Our Violent Society, Jerusalem Post, January 18, 2002 "In a recent interview in Yediot Aharonot, Prof. Bernard Lewis, the world-renowned doyen of Middle Eastern studies, described Israelis as being the most impolite people in the world. That description could be termed an understatement. I recently took part in a conference in which the participants came from 14 different countries. None of them dreamed of interrupting each other, none, that is, except the Israelis, some of whom evidently thought the accepted mode of debate is the one practiced in Dan Margalit's or Nissim Mishal's TV talk shows, in which participants have to shout each other down in order to be heard ... There is no need to belabor the point, especially not in The Jerusalem Post, many of whose readers came from 'Anglo-Saxon' countries and who suffer daily from the impolite behavior of so many Israelis. Rudeness, however, is only one of the maladies which afflict our society. Violence is far graver - violence in our schools, on the streets and roads, husbands against wives, fathers against sons and daughters, neighbors, in bars and pubs. Violence has become part of our daily lives. Not a day passes without some lurid story in the media, more testimony of the savagery we regularly inflict on each other. The situation in the schools is particularly disturbing, for violent behavior is becoming entrenched as a way of life for many of our children. Something evidently is very wrong with our society. Lack of manners, rudeness, hot tempers, impatience, aggressive attitudes, and violence have become hallmarks of our behavior to each other, and the symptoms are getting worse by the day ... What, then, has happened to us? Why have the ugly features of our society become so predominant? ... We have become war weary, a people which does not see a way out of the spiral of ever-increasing hostility that so characterizes our relations with our neighbors. That hostility, and the attitudes and deeds it creates in our dealings with them, impacts on what is happening in our own society. It cannot be otherwise. It affects our soldiers and the families of our soldiers, it affects our politicians, it affects us all."