Leila Segal is a writer from London and works on the Jaffa Photography Project and blogs at The other side.

Here she discusses her work and her strong feelings on the current situation in the Middle East. If you'd like to share your perspective on some of the issues discussed, don't hesitate to get in touch and tell us what you think.

1. Who are you?

Leila Segal from Brixton, London.

2.  What do you do?

I write. And I teach writing in the community, using word and image to give marginalised groups a voice to advocate for change. In London I work with refugees, excluded school kids and sex workers. I am editing my first short story collection for publication with Flipped Eye.

In Israel I work on a photography project in collaboration with NGO Sadaka Reut. The Jaffa Photography Project works with a group of teenage girls – Arab and Jewish – to document their lives through word and image, as a tool for advocacy within Israel and abroad. We have just opened an exhibition in the New Horizon Centre for Arab-Jewish society in Jaffa. You can see some of the work here.

3.  What’s been the most significant Jewish experience in your life?

Two things, which I can’t disconnect. Majdanek, Poland: realising that the camps were in sight of ordinary townsfolk throughout the war. Tel Aviv, Israel, on the beach: watching the IDF helicopters roar south, and realising it’s to Gaza just 40 miles away.

4.  Describe your perfect day

Do everything slowly. Take the time to look. Start with a long coffee at Rosie’s. Write, ride the bus, walk and sleep. Dress for dancing and whisky with my friends till late.

5.  If you could invite anyone to dinner who would it be?

My great grandmother

6.  What’s your greatest fear?

The inside of my mind

7.  You have 3 wishes, what are they?

1  Get funded to work in Jaffa
2  Make my book of short stories shimmer
3  Marry a kind, handsome and fascinating man

8.  Optimist or pessimist?

Optimist. How could you live any other way?

9.  What do you think is most over-rated in today’s world?

Individuality. Success.

10.  And what’s underrated?

Humility. Rock bottom is where it all begins.

11.  What makes you happy?

Nice dresses, disco dancing and love

12.  How important is your Jewish identity?

To me – or other people? To me it is a source of strength, confusion and tension. Identity – drawn from history. Insecurity – inherited. To others, it is a label that can be read through various preconceptions or stereotypes – good and bad. Last week I was teaching a course on photography and identity at a Pupil Referral Unit in London and we got onto religion – Islam and Christianity. Out of the blue, one of the students said she didn’t like Jews, and the others agreed. I didn’t think my Jewishness was an issue – but it turned out to be. They had never met a Jew before, and the class ended up a demythologising exercise.

13.  What really winds you up?

Bureaucracy and lies

14.  Favourite ice cream – and what does this say about you?

Toffee. I do not know what this means.

15.  How will people remember you in the future?

Kind and a bit wild

16.  What can’t you live without?

Pencil and paper

17.  What’s the most controversial thing you’ve done?

I’m never sure about anything before I do it. Controversus, the Latin word, means ‘turned in an opposite direction’. My work in Israel/Palestine is ‘turned in an opposite direction’ from the majority. I didn’t know, before, but it’s turned out I’m standing that way.

18.  What’s your greatest achievement?

The Jaffa Photography Project exhibition in Jaffa this May – in collaboration with co-workers Anna and Ya’el from Sadaka Reut. The pride and happiness on the girls’ and their parents’ faces was beyond words.

19.  Describe your relationship with Israel

Uncomfortable. I can’t come to terms with what we have done and what we have become: the brutality, denial of others’ suffering, racism – the estrangement of Jewish people from their culture. In Israel I searched for home but found only a deeper estrangement. What has happened to our conscience? To embrace human rights is to humanise not only ‘the other’, but also ourselves.

I spent last independence day in the home of my Palestinian-Israeli friend Sama. ‘Now it is Yom Ha’azmaut,’ she says. ‘You see on TV that Jerusalem is important for the Jews: we must fight for the Jewish legacy, they say. But what about the Arabs? What about us – our rights? Are we thin air? Don’t we count?’

20.  Why did you agree to answer these questions?

To promote the work I’m doing in Jaffa. To bring it to a wider audience so that we can find funding, and the girls can advocate for change.