WEBVTT

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My name is Shimon Shamir. I am a professor emeritus of Middle Eastern history.

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I spent a few years in our neighboring countries, five years in Egypt, the second phase as ambassador of Egypt.

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Then I served as Israel's ambassador in Jordan.

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And I am back at my university where I do research and teach students.

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Well, the attitude of the Arab countries to Israel has undergone a number of stages.

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At the beginning, it was all negative.

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You know, in 1948, not only that the Arab states did not want to recognize Israel,

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but they actually and actively came to destroy it in the war of 1948.

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And this was the basic attitude which was even radicalized at the time of Nasser,

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with his vision of pan-Arabism and struggle against imperialism.

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And Israel was defined as belonging to the imperialist camp and so on.

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So, the attitude was very negative.

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It all changed in 1967.

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And 1967 changed attitudes in the Arab countries in a number of ways.

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First, the remarkable victory that Israel had in a few days convinced many people in the Arab world

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that the vision they have of destroying eventually Israel,

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and therefore there is no point in accepting it, was shattered.

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The second factor was, for the first time, Israel occupied territories that belong to neighboring states.

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So, for the neighboring states, the main issue became how to get back to those territories

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and not so much the issue of the existence of Israel.

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And this was a period where negotiations started, leading to peace agreement with Asia, peace agreement with Jordan,

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and finally to the Arab Initiative in 2002, in which the Arab world, as a consensus, accepts the existence of Israel

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Israel, and is ready to make peace with it, on a number of conditions,

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that some of them are acceptable to Israel, some of them should be negotiated.

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But we are now in a situation in which the dispute with Arab governments is mostly on the terms of peace,

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and not on peace itself.

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Because religion can also have elements which can be used for solving conflict,

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in a different way compared to what is happening today.

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If you regard religion with its basic humanistic mission, vision, both Judaism and Islam,

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the two religions that are relevant in our arena of operations,

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you will find in these two religions many common elements,

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and many elements which oppose violent conflict.

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Both religions, for example, have this famous saying that man was created in the image of God.

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Man in general, not the people of this country or that country.

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Both religions have the idea that there are values that oppose violence and values of peace.

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And through constructive dialogue between the two religions, or people who belong to the two religions,

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you can think of ways to at least moderate the conflict.

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Unfortunately, all the attempts I know, and I participated in many interfaith dialogues,

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all the attempts so far have very limited influence on the situation on the ground.

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The liberal Muslims, liberal Jews, who meet each other, who have long discussions,

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who even articulate plans for reconciliation between the peoples belonging to these two religions,

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and so far belong to minorities in their society.

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And therefore, if we accept the situation, it is religion for the time being is a part of the problem, not of the resolution.

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Yeah.

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Well, as a historian, I can tell you that Jews and Muslims were close to each other throughout history.

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Yes.

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And the example you quote of the acceptance of Jews expelled from Spain in the Ottoman Empire is just one example.

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Yeah.

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If you think, for example, of Andalus, of Muslim Spain, and the cooperation between Jews and Muslims,

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actually the flourishing of a Jewish culture within the framework of Islam,

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and also the practical of Jews who occupied very high level positions at that time.

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Yes.

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So, throughout history, the situation was very different from what the fanatics describe today.

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Excuse me.

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The physician of Bayezid II and Suleiman I were Jewish doctors, actually.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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I think the Ottoman Empire has a good example of such symbiosis, I would say,

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cooperation and co-existence, not only of Jews, of all their religions.

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You had the millet system, which gave the Jewish community autonomy.

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Actually, Jews were judged by their own courts at that time.

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And they had all different, that was the Hacham Bashir.

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Oh, yeah.

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In Istanbul, who was the head of the Jewish community, just as they were heads of other non-Muslim communities.

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So, this situation existed, and it found expression in many ways.

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Take, for example, the greatest Jewish philosopher, Maimonides.

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Yes.

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He is famous for his ruling, what Muslims would call fatwa.

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Yes.

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About the right of Jews to pray to their God within a Muslim mosque.

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It started, I'm not sure, everybody is familiar with this case.

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It started with a question by a Jewish carpenter, I think it was,

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was working in a Muslim mosque, and he asked Maimonides, a great rabbi,

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what happens, while I work there, time for prayer comes, can I pray within the mosque?

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And Maimonides said, yes, you can, and he used this opportunity to express his opinion

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that Islam is a perfect monotheism.

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There is no difference between Jews, between Judaism and Christianity,

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and the Jews and Muslims share the same concept.

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Actually, there are many more similarities, if you think about these two religions.

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For example, Islamic law, Sharia.

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It's parallel to the Jewish law, Halakha.

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And basically, they are the same word.

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Sharia is a path, and Halakha is also a path that people are expected to tread.

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Take the structure of the theology of the two religions,

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both based on written scripture and oral rulings.

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In Islam, we have the Sunnah, the Quran, and we have the Hadith,

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which originally was oral, was verbal.

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In Judaism, you have the Torah, the Bible, and you have the Talmud,

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which was developed exactly like the Hadith.

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So, there are so many similarities.

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Both religions don't have a clergy, like in Christianity.

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People who have religious authority are those who are learned.

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Alem, those who are ulama, rabbis, exactly the same word.

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They are not clerical entities, like in Christianity,

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we are supposed to intermediate between man and God.

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They are not.

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No.

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The only authority is based on the fact that they know the law.

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In Islam, they know the Sharia.

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In Judaism, they know the Halakha.

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So, there are so many similarities.

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Israelis have a great affection for Turkey.

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They used to port to Turkey for vacations, for tourism.

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Yeah.

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And not only because it is near and there were opportunities,

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Israelis felt good in Turkey.

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They felt very close to the people, to the landscape, to everything.

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And I think there were similar things among Turks,

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but this is not for me to tell.

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So, there are many things that bring us together.

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And, of course, the economic factor, I think, is the most important.

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Even in the worst time of the Turkish-Israeli crisis,

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the economic cooperation continued silently.

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Yes.

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Which shows a simple thing, that there are interests.

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And where there are interests, I think there is also a friendship.

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Many Israelis, including myself,

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have the experience of talking to our personalities

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in countries where they do not recognize this.

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Israel, because in Egypt and Jordan there is no problem.

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And they express very positive opinions,

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while in public they continue expressing very hostile attitudes to Israel.

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So, there is this problem of the public and the private,

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which means that Arabs have also an important task to educate their peoples.

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You see, I spent seven years in Arab countries.

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And as an ambassador, then head of an academic center,

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and I could observe this.

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There is no way for an Arab, you know,

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neighboring countries to know Israel seriously.

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The press never describes Israel in terms of their social realities,

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in terms of their culture, of their achievements in technology and other areas.

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They focus always on the negative.

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And the image that the republics get from their media,

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exceedingly negative.

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I don't mean that they are not supposed to criticize Israel

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on things that they feel should be corrected in Israel.

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The Israeli press is also very strongly a critical many times.

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But in the Arab world, the media go beyond that.

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They are so one-sided and so often exaggerate everything that is negative in Israel.

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Sometimes using anti-Semitic things.

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Yeah.

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That the outcome is that the public has a negative,

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a very negative view of Israel,

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which perhaps, to go back to our previous point,

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which makes it necessary to the politicians

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then to turn themselves toward this reality

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and speak in the same terms to their publics.

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So I think what should happen really,

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and I told many of my Egyptian, Jordanian friends,

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they should do something about their media.

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But perhaps in Israel we can also improve our coverage of the Arab world,

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our acquaintance with the Arab culture, with Islam.

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And all this is done in Israel, but not sufficient.