. Most of them are serious though, and he tries pretty hard to get people to engage in a meaningful way (with varying degrees of success). There is quite a lot to see here, though.
Does anyone here want to submit any questions that he could maybe ask on camera? If so, do you think you'd be more interested in asking questions of Jews or of Palestinians? Maybe both? Please do look though the vids first and see if it's already been done though, that is quite possible. Speaking of which, do any of these vids stick out to you as particularly important talking points? One that sticks out to me is the one where he's asking Palestinians what the word Palestine means. Where does it come from, what's the language of origin, and basically what does it mean. Nobody really knew. There was one guy who thought he knew, and he was quite certain of all his conclusions, but he shouldn't have been quite so certain because he was completely wrong. That's something most people don't know, and it was surprisingly difficult to track down some detailed information. That's just me though, there's a lot going on here and I'd like to see what is of interest to everyone else.