About
Jews and Arabs Refuse to be Enemies is an anti-war social media campaign that aims to promote peace and solidarity among the peoples of Israel and Arab nations in the wake of the Gaza-Israel conflict in June 2014.
Origin
On July 10th, 2014, the Facebook page[1] JewsAndArabsRefuseToBeEnemies was created by Abraham Gutman, an Isreali college student[5] and Dania Darwish . The following day Gutman[2] introduced the hashtag #JewsAndArabsRefuseToBeEnemies to promote the Facebook page. In less than three weeks the page gained over 2,000 views.
Precursor
In March 2012, a similar social media campaign was launched by Israeli graphic designers Ronny Edry and Michal Tamir under the slogans “Israel Loves Iran” and “Iran Loves Israel” which sought to bring mutual assurance of peace between the two nations during the escalation of tensions over the Iranian development of nuclear technology.
Spread
On July 13th, 2014, Beirut-based American journalist Sulome Anderson[4] posted a selfie of her kissing her Jewish boyfriend white holding a sign which read:
“Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies.”
Within two weeks, the photo gained over 100 likes. On July 21st, the photograph, along with Anderson’s quotes, were featured on ABC News in an article titled “’Jews and Arabs Refuse to Be Enemies’ Proves Love is Bigger Than War.” The hashtag and Facebook page were also covered by The Huffington Post and HLNTV[6].
In less than a month the hashtag[3] was tweeted out over 4,000 times.
Notable Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1]Facebook – JewsAndArabsRefuseToBeEnemies
[2]Twitter – abgutmans
[3]Topsy – jewsandarabsrefusetobeenemies
[4]ABC NEws – ‘Jews and Arabs Refuse to Be Enemies’ Proves Love is Bigger Than War
[5]The Huffington Post – ‘Jews and Arabs Refuse to Be Enemies’ Proves Love is Bigger Than War
[6]HLNTV– ‘Refuse To Be Enemies’: A call to end Mideast hate