T. Belman. Visser speaks highly about Mudar. I have know Mudar for over 10 years and he was never shy about expressing his pro-Zionist bias. I would say that contrary to the title, the Abrahamic Accords were the fallout from my conference in 2017 in which Mudar and I introduced the Jordan Option.
“Jews are not settlers or conquerors in the Land of Israel. Believing so would be detrimental to the Islamic faith”
By Yochanan Visser, ISRAEL TODAY |
Is there such a thing as Arab Zionism? You can read below that this exists, and the phenomenon is expanding.
In 2021, relations between Jews and Arabs within Israel deteriorated markedly as evidenced by the extreme violence in mixed-population cities during the war in May last year and the continued stoning of cars owned by Jewish Israelis in Arab Jerusalem.
However, outside of Israel, there seems to be a very promising revolution in relations between the Jewish state and Arab countries, including those at the micro-level.
Since the signing of the so-called Abraham Accords in September 2020, much has changed in the relationship between Israel and a number of Arab countries. This is clearly observable at the macro level but also at the micro-level (more on that later).
Additional normalization accords underway?
The unprecedented warm relations between Israel, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Morocco have not only thawed the cold peace with Jordan and Egypt, but also seem to lead to normalization with other Muslim countries.
Among those countries are Libya, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.
Talks are currently underway with Indonesia which is the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. See: “Many Muslim Indonesians Love Israel”
There is also ongoing speculation about the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia that already maintained secret contacts with the Jewish state for years now.
Then there is Iraq, where last September a conference was held in the city of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan in the presence of more than 300 prominent Iraqis. Among them were both Sunnis and Shiites, and they called on the Baghdad government to join the Abraham Accords and to make peace with Israel.
It was time for face-to-face talks with the Israelis, according to the group attending the conference organized by the Center for Peace and Communications in New York.
The group of 312 men and women claimed that peace with Israel would stabilize the region and make it more peaceful.
Israel was an indispensable part of the Middle East and peace with the Jewish state would bring the many conflicts in this part of the world to an end, the group said.
The latter seems a utopia because the conflicts in the Middle East are mostly about different interpretations of Islam or about ethnic issues, and not about Israel.
There is, furthermore, a major problem in the form of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is dominated by a Shiite regime obsessed with the destruction of Israel. That obsession is completely irrational because in the Shiite version of Islam, Jerusalem and Israel have no meaning whatsoever.
Arab Zionism on a micro level
The Abraham Accords have also spawned what might be termed “Arab Zionism” among parts of the Arab population in the Middle East, less than a year and a half after they were signed.
There have always been Arabs, such as Mudar Zahran, the head of the Jordanian opposition in exile, who were outspokenly pro-Israeli and even Zionist.
Mudar, a Palestinian Arab, I know personally, firmly believes in the “Palestine is Jordan” solution to the conflict between the Palestinian Arabs and Israel.
Whenever there is a Jewish holiday, Zahran invariably sends a message to his Israeli contacts wishing them “Chag Sameach” (Happy Holiday) while also requesting that they convey this to the family.
Other pro-Israel activists previously came from Saudi Arabia.
Examples include Mohammed Saud and the female activist Souad al-Shammari, who already called for normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia way back in 2019.
During the same year, Saud came to Israel with a delegation of Saudi journalists and media activists and even had a meeting with then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The man was later attacked by Arabs during a visit to the Old City of Jerusalem. They called him a traitor and advised him to pray in a synagogue, not the in Al Aqsa Mosque. See: Saudi Journalist Abused at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount
Breakthrough on social media
On social media, the influence of the Abraham Accords is now also clearly visible among the Arab population in the Middle East.
These Arabs no longer fear the reaction of regimes or the population to which they belong and are posting highly pro-Israel messages on social media.
A blogger in Syria, for example, recently posted an article calling on Israel to invade his country.
He did this because, according to him, Israel was responsible for the fact that there was no destruction and misery on the Golan Heights as is the case in the rest of Syria currently.
In the video he subsequently posted on his blog, the man begged the Israeli government to end the rule of dictator Bashar al-Assad and to bring Syria under Israeli rule.
See: Syrians: “May the Israeli Conquest of the Golan Heights Be Blessed!”
Arabs from Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) also no longer feel hesitant to express their true feelings about Jews and Israel on social media.
One of them was a scientist from the UAE who almost burst into tears after being interviewed during a visit to the Holocaust museum Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
The man swore that Jews, Christians and Muslims together would prevent another Holocaust.
“It will never happen again,” said the UAE academic.
Loay Al-Shareef, 39, is an Abu Dhabi-based social media activist and a self-proclaimed Zionist. He has 180,000 followers on Twitter and over 80,000 on Instagram, due to his regular posts dealing with languages and etymology.
Originally from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, al-Shareef studied software engineering in America, and in 2010 lived with a Jewish family in Paris for some time to learn French.
“That was the real life-changing point for me with the Jewish people because I got to know the Jews better,” he said.
“Jews are not settlers or conquerors in the Land of Israel,” al-Shareef said. “If we believed that, we would have to assume that the kings David, Solomon, Isaiah and Jeremiah as well as other prophets were actually settlers. That would kill the Islamic faith,” al-Shareef stated.
“I’m trying to teach my audience more about the Hebrew language, and more about the existence of Jews in this region and, furthermore, that the Jews are part of this region,” the Arab Zionist added.
See related: Palestinians Decry Rise of ‘Arab Zionists’
Welcome to Israel
Thirty-year-old Fatema Al-Harbi from Bahrain first came to Israel in late 2020 and again last year.
The woman said that before her first visit to Israel she was frightened because of the brainwashing lies she had always heard about the Jewish state.
Once in Israel, the former employee of the Ministry of Education in Bahrain soon learned that her fears were completely unfounded.
“As soon as I landed there, we arrived at the hotel and I saw how friendly the people were. Arabs, Muslims, Jews, all from different backgrounds. They were even happier than we were that we came,” al-Harbi wrote.
“We wore our traditional clothes, so it was easy to recognize us on the streets of Israel,” the social media activist added. “People we didn’t know at all kept approaching us while asking ‘are you from Bahrain or Dubai?’”
With delight she recalled that they kept saying: “Welcome to Israel!”
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