Meet the Arabs Who Support Israel
Sharaka brings a message of hope and sanity to Washington state.
Last week, a delegation of individuals from Bahrain, Morocco, and Israel visited Seattle, Tacoma, and Mercer Island with Sharaka, a group dedicated to shaping “a new Middle East, built on dialogue, understanding, cooperation and friendship.” The organization was founded in 2020 following the Abraham Accords and seeks to bring the partnerships formed at the governmental level down to the popular level. (Sharaka means “partnership” in Arabic.) It’s not easy, especially since October 7th, but their work is inspiring and so, so important.
I had the opportunity to interview the following people:
Dan Feferman (Israel): Executive director
Fatema al-Harbi (Bahrain): Gulf affairs director
Dr. Ahmed Khuzaie (Bahrain): Director of political affairs
Youssef Elazhari (Morocco): Morocco director
Neveen Elias (Israel): Advocacy fellow and deputy director of Israel Christian Aramaic Association
“It is really a paradox: the people that we hate the most are the people who can bring the love or peace the most.”
The Cholent: Let’s jump right in. How do we achieve peace in the Middle East?
Ahmed: Sit at a table. Our biggest issue until today is demonizing the other. See, Israel has been there in the Middle East, but we couldn’t sit at a table with them. We’ve heard stories of people thinking that the Jews from Israel would look different. So, sitting at a table from one across the other and start a conversation about anything, that could start the process.
Youssef: Politically speaking, I think we are going on the right path. Those countries are really influential in the in the region: Bahrain, Morocco, and then hopefully Saudi Arabia. I believe in the power of media. I believe in the power of cinema. I think this would really change a lot of things in the in Middle East. We need more content from the Israeli side. Right now with open platforms, I think if we invested a lot in that, that would really bring a lot of understanding to these countries, actually.
Neveen: I agree with Ahmed. It’s being at a table, having a conversation, but also celebrating each other while celebrating each other’s holiday. I think it’s one way towards peace. Also, I can share as a minority in Israel, to share with the all the Middle East about our life in Israel, it’s very important how we enjoy freedom. How, as a minority, it’s the safe place for minorities in Israel. I can share my story, how I joined the IDF when I was 39 years old. It’s very important to share with the Arabs, with the Christians, with everyone in the Middle East. When they hear about us in Israel, everyone will be excited to have peace with Israel. The Abraham Accords, it should be model for all the countries in the Middle East.
What questions you get asked the most, and also what myths or misconceptions or questions drive you the most crazy in your work?
Youssef: In my community, the question I’ve been asked the most would be, does Israel want peace? They don’t trust Israel. They feel always threatened. My response was always, this is easy. Israel is well known for its respect to minorities. And you can understand that because Jews were living as minorities all over the world before. So they have really this deep understanding of the minorities, and that’s why they respect their rights all over Israel. Israel is the one that really will save the Palestinians from themselves, from this radicalization that’s happening in the region.
Fatema: I agree with you because people back home always say Israelis want more, but I tell them, whenever I meet an Israeli, no one, not even a single person has ever told me they’re happy about the war, happy about the killing of Palestinians. They don’t want war. They don’t choose the war over peace. And they actually want a homeland for Palestinians, whatever will it be. But they want them just to live their life. They don’t want to choose war. And this might sound stupid, but there are so many people that think of Israelis of some kind of creature, not a human, you know? I told them, they’re so much like us. There are more similarities than differences. And they get shocked.
Dan: We find, for example, people around the U.S. are really unaware of the Abraham Accords and their impact. In America, we have different audiences. So, obviously Jewish audiences want to know about the moods and the feelings in the Arab countries, but the non-Jewish audiences, especially when we meet Muslims, want to know what Israel wants. They have a lot of assumptions about Gaza, about Hamas, just not understanding who Hamas is and what they actually want, what Israel’s long-term plans are regarding the Palestinians. Just to see a human face on it is a big deal for a lot of people.
Youssef: I feel that a lot of people, they discuss the conflict as if it’s a football game. And this brings them to some very paranoid ideas. Like for instance, Hamas is Israel itself. Like they belong to the IDF. I think they discuss it as a football game because they don’t understand the basics of radicalization in the region. They don't understand that Hamas is only a mirror to a whole ideology that wants to annihilate all the Jews. I think they don’t have this deep understanding that first it’s religious. And the second thing: all those leftists who think that Israel is the product of America. They don’t have a deep understanding of this hatred, actually, how it’s rooted.
Neveen: They have a lot of questions how, as a minority in Israel, how we stay in Israel after 1948. We have a lot of bad stories that happened for us, [but we are] still allowed to be in Israel and enjoy Israel. It’s very important to share everything with these people. If I talk about October 7th — okay, they asked me, are you sad about all the people and the huge number that are killed every day? Yes. But Hamas should take responsibility about what happened in Gaza, because it began the war in October 7th, and our government takes care of our citizens in Israel. I live very close to the Lebanese border. I am not worried if the situation becomes more difficult, because I am sure that the government and our country will take care of us as a minority, as citizens. I will not be afraid about, what if I will be hungry, for example.
I want to take a step back and ask you about if there was a time when you changed how you thought about things.
