It is late afternoon and I'm on my way to a meeting in Kfar Vradim, a lively Jewish settlement next to the Tefen industrial area in the Western Galilee.  Kfar Vradim was established in the 1980s by Stef Wertheimer, the legendary industrialist, and a group of partners, as a new model for quality settlement in the country's northern periphery.

The route to Kfar Vradim took me through the city of Carmiel.  Topping the crest of the hill that stretches from west to east over Carmiel, I stopped to take in the expansive view. The landscape in front of me was breathtaking for two reasons: first, because the Galilee at this point in the late winter/early spring is sparkling green, highlighted by bright patches of color.  Even the usual eyesores - the quarries and ad hoc garbage dumps - are obscured by a veil of green and flowers. These are the days when the Galilee is at its most glorious - like a bride under the huppa, when her scars and discolorations are hidden under a heavy layer of makeup, and the happiness of the wedding day.  And secondly, each time I see this view I am impressed (on the one hand), and worried (on the other) by the mosaic of settlements and communities in the Galilee.  Carmiel is situated right in the center of the Galilee, and around it are scattered a number of small Jewish settlements, kibbutzim, moshavim and communal villages, which are generally perched on the tops of hills, in defiance and for protection. Around them are large Arab villages, generally built, according to the finest tradition, at the base and slopes of the hills, to take full advantage of the fertile valley lands.

And while I was standing there, breathing in the clear air and enjoying the view, a white car stopped next to me and a young man got out.  He looked Arab but was dressed like an American.  He walked over to a large rock and looked out over the peak, in the direction of the Muslim village of Dir el Assad. Totally focused on the landscape below, he took out a camera and started to take pictures. I went over to him and started a conversation.  The words flowed out of him easily, without hesitation, as if he was just waiting to be asked to share his feelings.  His name is Mustafa, he told me, and he was born in Dir el Assad - the town he was taking a picture of.  He has a wife and son.  He is Muslim.  For the last ten years he has been living in the US, in Orlando, Florida.  He left Israel because he wanted a change of scene, and try to make his way in a new place. He'd only been back to visit once during those ten years. He works in a cell phone store in Orlando.  He deeply misses the Galilee and his village, the family values and the community life, but in the US he has a chance to advance, to earn more.  I asked him what he misses most.  "Everything" he answered.  "But most of all this view - of my village.  There is no view like this in America.  I love this land.  The first thing that I did when I arrived was to come up here to look at the village from above and capture this view in a picture."

I asked Mustafa what he thought about Jewish-Arab relations.  He explained that many Jews live in Orlando, as well as many Arabs, and they live and work very nicely one next to the other. "Only here in Israel there's a 'balagan' (mess).  If you want to see how Arabs and Jews can live together - only in the United States.  There everyone respects everyone - as equals. Just here there's 'balagan', he repeated.

I asked permission to take his picture, and I continued on my way to Kfar Vradim, on a road that winds between olive groves and stone terraces. As I drove, I wondered to myself why in Orlando Jews and Arabs live so nicely together and here in Israel there is 'balagan' between them. Could it be the distance from the centers of tension?  Perhaps the foreign language? Or perhaps it is the shared background and similar cultures of the Middle Easterners that connects them and creates a common ground, ironically in a foreign land? What enables Mustafa and his Israeli-Jewish friends in Orland to develop relationships that they can't manage to do as neighbors in Israel?

And still buried in my thoughts, I arrived at Kfar Vradim, with its beautifully landscaped grounds and homes for some 1500 families.  In the center of the town there is a well- equipped country club, a commercial center, school and everything a community needs to live comfortably in a lovely rustic Galilee landscape.  With a little time remaining until my meeting, I decided to look around the town and get a taste of the atmosphere.  As a sports enthusiast, I naturally gravitated to the country club.  Following my senses of smell and hearing, I found my way to the room where a martial arts class was underway.  It looked like a mixture of Karate, Ju Jitsu, and Tae Kwan Do.  But it wasn't the technique that caught my attention, but the mixture of people and languages in the class.  The two instructors were young, powerful Arabic-speaking men (Druze, Muslim or Christian - it's hard to tell).  And practicing with them were about 15 kids between the ages of 7 and 12.  Most of them were Arab and some were Jewish.  But it was the language of instruction that amazed me. The teachers spoke in a mixture of three languages!  Arabic (their mother tongue and that of some of the students), Hebrew (mother tongue of some of the students and the national language of Israel), and English, which seemed to be the official language of this type of integrated martial arts.  Thus, when the teacher ordered a child to kick at three different heights, each height get its own language: "ras" (head), "middle", and "regel" (leg)....

In the month of Adar, a time when it is a mitzvah to be happy, on the eve of Purim, a week after the shocking murder of the Fogel family in Itamar, as the cars of Arab students are torched at Safed College, and the level of tension and racism in Israel steadily rises, Mustafa from Dir el Assad and his Jewish friends in Orlando, and the participants in the martial arts course in Kfar Vradim, show that, in spite of everything, it is possible.