My name is Shimon Shamir. I am a professor emeritus of Middle Eastern history.
I spent a few years in our neighboring countries, five years in Egypt, the second phase as ambassador of Egypt.
Then I served as Israel's ambassador in Jordan.
And I am back at my university where I do research and teach students.
Well, the attitude of the Arab countries to Israel has undergone a number of stages.
At the beginning, it was all negative.
You know, in 1948, not only that the Arab states did not want to recognize Israel,
but they actually and actively came to destroy it in the war of 1948.
And this was the basic attitude which was even radicalized at the time of Nasser,
with his vision of pan-Arabism and struggle against imperialism.
And Israel was defined as belonging to the imperialist camp and so on.
So, the attitude was very negative.
It all changed in 1967.
And 1967 changed attitudes in the Arab countries in a number of ways.
First, the remarkable victory that Israel had in a few days convinced many people in the Arab world
that the vision they have of destroying eventually Israel,
and therefore there is no point in accepting it, was shattered.
The second factor was, for the first time, Israel occupied territories that belong to neighboring states.
So, for the neighboring states, the main issue became how to get back to those territories
and not so much the issue of the existence of Israel.
And this was a period where negotiations started, leading to peace agreement with Asia, peace agreement with Jordan,
and finally to the Arab Initiative in 2002, in which the Arab world, as a consensus, accepts the existence of Israel
Israel, and is ready to make peace with it, on a number of conditions,
that some of them are acceptable to Israel, some of them should be negotiated.
But we are now in a situation in which the dispute with Arab governments is mostly on the terms of peace,
and not on peace itself.
Because religion can also have elements which can be used for solving conflict,
in a different way compared to what is happening today.
If you regard religion with its basic humanistic mission, vision, both Judaism and Islam,
the two religions that are relevant in our arena of operations,
you will find in these two religions many common elements,
and many elements which oppose violent conflict.
Both religions, for example, have this famous saying that man was created in the image of God.
Man in general, not the people of this country or that country.
Both religions have the idea that there are values that oppose violence and values of peace.
And through constructive dialogue between the two religions, or people who belong to the two religions,
you can think of ways to at least moderate the conflict.
Unfortunately, all the attempts I know, and I participated in many interfaith dialogues,
all the attempts so far have very limited influence on the situation on the ground.
The liberal Muslims, liberal Jews, who meet each other, who have long discussions,
who even articulate plans for reconciliation between the peoples belonging to these two religions,
and so far belong to minorities in their society.
And therefore, if we accept the situation, it is religion for the time being is a part of the problem, not of the resolution.
Yeah.
Well, as a historian, I can tell you that Jews and Muslims were close to each other throughout history.
Yes.
And the example you quote of the acceptance of Jews expelled from Spain in the Ottoman Empire is just one example.
Yeah.
If you think, for example, of Andalus, of Muslim Spain, and the cooperation between Jews and Muslims,
actually the flourishing of a Jewish culture within the framework of Islam,
and also the practical of Jews who occupied very high level positions at that time.
Yes.
So, throughout history, the situation was very different from what the fanatics describe today.
Excuse me.
The physician of Bayezid II and Suleiman I were Jewish doctors, actually.
Yes.
I think the Ottoman Empire has a good example of such symbiosis, I would say,
cooperation and co-existence, not only of Jews, of all their religions.
You had the millet system, which gave the Jewish community autonomy.
Actually, Jews were judged by their own courts at that time.
And they had all different, that was the Hacham Bashir.
Oh, yeah.
In Istanbul, who was the head of the Jewish community, just as they were heads of other non-Muslim communities.
So, this situation existed, and it found expression in many ways.
Take, for example, the greatest Jewish philosopher, Maimonides.
Yes.
He is famous for his ruling, what Muslims would call fatwa.
Yes.
About the right of Jews to pray to their God within a Muslim mosque.
It started, I'm not sure, everybody is familiar with this case.
It started with a question by a Jewish carpenter, I think it was,
was working in a Muslim mosque, and he asked Maimonides, a great rabbi,
what happens, while I work there, time for prayer comes, can I pray within the mosque?
And Maimonides said, yes, you can, and he used this opportunity to express his opinion
that Islam is a perfect monotheism.
There is no difference between Jews, between Judaism and Christianity,
and the Jews and Muslims share the same concept.
Actually, there are many more similarities, if you think about these two religions.
For example, Islamic law, Sharia.
It's parallel to the Jewish law, Halakha.
And basically, they are the same word.
Sharia is a path, and Halakha is also a path that people are expected to tread.
Take the structure of the theology of the two religions,
both based on written scripture and oral rulings.
In Islam, we have the Sunnah, the Quran, and we have the Hadith,
which originally was oral, was verbal.
In Judaism, you have the Torah, the Bible, and you have the Talmud,
which was developed exactly like the Hadith.
So, there are so many similarities.
Both religions don't have a clergy, like in Christianity.
People who have religious authority are those who are learned.
Alem, those who are ulama, rabbis, exactly the same word.
They are not clerical entities, like in Christianity,
we are supposed to intermediate between man and God.
They are not.
No.
The only authority is based on the fact that they know the law.
In Islam, they know the Sharia.
In Judaism, they know the Halakha.
So, there are so many similarities.
Israelis have a great affection for Turkey.
They used to port to Turkey for vacations, for tourism.
Yeah.
And not only because it is near and there were opportunities,
Israelis felt good in Turkey.
They felt very close to the people, to the landscape, to everything.
And I think there were similar things among Turks,
but this is not for me to tell.
So, there are many things that bring us together.
And, of course, the economic factor, I think, is the most important.
Even in the worst time of the Turkish-Israeli crisis,
the economic cooperation continued silently.
Yes.
Which shows a simple thing, that there are interests.
And where there are interests, I think there is also a friendship.
Many Israelis, including myself,
have the experience of talking to our personalities
in countries where they do not recognize this.
Israel, because in Egypt and Jordan there is no problem.
And they express very positive opinions,
while in public they continue expressing very hostile attitudes to Israel.
So, there is this problem of the public and the private,
which means that Arabs have also an important task to educate their peoples.
You see, I spent seven years in Arab countries.
And as an ambassador, then head of an academic center,
and I could observe this.
There is no way for an Arab, you know,
neighboring countries to know Israel seriously.
The press never describes Israel in terms of their social realities,
in terms of their culture, of their achievements in technology and other areas.
They focus always on the negative.
And the image that the republics get from their media,
exceedingly negative.
I don't mean that they are not supposed to criticize Israel
on things that they feel should be corrected in Israel.
The Israeli press is also very strongly a critical many times.
But in the Arab world, the media go beyond that.
They are so one-sided and so often exaggerate everything that is negative in Israel.
Sometimes using anti-Semitic things.
Yeah.
That the outcome is that the public has a negative,
a very negative view of Israel,
which perhaps, to go back to our previous point,
which makes it necessary to the politicians
then to turn themselves toward this reality
and speak in the same terms to their publics.
So I think what should happen really,
and I told many of my Egyptian, Jordanian friends,
they should do something about their media.
But perhaps in Israel we can also improve our coverage of the Arab world,
our acquaintance with the Arab culture, with Islam.
And all this is done in Israel, but not sufficient.