Can 250 Video Cameras Bridge the Israeli-Palestinian Divide?

In a Time Magazine cover story, Steven Spielberg talks about his new movie exploring the aftermath of the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. He also reveals his plan for improving Israeli-Palestinian relations: “There’s a project I’m initiating next February that I think might also do some good,” he said. “What I’m doing is buying 250 video cameras and players and dividing them up, giving 125 of them to Palestinian children, 125 to Israeli kids, so they can make movies about their own lives—not dramas, just little documentaries about who they are and what they believe in, who their parents are, where they go to school, what they had to eat, what movies they watch, what CDs they listen to—and then exchange the videos. That’s the kind of thing that can be effective, I think, in simply making people understand that there aren’t that many differences that divide Israelis from Palestinians—not as human beings, anyway.”