It wasn't enough that Froman was longtime friends with Yasser Arafat. His most notorious outreach activities to Palestinians were with several leaders of Israel's most hated enemy, Hamas.

As the Palestinian Authority heads to New York this week to confront the Israeli government at the United Nations with a declaration of statehood, back in Israel a group of Jewish and Arab kids are laying the foundations for a more hopeful future through the art of storytelling.

The time has come for the people on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide to tear down the shameful fences and walls and demand an end to this consuming madness.

Nazia Masrawa, the mayor of an Arab Israeli town, and Chaim Gaash, the mayor of a nearby Jewish town described a project that is extraordinarily difficult: their townspeople are working together to solve the day-to-day problems shared by both communities.