PERSPECTIVE ON MIDDLE EAST : Cyberfada--Peace on the Internet : Hatred and warmongering are clogging the Middle East information superhighway.

In one forum for Mideast news junkies, you’ll find people who insist that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is a fascist brute and war criminal; that the state of Israel has either lost its soul or never really had one, and that no Jewish state should seek acceptance in a region where the Koran holds sway.

In another forum, Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat is reviled as a terrorist with no place on the world stage. Here, Palestinian autonomy is seen as a moral travesty, arming Palestinian police with AK-47s as sheer lunacy and peaceful coexistence between Arab and Jew as a sacrilege.

Sound like the same old Middle East? Not on the Internet.

The first forum is called JPOL--standing for Jewish politics. Here, mostly ultra-right-wing American Jews willing to fight to the last living Israeli rage over the perfidies of the Israeli government while adopting the rabid rhetoric of their Arab enemies. The second list is called P-NET, or Palestine Net. Here, Palestinians and supporters--P-Nutters--regularly slam the terrorist leader they once insisted Israel recognize.

Welcome to the superhighway monkey house.

Common wisdom holds that the Internet contributes directly to global unity. It certainly helped the news get in and out of crisis spots like Beijing, Moscow and (after our last major earthquake) Los Angeles. But it hasn’t quite wrought that Wellsian Utopia globalists anticipate. Indeed, in the opportunities it presents for frank and even vitriolic exchange of views, it may even be contributing to global extremism, intolerance and Balkanization.

This is especially true for the Middle East where, ironically, the first fledgling steps toward regional coexistence have been taken. In an area where good walls and recognized borders may make for even better neighbors, the net is encouraging Arabs and Jews worldwide, as well as ideologically opposed members of both tribes, to invade each other’s living rooms.

Many in America would probably regard this development as ideal. Americans seem to believe that no problem can’t be talked to death. But those Jews and Arabs attracted to the sudden novelty of exchanging views with lifelong enemies via Internet often discover that their respective self-images and world views have, during a full century of strife, become almost mutually exclusive.

The result of such exchanges is often an embittered state of cyber-shock, not conducive to neighborly relations. It’s not for nothing that Israelis and Jordanians now crossing into each other’s countries in buses (rather than via e-mail) are urged, at least for the moment, to keep their voices down and to refrain from talking politics.

Nor are all Arabs and Jews well-meaning--especially on the net. Because of its easy accessibility and relatively wide distribution, no other venue boasts a greater concentration of unabashed anti-Semites, Arab bashers, skinheads, white supremacists, Holocaust deniers and other racists. One can certainly ignore the Hamas supporter who, in a recent post to a cultural discussion group in Israel, insisted that since Jews had killed Christ and Mohammed, it was only a matter of time before Hamas members too would take their places as martyrs. But, within several ostensibly mainstream Jewish discussion forums, right-wing rejectionists now hold sway. As during the heyday of the Likud, when many Jewish-American organizations toed a maximalist line on Israeli territorial aspirations, they dominate discussion through personal insult and invective, silencing or scaring off alternate voices with endless shouting and wanton charges of treason.

Similarly, among the Palestinians of P-Net and other such groups, there are many who sniff at any form of Jewish participation within their forum--even from boosters like Yigal Arens, the anti-Zionist son of the former Likud Israeli defense minister, Moshe Arens. For many here, Jews have as much right to a place on the Internet as they do in the Middle East--none.

For both camps, the net is a strategically placed hilltop from which to lob the computer equivalents of Katyusha rockets and artillery shells at the enemy.

This behavior goes against trends on the ground. In 1967, Israel fended off a threatened pan-Arab military assault with a preemptory strike that led to the occupation of the West Bank, Sinai and Gaza. After the dust settled, the architect of that victory, Moshe Dayan, began to argue that day-to-day interaction between Arabs and Israelis within the occupied territories would ultimately dispel their cumulative mutual hatred. It’s probably a good thing that Dayan didn’t live to witness the Palestinian uprising that spelled an end to his delusions. Most observers now believe that Israeli-Palestinian coexistence can be achieved only by putting up a solid block wall between the warring parties. The problem isn’t that Israelis and Palestinians don’t know each other. As in a terminal marriage, they know each other too well.

Alas, the net is not such a good place for disengaging. Many people do not maintain a modicum of civility anywhere on the Internet. Gibbering and jabbering, those who occupy the Middle Eastern arenas threaten each other regularly with extinction. They do so oblivious to the fact that in the real world, Israelis, Egyptians, Jordanians, Tunisians, Kuwaitis and even Saudis are schmoozing each other routinely in places like Morocco and Cairo and the United Arab Emirates.

Whatever the pitfalls of net-bound Middle East dialogue, Jewish and Palestinian netters alike will probably tell you the Net is ideal for dispersed people. Palestinians need it for community-building, Jews need it as a weapon against assimilation and Israelis find it a helpful, if sometimes unnerving, antidote to their inherent geographical claustrophobia. As for me, I suppose that if there has to be shooting, better it should go down in cyberspace than in the streets of Hebron or on the Golan Heights. Just do me a favor--let’s not talk about it.