the region in which we live. The price of peace is much cheaper than the bitter and destructive price of war." He has written extensively on social and political matters for Arabic and Hebrew newspapers and occasionally for foreign newspapers. His stance against stereotyping, prejudices and racism is also reflected in his novels. Even in his first novel, All Men are Equal – But Some are More (1974), he writes of these prejudices within Jewish society in Israel. The novel was influential for the second generation of the immigrants who saw Michael as a spiritual leader. The name of the book became a well-known saying. On the ever-widening social and economic gap in Israel, Sami Michael has said, "This is dangerous shortsightedness. Poverty is a hot-house for the collapse of democracy and culture. Poverty is not a natural disaster. The rich need to understand that widespread poverty threatens, in essence, the existence of social-order. The most secured mansion with all its inhabitants, will not endure if the mansion is built in the center of a shantytown." When the annual report of ACRI came out on International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2007, it noted: "Author Sami Michael, the association's president, said upon the release of the report that racism was so rife it was damaging civil liberty in Israel. Israeli society is reaching new heights of racism that damages freedom of expression and privacy." "A hundred years of conflict has given us a majority poisoned by ideological education –a racist majority even more extreme than its leadership." 10. At the Hebrew Book Fair in Tel Aviv when Michael made a solitary demonstration against racism in Emanuel (a settlement town): "Let's call a spade a spade: The lords of Emanuel are racists who imperil the values of Judaism and democracy. This separation fence of defilement, which shady rabbis plot to plant in our souls, must be uprooted… I will definitely demonstrate during the celebration of Hebrew Book Week, for a school is called 'the house of the book' in Hebrew… Every man, woman and teenager will be welcome to join me to extirpate the racist crime in Immanuel today – and should we remain silent, in all of Israel tomorrow." About the immigrant and foreigner: "The fact that we are talking about Christians and Buddhists and those without religion does not negate from them the possibility to be helped as the