Jews and Arabs Refuse to be Enemies 

Earlier this month, the Israeli news site, Ynet, reported that over 300 people protested the rocket attacks on Gaza by their government saying that people were chanting one simple message, “Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies.”

That slogan has now turned into an international social media campaign against the civilian deaths in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

People are sharing photos of themselves holding pieces of paper demanding an end to the violence and supporting civilians under attack. They are using the #JewsAndArabsRefuseToBeEnemies hashtag, and sending their photos to the “Jews and Arabs Refuse to Be Enemies ” Facebook page.

The Facebook page was started by an Israeli, Abraham Gutman and a Syrian, Dania Darwish. In an interview with The Huffington Post, Gutman said: “In the last month it was hard for us to open our social media accounts. Our feeds were full of hateful comments.” He added: “We wanted to create a community of people that oppose this kind of speech and to remind people that in the bottom line we are all just people.”

The Facebook page’s latest update says that “as Arab-Israeli political tensions escalate, the social media discourse has become more hateful.” The post concludes by saying that people do not need to be the enemy of someone they’ve just met just because of their ethnicity or religion.

For more on this story: http://www.buzzfeed.com/rossalynwarren/jewish-and-arab-people-are-posing-together-in-inspiring-phot