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When I was a kid and my parents had fights, I remember feeling very confused. Somehow I identified with BOTH of them, they were both “right.”

Fast forward to the Israeli/Palestinian mess. I’m a card carrying Jew (circumcised, Bar Mitzvahed, even a kabbalistic tattoo on my arm). I’m proud of my ancient heritage – especially when it talks about “justice, justice, shall you pursue” and “a stranger shall you not oppress, since you know the heart of a stranger, seeing you were strangers in the Land of Egypt.”

I immigrated to Israel in 2006 (as any Jew worldwide can do, according to Israeli law – something any Palestinian refugee worldwide, whose grandparents actually lived somewhere in the current state of Israel, can only dream of). I immediately realized this is a frustratingly polarized place. A lot of “leftists” are just as aggressive and angry as the worst of the ultra-Zionists, pan-Arabists, and other fundamentalists. And I soon discovered this very unusual Palestinian activist, lawyer, and poet. Not only a terrific subject for a doc, but a great excuse for some wild adventures.

How do you teach people compassion? Especially when they don’t necessarily WANT to identify with “the other”?

Mahameed sometimes hangs a Palestinian flag in his tiny museum. He often spends the first hour with a Palestinian audience developing rapport, speaking their language – yes, he wants every one of them to be able to return to their villages WITHIN Israel. Then finally, near the end of his talk, when they’re itching to see the photos he’s mentioned several times, he takes them out.

It’s almost like he has to trick people into feeling something they don’t want to feel. And likewise, when he shows the photos to Israeli soldiers, he says he wants to “shock them” into treating Palestinians more humanely.

A guy who has sat down with sheikhs and rabbis, Hamas and Fatah members, holocaust survivors and the father of Gilad Shalit – is not afraid to test his ideas wherever he can. One thing for sure: he has an almost obsessive faith in the power of examining the Holocaust – “looking into the pain” – to change peoples’ thinking on BOTH sides.

I’ve quickly found that not only Khaled’s work, but my film will provoke people – including potential funders. One Jewish guy was totally high when I first talked w. him (I guess he assumed Khaled was some kind of simplistic saint), but the more I showed him, the more suspicious he got, until he was quoting me warnings like, “If we are kind to the cruel, then we will be cruel to the kind.”

So I ask you – Arab or Jew, Zionist or anti-Zionist, religious, secular, none of the above – to look at this project with open eyes – don’t immediately evaluate it one way or another. We welcome interaction and feedback. Stay with us for the ride, support us in any way you can – and in a year or so, we’ll have finished a cool film about an amazing man, set in a beautiful, peaceful corner of the world.