Fatema: For me, it was a trip that changed my perspective and my whole life, actually. I’ve always wanted to go Israel out of curiosity, but I never thought it would happen. It was the forbidden thing. It was the thing that we are not allowed to do. And then the Abraham Accords happened, and Sharaka was established and invited me to be in the first delegation of youth leaders from UAE and Bahrain. My goal was to see it by myself. I see it by my own eyes. I didn’t want other people to feed me their agenda. I knew we always hear one narrative. I knew there is a second narrative we didn’t hear anything about. Since that day I changed my whole idea and perspective about Israel. And we always say, if you really want to know Israel, please just go visit Israel. Be my guest. We’ll have you as a guest of Sharaka to go and visit Israel and meet Israelis. And that will will change everyone’s perspective, I think.
Youssef: I feel it’s very funny, because if someone wants to act as an enemy or as the evil of the world, they would at least close their doors to people, because it is like they’re hiding a crime or something like that. I feel it’s funny how Israel is very open to all tourists all over the world to come. Journalists and everyone who wants to do anything, like to report anything, they are really open to that.
I've been a little bit spoiled, because I grew up with Jews. But the propaganda really made it as if there is a difference between a Zionist and a Jew, and the Zionist is more horrible than a Jew. In a particular moment of my life, I was a little bit touched or influenced by this propaganda.
I've been [to Israel] and to my surprise, when you go there you see how the people are very inclusive, very welcoming. I’ve been also invited to many Shabbat dinners. I feel that it was really the moment when I built empathy. But at that moment, particularly when I went there, it’s like I became more and more convinced that this is the guys I want to stand by. This is the people that will bring peace in the Middle East. It is really a paradox: the people that we hate the most are the people who can bring the love or peace the most. It is really, really funny.
Dan, we’ve talked about myths and misconceptions in the Arab world, but are there misunderstandings in the Jewish world, things we don’t understand?
Dan: There are many in the Jewish community, usually in the Orthodox community, and in Israel across the board, who are just simply convinced that there’s something innate and irreversible, that all Arabs, all Muslims just want to destroy us, want to kill us, want to fight us forever, and that if we find the few people here and there, they’re not real, they’re not representative, or that it’s just a lost cause. I think they don't understand that this is born out of long-term ignorance and misinformation that can be overturned through engagement in education. I will say it’s very hard, unfortunately, most of the Jewish and Israel organizations and influencers are really speaking to themselves, because they’re saying messages or they’re amplifying messages that sound good to them, but that most Arabs or most people who don’t like Israels really don’t want to hear.
In the more progressive camp of the American Jewish community, they really don't get Israel, really don’t get their own history and have bought up a lot of this propaganda here in the United States. It’s different messaging points to different crowds. In Israel, we bring a lot of different people from around the Arab world, from around the Muslim world, and their minds are changed. I think the Israelis see that and they say, oh, there are people who are actually normal and not extremist, and who are open-minded, and many of them love Israel. It's a big, very positive surprise for them.
I want to go back to Youssef’s point about Jews versus Zionists. We hear this here, too, that Jews aren’t the problem; the problem is Zionists. What do you make of this? How did this happen?
Youssef: We, in Morocco, live in peace with the Jews. But then in a particular moment of time, maybe was in the ’80s or the beginning of the ’90s, it became very popular, which is the Protocols of Elders of Zion. You can find them in any bookstore in Morocco. This is like the evil plan of the Jews to take over the world and to kill all of us. This plus, of course, the propaganda coming from the news outlets. I would say the start was 1990 [when satellite TV was established]. 1990 is when we as Moroccans, we opened up to the Arab world. The establishment of satellite really poured a lot of hatred message toward the Jews. The third thing, Islamic scholars, they really follow this propaganda. So we lived in peace until this happened all of a sudden.
Fatema: The problem is ignorant people. They try to distinguish between being Jewish and being Zionist. That’s what we have in Bahrain, because we always had Jews in Bahrain. But they tell us, oh no, those Jews in Bahrain are different than the Jews in Israel. But in the end, the Jews, they all feel that they’re related somehow because of their religion identity. So I think people have to know the definition of Zionism and how it relates to being Jewish.
Dan: The disconnect between Judaism and Zionism was a malicious intent originally perpetrated by the Soviet Union in the ’70s, in the ’80s, when they introduced Zionism as racism. They took something that was actually celebrated by the left and turned it into a weapon against Israel to divide the Jewish people and to to use the new language and terminology of human rights, which had grown to become the world religion against Israel.
It’s part of a broader strategy. The more you accuse someone of something, the less people think about it and it just becomes ingrained in their head. So right now you have the whole thing with the ICJ accusing Israel of genocide, which has no actual legal claims. And that's not the point. The point is just to get people to associate the word Israel with genocide further in their heads. Israel and Zionism with Nazism, Zionism with racism. It’s just part of this ongoing campaign to the point where most people in the Arab world and now on the left here in America, in Europe, has just associated Zionism with something racist and evil rather than what it actually is.
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Shoutouts
Shout out to our friends and partners at the Black Heritage Society of Washington State to wish them a happy Black History Month and looking forward to our kickoff event Confronting Hate Together: The Power of Community on February 24th at 11 am at MOHAI. See https://mohai.org/event/confronting-hate-together-the-power-of-community/ —Lisa Kranseler
Mazal tov to Ray Levy and Jordan Silver on their engagement. —Miriam Levy