"I was educated on the false perspective that Israel is a Jewish Apartheid State, one that doesn't give Arab their rights. A dramatic turning point for me was in 2010, when I was exposed to a totally different truth. The truth is freeing!" Luay Alsharif, a linguist and thinker from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, told Israel Hayom.
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Q: What happened in 2010 that changed your negative perception of Jews?
"That year I was living with a Jewish family in France, and I studied the Bible and the shared tradition that Jews and Muslims have – and I was exposed to the historical connection that the Jews have with the region, which is an absolute fact, rather than the lie that they are colonialists. I changed my mind about the Jews. At that stage, I still had a negative attitude to Israel, and the revolution was completed four years ago when I discovered the truth that Israel provides for individual freedom of religion."
Around two years ago Alsharif, an opinion former who today lives in Abu Dhabi, which is in the UAE, met the Arab-Israeli hasbara activist Yoseph Haddad, CEO of Together – Vouch For Each Other, and this received extra validation with the signing of the Abraham Accords. The exciting meeting between them took place in March 2021, in a Muslim country that held a Holocaust Memorial Ceremony for the first time (at the initiative of Together – Vouch for Each Other and the organization Israeliz), during which, among other things, the testimonies of Holocaust survivors were shared.
"During and after the event I cried a lot. It took me a day to gather myself," Hadad says. "The Emiratis said that the ceremony made them understand the depth of the subject in a way they had never realized before, and this of course gave deep significance to the fact that it was being carried out in the light of the Abraham Accords." He has something else to emphasize. "We have to study history, and when an Arab-Israeli learns about the Holocaust it is a catalyst for Jews to come closer to Arab society and to bridge the gaps, without unnecessary racism."
Alsharif adds that "this unique event was extremely emotional. It's important to also note here the part of those Muslims who helped Jews, in the heart of the human tragedy, to escape from the gas chambers [mainly in North Africa and the Balkans]. For the sake of history and the future, inshallah we will have many memorial events like this in the UAE. We will never forget."
Haddad, who occasionally writes op-eds for Israel Hayom, says emphatically: "You don't understand how thirsty the Emiratis were to learn about Israel, Jewish society and Arab-Israeli society. Peace was formed against this background, as well as the openness and this crazy connection. We can feel something different in the air. Master of the Universe, I said to myself, they didn't know us and we didn't know them, but we wanted to know one another so much, it was a kind of falling in love."
Q: Arabs who are proud of their Israeliness
Haddad is a disabled IDF veteran who was severely wounded during the Second Lebanon War, after he volunteered for the IDF and served as a combat soldier in the Golani Brigade. Following his injury, he decided to devote his life to global hasbara about the beautiful side of Israel and about the real opportunities that Arab-Israelis receive.
In this context, regarding the importance of the Abraham Accords, Haddad, who lives in Nazareth, says: "It was personally fun for me to see how Arab society in Israel responded to this peace. For me, this is very important. The Abraham Accords aren't only important in the context of their direct outcome because first and foremost they broke the assumption that it isn't possible to make peace with Arab states without advancing the peace process with the Palestinians. From this perspective, it's possible to talk about the changes between Jews and Arabs.
Q: MK Odeh wasn't very enthusiastic, he called the agreements the "illusions of peace."
"There is criticism from Arab society about the Arab political representatives who opposed the agreements. It's a fact that when they opposed the accords, the Joint List wasn't representing the Arab-Israeli public. In actuality, when I flew to Dubai, 80 percent of the passengers spoke Arabic. Arab-Israelis were always waiting to fly to Dubai and to do business there. It's the language of our people, it's the most natural thing there is. From this perspective, the connection between the Arabs in the Emirates and the Jews here in Israel is natural. The leaders warm the relations, and the peoples are also connected."
Here Alsharif joins in and adds that he knows "many Arab-Israelis, including Muslims, Christians, and Druze, who are proud of their Israeliness. By contrast, the fact that there are still Arab-Israelis, with Israeli citizenship, who accuse Israel of war crimes against the Palestinians and aren't loyal to it, is inconceivable for me. They, alongside the Palestinian and anti-Israeli propaganda, are part of the problem – hiding the truth, turning it upside down. Happily, today there is social media, and especially the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities, that help us produce a new reality for Jews living in the Gulf.
Apart from his life as a social media influencer, Haddad deals devotedly with connecting Arab society in Israel to the rest of Israeli society and in bridging the gaps. "During the last five years there was tangible progress, and then there were the disturbances of May 2021. I immediately emphasized: They are the extremist voices and they aren't a majority of either of the sides. A few thousand Arabs participated out of two million, and out of seven million Jews there were a few hundred who went wild."
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