I had an intresting conversation this past weekend with someone and I was ondering what your opinions on it would be. In English we have the words Love, like, and hate. In hebrew there is only a word for Love and for hate. There is no way to say that you just like some one. You have to say that you either love them, hate them, or don't care about them one way or the other. Her idea was, that this is one of the factors of the terror in israel. Many of the israeli's can't feel like they will ever love the palestinians. They don't not care either one way or the other. So instead they hate. The vocabulary in there language does not have a word for like, So they are unable to express themselves in that manner. I was wondering, do you agree with that? Is a person actions limited by thier language? If there language does not have a word for that feeling, do they just not feel that way?

Even though there may not be a word for "like," I am sure that Israelis and Palestinians are not without the capacity to "like." The word may not exist to express their emotion, but the emotion may exist nonetheless.
I am sure Palestinians and Israelis do not love their employers, for example, but they do not (well, hopefully not) hate the employers. Certainly there are words other than 'like' to express how one feels. "Neutral," "indifferent," "undecided," "uninterested," are some. "To find pleasant." "To neither love nor hate." "To regard without animosity."
The mere lack of one word is not sufficient reasoning to hate. Babies and animals must express themselves without any words at all and they do not simply hate everyone because they cannot find the words.
Personally, I would have a hard time liking Palestinians, if I were an Israeli (or, not hating Israelis if I were a Palestinian) at this point in time –whether or not the word "like" existed in my vocabulary. I would be likely to substitute it with hate, because that is likely what I would be feeling.

Your post reminds me of one of the principles behind the book 1984. In the book, George Orwell describes a society with a language intended to eliminate all words that could express ideas contrary to those of "The Party."

It is a perfect example of how not being able to express an emotion is comparable to not having that emotion at all, which is the idea you're expressing regarding the Hebrew language.

You may want to research the Whorf Hypothesis for this.

These are some comments from a Google search.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis theorizes that thoughts and behavior are determined (or are at least partially influenced) by language. ...

Description: 1999 overview of the history and development of the theories of linguistic determinism and linguistic...

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. 'He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
Which is the measure of the universe' - Prometheus Unbound, Shelley. ...
Description: An assessment of linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity. With reference to the legacies...

Most of what I found is very academic but there is definte value in the idea.

MkStfnz, if I recall 1984 correctly, though, the main characters discovered they were in fact capable of those emotions after all (even though they were later punished for those emotions).

We are influenced by our language (just ask aomeone who is bilingual in languages from somewhat different cultures), but I think that this is a case of taking a valid idea too far. People are not going to hate other people just because they don't have a word for like. I'm sure there are words for degrees that can be applied to loving and hating.

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Originally posted by Elexina:
MkStfnz, if I recall _1984_ correctly, though, the main characters discovered they were in fact capable of those emotions after all (even though they were later punished for those emotions).

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This is because they were expressing these emotions with ideas in Oldspeak. The main character worried very much about people not being able to express those emotions when Newspeak came into use as the only language.

I meant, I recall them expressing those emotions without using words at all.

Elexina, this idea was discussed in the book, but the main characters could express these ideas verbally and nonverbally because they could think in the Oldspeak language. Their worry (and the Party's goal) was that once Newspeak came into existance, people could not feel certain anti-Party emotions because they would not have a language to even form their thoughts, let alone express them.

It has been some time since I read the book, but I do recall that worry. I do still think, though, that it is possible to express a concept even without the words to do so, and that was the point of the question -I thought.
For instance, the French do not have a word for "toast." They have other words that mean toast and words that describe toast, but they do not have an equivalent to the English "toast" (unless you count 'le toast). This does not mean, though, that they are incapable of having toast, they have just found other ways to describe it.