VENTURA, Calif. — Suzie and Ashraf Ali, ages 13 and 18, follow the march of Israeli tanks and the horrors of bombings on a 28-inch television screen that is never turned off.

The teenagers switch from news channel to news channel, absorbing horrific images — an Arab station showed footage of a Palestinian being killed — and looking for different ways of understanding battles that never end. Usually they watch with their mother, who is Palestinian and calls every other day to check on relatives in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Their father, who is Egyptian, cautions them never to believe everything they see or read. He tells them to sort through the different voices and make their own conclusions.

"I want them to understand the truth," said Mohamad Ali, adding that chances for peace will eventually rest with his children’s generation. "If we don’t have the knowledge and wisdom to change things, I hope they will."

As Arabs and Jews try to help kids understand the complexities and centuries of history that are the back story of Palestinian-Israeli warfare, some educators worry about emotion deteriorating peripheral vision.

While there are parents and teachers who help children understand different viewpoints, others may become so attached to one view of a conflict that others are obscured.

Observers worry about Palestinian parents and children comparing Israel’s leaders and the offensive into the West Bank to the Nazis, just as they worry about Jewish kids making the same comparison with Palestinian extremists.

"You’re going to recreate the cycle of hatred," said Judith Green, referring to children looking through the exact same lens used by their parents. "It’s not going to get us beyond it to the point that we all have a right to live together."

Green is an education professor and co-director of the Center for Teaching for Social Justice at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The center documents efforts of public teachers in helping students learn tolerance and respect for cultural differences.

An educator for 40 years who is Jewish but not religious, Green said the best way to teach children about Middle East hostilities is to present them with voices that can be compared and contrasted. Whether the children are Jewish, Palestinian or another ethnicity, they have to understand what it means to live as refugees, just as they need to know about the fear incited by terrorism.

"It makes you think what would it be like? How would you feel?" she said.

"It makes you step back from your own position and look in other ways. What would peace look like from that other person’s point of view?"

Some attempts to teach children about the Middle East are carefully worded excursions that avoid any judgments.

More often in homes and places of worship, the discussions are launched from a point of view accentuated by heritage and personal bonds.

Some Arab-Americans use imagery to make their children understand the tragedy of Palestinians killed in an Israeli military offensive into the West Bank that continues as leaders of other nations call for a withdrawal.

In some of these homes, parents and children said they search all sides of the issue but settle at the conclusion that the Palestinians are victims living in refuge and, at the moment, under gunpoint.

Nidal Barakat of Moorpark, Calif., teaches his four children never to hate and always look for peace.

Barakat said he doesn’t blame Judaism for the conflict but has harsh words for Israel’s leaders.

"The Jewish people have been kidnapped by a racist ideology called Zionism," he said. "I would put the Zionists in the same category as Nazis."

Rivka Ben-Daniel, a teacher, said she’s just as offended when fellow Jews refer to Palestinian leaders as Nazis as when the same labels are pinned on Israel’s leaders. It represents a way of rationalizing.

"If they’re Nazis, you can kill them," she said.

"I would never use words that would put Palestinians as not human beings." Ben-Daniel, who teaches at a Jewish elementary school, grew up in Nazareth and still has family there. She and her 16-year-old daughter listen for news from the Middle East each morning over breakfast and then talk about it on the drive to school.

Sometimes, she wonders if there’s just too much involved for a teen-ager to understand.

"I’m trying to feed her. ... There’s so much to know," she said, referring to the current Israeli-Palestinian land battles. "There’s more than 50 years of history. She’s overwhelmed."

The challenge for other parents and educators come in the questions. Halima Fadila’s twins are only 5 years old. But they want to know about the conflict.

"They ask me which ones are the good guys and which ones are the bad," said Fadila, who is a regional spokeswoman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Fadila tries to explain it’s not so simple, that there is good and bad on both sides of the battle.

She tells her boys the good people are the ones working for peace. Then she talks about people fixated on rancor.

"I tell them that any act that is based upon anger or hatred is not justified," she said. "Killing another human being is not justified."

Judith Green contends that peace is linked to teaching kids of opposing backgrounds new ways of communicating. She thinks the key is exposure, bringing people together and finding ways to learn from each other.

"It’s the daily contact that makes the difference in people’s understanding of others," she said. "It’s very difficult to reach out a hand ... but that’s what they need to do. Peace needs to have a different language."

On the Net: For information on the Center for Teaching for Social Justice, visit www.education.ucsb.edu/socialjustice/.