The BBC has aired a new documentary called "Normal Israelis". It looks into a group of people living in Israel called the Normal Israelis, who although previously unheard-of actually make up the majority of Israel's population.
The documentary follows the lives of these mostly-Jewish people, as they go to school or work, play and bring up children, go to the cinema, cook, sleep, and celebrate things such as birthdays and weddings.
As well as occupying houses in cities from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, some of the Normal Israelis even live in areas in the West Bank, despite international criticism that Jews shouldn't live where Palestinians don't want them. These Normal Israelis are of the ideological view that them being Jewish and alive isn't really a good enough reason for them not to own and live in houses in those areas.
But the one place in Israel you won't find any Normal Israelis living is in the Gaza Strip. There everyone appears to be Palestinian for some reason, with not a Jew in sight.
The Normal Israelis hold an unusual and unique stance towards peace, compared with most of the rest of the world. They say they want peace, but strangely they also don't want to be attacked by those who want to attack them - and they even support measures taken to prevent this! When they do come under attack, usually by rockets from Gaza, they will complain about this, claiming it goes against their ideology of not wanting to come under rocket attacks.
But the Normal Israelis are also quite similar to Normal Palestinians in some ways, for example they're both forbidden to murder and stab people and stuff - even people they know - , and both are frequently questioned and checked by the Israeli army when they go through checkpoints, to ensure they don't do these things.
Despite their normalness, perhaps the strangest thing about the Normal Israelis is that they say they don't hate the Normal Palestinians, but at the same time they also claim not to hate Israel, some of them even going so far as to confess that they like some things about their homelandl!
A BBC spokesperson said of the documentary:
"We wanted to be fair and balanced, and to give an insight into all parts of Israeli society, as we hadn't previously looked into the Normal Israelis. We've discovered they're actually quite boring people though, so we probably won't mention any of them ever again."
