{"id":22738,"date":"2017-01-27T03:41:45","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T11:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=22738"},"modified":"2017-01-26T10:59:51","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T18:59:51","slug":"opinions-from-the-streets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2017\/01\/27\/opinions-from-the-streets\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinions from the streets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Corey Gil-Shuster has split his time between Canada and Israel for 28 years now. (photo from Corey Gil-Shuster)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Corey Gil-Shuster is an Ottawa-born and -raised Jew who spends a great deal of his time and energy asking people their opinions regarding the Middle East conflict \u2013 and doing so on camera. He has his own channel on YouTube, called the Ask Project.<\/p>\n

Gil-Shuster has spent the last 28 years splitting his time between Ottawa and different places in Israel. He first went to the Jewish state in the 1990s for a study-abroad program at Tel-Aviv University.<\/p>\n

At the time, Gil-Shuster said he was just happy to find \u201ca good, safe place to travel and then, from there, to travel to other places. Then, when I was here in Israel, actually I didn\u2019t like it very much. It was very different than I expected. I found it too chaotic\u2026. It took me about six months to get used to it. Once I did, I started to fall in love with the place.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1995, Gil-Shuster met his now-husband, Yaron. The couple later adopted a child.<\/p>\n

Gil-Shuster said he has found Israelis to be fairly open to discussing homosexuality, and noted a level of acceptance or openness that he has not found in Canada. Even strangers in Israel have felt very comfortable asking him questions about being gay, and he has used the opportunity to educate them about the topic. On more than one occasion, once that initial question has been broached, people have invited him over for dinner to ascertain how they can move to Canada, make a good living and buy a big house.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found Israel refreshing,\u201d said Gil-Shuster. \u201cI kind of enjoyed that, because it put me in control as opposed to the opposite \u2013 at least the early 1990s in Canada \u2013 being gay with straight people in control of whether you\u2019re accepted.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he acclimated to Israeli society, Gil-Shuster found himself getting into debates about how Israelis really feel about the situation in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, well, I have a video camera, so why don\u2019t I just go out my front door and ask random people on the streets to answer some questions?\u201d he told the Independent<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What Gil-Shuster initially found was that, while people had their opinions, they were not interested in asking questions themselves or in listening.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll these people are either pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian, and they are sure they know everything about Israel,\u201d he said. \u201cBut, nobody could come up with a question to either confirm their ideas or give the opposite of what they think. Finally, somebody said something about how Israelis won\u2019t accept a one-state solution. Great, I\u2019ll take that and ask that as a question. I asked neighbours, the guy who sells me fruit and veggies, and another grocery store guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gil-Shuster had to do on-the-spot translation of the comments from the street interviews. \u201cI would translate as they were speaking Hebrew,\u201d he said. \u201cI put it together. I had seven or eight people and I put it in a film. I learned to edit, but I didn\u2019t cut anything out, and I put it on YouTube.\u201d<\/p>\n

In no time at all, Gil-Shuster understood the power in simply letting people share their views \u2013 \u201chow much power that can have to go against what mainstream media puts out, whether that\u2019s Canadian, American, Israeli or Palestinian. Every country\u2019s media has a certain narrative they want to say. They have a story they\u2019re trying to sell to their people, and they have to frame the conflict within that.\u201d<\/p>\n

To make his videos more objective, Gil-Shuster started to venture further than his backyard in Tel Aviv. He began traveling the country asking people for their opinions. Regardless of what they said, he made a point of not cutting or editing the videos \u2013 even if racist or horrible comments were made that didn\u2019t conform to his views.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean he keeps silent, however. He allows himself the right to make sarcastic comments as he feels the need, noting, \u201cIt keeps me more interested. I try to make it very objective … I try to figure out, as much as possible, where they\u2019re coming from. If their question is, \u2018Why don\u2019t you all just get along,\u2019 I\u2019ll reply quite naively insofar as what my follow-up questions are … thinking that\u2019s kind of where they\u2019re coming from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gil-Shuster has been doing this for the past four years, with a growing following that comprises a mix of pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian fans and many others in between. He provides a variety of views and topics to keep people watching.<\/p>\n

When he has to travel for work, doctor appointments or other reasons, he brings his camera along, stopping to speak with people along the way. Jerusalem and Haifa are a couple of his favourite places to do this, as he is more likely to encounter both Israelis and Palestinians.<\/p>\n

In general, he has found Palestinians to be more open to talking, though some are fearful and only want to be interviewed if he will agree to conceal their face. Typically, in these situations, he works with a translator.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first started out, my hope was to use these videos as a forum for creating peace in some way, to create a dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians,\u201d he said. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s about understanding. But, quickly, I realized that very few Israelis and Palestinians are interested in having a dialogue \u2013 at least, not in a public way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some people get mad at Gil-Shuster, feeling he is doing something purposefully against one group or another. In contrast, he gets a lot of messages from people in the Middle East saying, \u201cThank you for showing me a different side of the conflict. I always had a feeling I was being lied to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are the emails I like the most,\u201d he said. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to like what somebody says, but I\u2019m hoping they\u2019re humanized as a group.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked about how the project has changed his views, Gil-Shuster said he no longer thinks peace is possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsraelis are tough-talking, but are willing to compromise to a certain degree. Palestinians are very open to other people in some ways, but, it\u2019s very black and white for them. It\u2019s all … the land was stolen by foreigners who shouldn\u2019t be there, and that there\u2019s no solution until they leave. Maybe someday they\u2019ll get a leader who\u2019ll be brave enough to tell them what reality is, but they don\u2019t have those kinds of leaders. They always deal with Israel \u2026 [with the view that] for now, we can benefit from it, but it\u2019s all ours, so we will get it back someday.\u201d<\/p>\n

To date, Gil-Shuster has created more than 500 videos. They can be found at youtube.com\/user\/coreygilshuster<\/a>, and he encourages viewers to suggest questions.<\/p>\n

Rebeca Kuropatwa<\/strong> is a Winnipeg freelance writer.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Corey Gil-Shuster has split his time between Canada and Israel for 28 years now. (photo from Corey Gil-Shuster) Corey Gil-Shuster is an Ottawa-born and -raised Jew who spends a great deal of his time and energy asking people their opinions regarding the Middle East conflict \u2013 and doing so on camera. He has his own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4329],"tags":[4330,1673,2721],"class_list":["post-22738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","tag-israel","tag-israeli-palestinian-conflict","tag-peace"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}