What is the definition of a normal childhood in a country where war is normal? And how should a child act when the boy or girl next door is someone they are consciously taught to hate? The Israeli and Palestinian children who are the subjects of “Promises” are living answers to difficult questions, intelligently and movingly documented.

Jerusalem-born documentary filmmaker B.Z. Goldberg and fellow filmmakers Justine Shapiro and Carlos Bolado decided to find out what it took to grow up in Israel. They chose seven children from varying backgrounds in and around Jerusalem and filmed the experience of the Middle East conflict from a child’s perspective. What emerges is an unsettling picture of childhood innocence combined with indoctrinated prejudice. But Promises is not a psychological exercise – it is a compelling piece that demonstrates just how well children can be trained to live out and carry on their parents’ anguish.

Faraj is a young boy who lives in a Palestinian refugee camp. Anywhere else he might be playing computer “shoot-em-up” games, but instead he has been born into a game of hatred where the rules are for the real, and the dead don’t get another chance in a second round. His best friend Bassam was killed by an Israeli soldier when he threw a stone through a window. “I wanted to cut a soldier in half – to blow him up – to avenge Bassam’s death,” says Faraj passionately.

Not too far away, his counterpart Moishe lives in a West Bank Jewish settlement. He is surrounded by the enemy and protected by the military. During the film’s production his friend Ephraim is killed in a Palestinian attack. Moishe often bikes by a local military firing range. “And if the soldiers aim poorly, it’s okay because they might shoot an Arab,” he jokes -- his smile makes us uncomfortable.

The filmmakers take care to represent several points of view; In addition to Faraj and Moishe, there is Sanabel, a Palestinian girl whose journalist father is being held without charge by the Israelis. Mahmoud is Arabic and living in the Moslem quarter of Jerusalem. Shlomo is Ultra-orthodox Jewish . . Yarko and Daniel are secular Israelis whose grandfather emigrated to Israel from Poland after losing his family in Nazi death camps.

As the film progresses, the children’s stories become more absorbing, revealing just how much of their childhood has become a casualty of the Middle East war. It is hard to hear a ten year old talk of murder, or to watch a child expound vehemently on the theology of his right to land without mourning for the loss of innocence.

Near the end of the film, Goldberg introduces some of his subjects to each other – Israeli twins Yarko and Daniel meet Palestinian Faraj. And suddenly their inheritance of hatred is forgotten in simple children’s games. They are laughing and joking with each other instead of spouting political rhetoric. It is a scene that is both wonderful and difficult to watch. There is the fleeting thought that maybe peace is just this simple, and then the recollection that this one moment was made for a camera and that these children are like thousands of children before them, who most likely will grow up and never, ever think of playing with the enemy again.