Fifi's: A Sane Oasis Amongst A Sea of Paranoia

         Time for a small discussion relating to the broiling conflict in the Middle East, specifically, the racial tensions in Israel between the Jewish and Arab populations. While browsing the New York Times, I stumbled upon an OP-doc titled "The Shampoo Summit." This was a documentary about a hair salon in Haifa, Israel called "Fifi's" run by two Christian Arabs. Within this salon, unlike most of Israel, both Jews and Arabs, without a hitch, peacefully talked and ate with one another as if they were no different from each other. As the documentary put it, the salon was a "little island of sanity." This is due to the salon being free of the prejudices and paranoia that plague most of Israel during this time of conflict with Hamas and the Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
          The documentary helped to show that, as in every conflict over the whole of time, there is equal hatred and fear from both sides, and offered a reminder that on them both, there are people just like us. It showed that peace truly is possible between Jews and Arabs. However, something that I feel this documentary failed to cover was the feelings and attitudes of Muslim Arabs. The documentary only covered and discussed the feelings of Christian Arabs and Jews, as those were the main clientele of the salon. Often times, the children of Muslim Arabs within Israel are raised to think in a much more martyr-like way, in opposition to Israel as a state. Without their opinions considered in this documentary, it lacks the thoughts and feelings of one of the major populations in Israel.
          One specific point in this documentary that also irks me is that one of the people being interviewed says that the two populations would get along much better if the primary politicians were women. Without being prejudiced towards women as a gender, I can't say I agree with that statement. This is due to the fact that historically, woman politicians have been generally more tough than most men in governments around the world. One relevant example is Hillary Clinton. To be quite frank, she may be seen as a pathologically lying, scandal-clad, evil politician, which she most certainly is, but that is besides the point. She is a battle hardened individual who has been historically tough on crime and harsh to deal with all around due to her crippling realism, which is not seen in many male politicians (or politicians in general usually). In a recorded backstage interview conversation with representatives from the Black Lives Matter movement in which she tells them that they can't actually fully succeed with their goals, and that they merely re-disperse resources and change laws, not the hearts and minds of the people they try to reach out to. Once again, this pragmatism, this pessimism and harshness is rarely found in male politicians as a whole, and it is most certainly not suited for fostering relationships between conflicting ethnic groups/religions.