In the first mention of the Hebrew language in a good light in our local media, educators have voiced their opinions about promoting the learning of the language in Arab countries to reciprocate the learning of the Arabic language in Israel, where Arabic is one of the official langauges.

I'm all for it! Please go ahead and start teaching Hebrew to those who want to learn the language in universities and colleges, if not in schools. I speak a little bit of Hebrew myself, though it's not very advanced and my vocabulary is comparable to that of a six-year-old Jewish Israeli child. I wonder if I should teach it to those who are interested... I mean, I've learnt this language with the help of certain books and people and now it would be nice to 'pass it on'.

Though, I'm opposed to the reason behind the people's desire to learn the language. In the article, people say they want to learn it so they can know their enemy. Why not 'know thy neighbor'? It's about time the two sides stopped seeing each other as 'the enemy' and let the ordinary people communicate and connect with each other so they can hurry the hell up and get the peace process started!

It was nice to read such an open-minded article about Hebrew on the first day of the new Jewish year - yes, today is Tishri 1^st, 5767, and also Ramadan 1^st, 1427, the first of the 30 [or 29, depending on the moon] 14-hour-long fasts. Yom Kippur, the 25-hour-long fast for Jews falls on October 2^nd - Tishri 10^th, so Jews and Muslims will be fasting together. Here's to a month of peace!