Please share your thoughts on the issue with JVP. We'll collect them and send a selection of them to Jewish leadership, as we ask communal leaders to take responsibility for this extremism and work to counter it by building Jewish communities based on respect for others, faith in equality, and reverence for justice.

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A number of people have written us saying that they think the video is odious and, while they don't support YouTube censoring it, they don't want JVP to promote it, either. These are great points. We share your repulsion at what is expressed in the video. And it's for that reason exactly that we believe that the video needs to be seen and discussed and YouTube needs to host it. So we're not promoting the video, per se. We're promoting open discussion on the extremism in our midst. This video is just a part of that discussion.

Here are the reasons we believe the video must be seen and discussed, and therefore we want YouTube to host it:

1) Because the way that these young Jews talk about Muslims and Arabs has become normative inside the Jewish world. We see the seeds of this kind of talk inside institutional Jewish life. Jewish leadership on local, national and international levels doesn't do enough to counter it. Hatemongers like Daniel Pipes are invited to speak at Hillels on college campuses around the country while Alan Dershowitz, who accuses Hamas of being "Hitler's heirs," is considered a prominent Jewish leader and given ample media platforms to spread his vitriol. Here's another example: a settler who advocates denying Palestinian citizens of Israel their civil rights is not marginalized for his views - instead he's become Israel's new foreign minister! And most American Jewish institutions that claim to support Israel have not condemned his racist, extremist policy proposals. It is clear: the views that these kids expressed on the streets of Jerusalem reflect larger ills in Jewish society today. Let's lay them all on the table.

2) Because this video shows a pattern that's emerging on YouTube in which videos that show Jewish people behaving badly are pulled down while other videos full of hate, even hate aimed towards Jews, are allowed to stand. For over a year, YouTube hosted videos showing Israeli soldiers humiliating Palestinians (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1094242.html). After these videos were reported in Ha'aretz (6/19/2009), YouTube pulled them - but not before. Yet an interview with Holocaust denier David Irving has been on YouTube since July, 2008, too, and one need only hear the first sentence the man utters to grasp the pure hate and anti-semitism of his words. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhCbHZPwEEQ) This video has not been pulled - though it, too, ironically, was posted by Max Blumenthal.

3) Because this video is not "the alcohol talking." Some of the kids were drinking, but not all of them were; Max Blumenthal and Joseph Dana said explicitly that many of the kids they spoke to were not drinking. But even so - even if these kids were drunk - does that make their hate less hateful? Just because Mel Gibson was drunk when he was arrested in 2006, does any of us believe that he doesn't hold the anti-semitic views he expressed then? He was held publicly responsible for his words and required to apologize to Jewish leaders, as he should have been.

If these kids were drunk, they're drunk on the ideology and power of domination. It's what they're learning from Jewish leaders in the U.S. and in Israel. The very different world we are working to create will only come about when we honestly and openly take on this kind of intoxication in our communities and when we learn how to yield power without committing abuse. And we can only learn these things when we acknowledge and confront the extremism that the kids in this video express. The video is painful, embarrassing and enraging for viewers and shameful for the kids who are in it. To work towards a just peace in Israel/Palestine, we need to build communities based on respect for others and commitment to equality, and that work needs to happen in our Jewish and non-Jewish communities right here at home. One important piece of it is viewing this video and asking ourselves, our family, our friends, our neighbors: where do these kids go wrong? Where do they find external affirmation for their racist and hateful views? How can these views be confronted? What does each of us need to do in order to build communities based on respect for others?

Keeping this video up and available for all to see is only one step in this longer journey we have to take.