Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: interfaith dialogue

Showing posts with label interfaith dialogue. Show all posts

Friday, November 11, 2022

Two interfaith events between Muslims and Jews, on opposite sides of the Middle East

In the shadow of the UAE’s elaborate Grand Mosque and its white marble spires, interfaith representatives from across the world are gathered to listen to, of all people, a rabbi.

It is a scene that would have seemed unlikely a few years ago, and at times impossible. In the ballroom of Abu Dhabi’s Ritz Carlton, among the chandeliers, dates and gold, Chief Rabbi Mirvis made an unprecedented address to the audience of hundreds of Islamic scholars and leaders.

The first UK chief rabbi to ever visit the Emirates, Rabbi Mirvis was welcomed to the Abu Dhabi Peace Forum by its president, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah, a revered Islamic scholar.

Addressing the crowd in a mixture of Biblical Hebrew, Arabic and English, Rabbi Mirvis called on leaders of all faiths to “achieve the unachievable” and build on the historic peace brought about by the Abraham Accords two years ago.

Over 7000 km away, another kind of interfaith gathering happened recently - in Morocco:

After a forced two-year hiatus linked to the pandemic, the emblematic Atlantic Andalusian Festival returned this year for its 18th edition.

President and Founder of the Essaouira Mogador association, André Azoulay, adviser to King Mohammed VI. speaks of it with passion and fervor: “It is an indescribable festival, which never ceases to amaze and which, in the eyes of some, brings together all the paradoxes: a festival which has not always been understood. We were often seen as somewhat naïve dreamers, expressing a reality that many had turned their backs on.”

Azoulay repeats it frequently: this meeting is the only one in the world to bring together thousands of Muslims and Jews, who have chosen to meet in Essaouira for the simple “happiness of being together."

This is more than a slogan for the followers of this committed festival: against the current of a culture of indifference and denial. And this year, more than 10,000 came to listen to the songs and music of the malhun or the Judeo-Arab matrouz.

“We blew the numbers. Never - I who dream a lot for my country, my city and my Andalusia - had I dared to imagine that they would be there by the thousands from Israel, France, Canada, the United States, Latin America, from Africa and the Arab world… Shoulder to shoulder to sing and dance together.

On social networks, explains Azoulay, the videos of the concerts and the forums of the festival amount year after year in millions of views.

And of course soon thousands of Israelis will descend to Qatar for the World Cup.

We live in amazing times. No wonder the Israel haters are perpetually angry.

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Palestinians in the UK warn about the "dangers" of interfaith dialogue - they normalize Israel!

The Palestinian Forum in Britain, in cooperation with the European-Palestinian Communication Forum (Europal), organized a symposium in London on “How Interfaith Groups Are Being Used to Normalise Israeli Apartheid.”

Zaher Birawi, head of the Palestinian Forum in Britain, said during his opening speech, “The aim of the symposium is to warn of the danger of the occupation state or the Israeli lobby institutions in Europe using this concept (of interfaith dialogue) as a means to normalize the practices of the apartheid state, or to infiltrate communities. It promotes the occupation’s false narrative about the conflict, or is even an attempt to distance the Muslim community, its institutions and mosques from talking about the crimes of the occupying state against Jerusalem and the Israeli violations against the first two Qiblas and the third of the Two Holy Mosques. "

Birawi added: “We are certainly with the idea of coexistence, tolerance, and even cooperation between religions, but on the basis of respecting everyone’s minds and rights, and not according to the model supported by the Israeli lobby, but on the basis of rejecting the occupation and its practices against Muslims and Christians in Palestine, mosques and churches, and on the basis of rejecting racism in all its forms.”

In short, they support dialogue which is a monologue of Palestinian Arab claims.

It looks like it attracted about a dozen people.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

SOAS professor calls Israel a "Western virus"

There is so much in this article from TheJC that typifies the new antisemitism. Read the whole thing. Some excerpts:

An academic from London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) has labelled Israel a “Western virus”.

Dr Haim Bresheeth, Professorial Research Associate at SOAS's Centre of Global Media and Communication, also claimed the Holocaust was the “clincher argument” in Israel’s “presumed right over Palestine”.

During a debate held earlier this month on the “normalisation” of Israel, Dr Marwa Osma, a Lebanese commentator who has appeared on Iranian-backed Press TV, also called for support for “armed resistance” coupled with “international pressure” against what she said was “Zionist aggression.”

The two-hour long discussion was organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) and included a contribution from the controversial charity’s chair Massoud Shadjareh.

Yes, the "Islamic Human Rights Commission" hosted someone who advocates killing Jews in Israel. ("Armed resistance" is a nice way of saying "terror attacks.")

Anyway, Mr. Shadjareh has an interesting take:

He said there was “huge concern the way that there has been a policy of the Zionists to normalise themselves in all different arenas” – focusing particularly on inter-faith initiatives between the Jewish and Muslim community.

Condemning attempts to “normalise” Israel, Mr Shadareh said “the institution of interfaith was used as one of the tools for this and you know, you could ask yourself, you could look into it, why is it that all the Jewish organisations who are involved in interfaith are actually Zionists while we know there is a huge number of anti-Zionists, non-Zionists in the Jewish community and none of them are represented. “

Meanwhile Mick Napier, the former leader of the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, claimed Israel was the world’s number one pariah state – and the mass media, including the BBC, were involved in a cover-up of its crimes.

Dr Bresheeth, an associate member of the SOAS Centre for Palestinian Studies, suggested Zionism was "riding on the latent Islamophobia inherent in Christian society since the Crusades”.

He argued: “This form of Islamophobia has never disappeared from the West and explains the great centrality of Zionism to Western regimes”.

"Israeli presumed rights over Palestine are seen as, within Zionism, as exclusive and religious-based with the Holocaust deals at the clincher argument. This is very useful because no one seems to be able to say anything about this combination of, you know, Judeo-Christian and Holocaust arguments."

Arguing that Zionism was the creation of Western Christians at the end of the nineteenth century, who used it to exert control over the Middle East, Dr Bresheeth said: "The West had conceived of Zionism as the bulwark of Western capitalism against Islam and the Arab world and used it to open the Middle East for western interests, and this is continuing.

“In this way Israel became the Western virus in the region during the Cold War, developing its political outlook as a Western/US outpost in the near east - an agenda gradually adopted by the US, UK, Canada, Australia, apartheid South Africa, and most importantly the EU.”

Israel has a purpose even for these jokers. It is a means for them to publicly spout their hate for Jews while pretending that they are merely rabidly anti-Zionist.

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