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Would You Believe That Young Arab Muslims Are Sending Love Letters To Israel? UPDATED

Would You Believe That Young Arab Muslims Are Sending Love Letters To Israel? UPDATED

Last updated on: January 24, 2017 at 6:54 pm by Frank Weathers

Would You Believe That Young Arab Muslims Are Sending Love Letters To Israel? UPDATED 2017-01-24T18:54:33-05:00 Frank Weathers

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Translation: “We love Israel, but in our country we can not show it, and if we do, we can get killed.” Image uploaded to BeTzaHal on Facebook.

Of course you wouldn’t. Because to hear of such a thing would bring into question the idea that you’ve come to believe. You know, the idea that Muslims are a bloc of jihad mongering zealots.

Well, here’s a story I found in the Al-Monitor that torpedoes that tidy little narrative. Take a look,

It all began as a personal project by a young Israeli Arab who lives in northern Israel. He wanted to use social networking to convince other Israeli Arabs that the Israel Defense Forces are not some “army of evil” and that its soldiers are not as bloodthirsty as they tend to be portrayed in Arab propaganda films. He soon learned, however, that in the digital age, there is no end to surprises. Instead of messages and responses from the Israeli Arab audience he was targeting, he began receiving messages of peace and love from young Arab men and women from across the Arab world.

Break. You had no idea that Israeli Arabs even served in the IDF, did you? Read up on that here. Back to the story,

M. is an Israeli Arab Muslim who served in the IDF. He spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. Last year, he came across a series of billboards sponsored by the Balad Party as part of its campaign against the recruitment of Israeli Arabs into the IDF. He decided to fight back. “I saw the signs that were hung in Arab villages, and I kept track of the Facebook campaign being run by activists of Balad and the other Arab parties under the name ‘TZaHaL ma bistahal’ [‘The IDF isn’t worth it’]. It infuriated me,” he said.

“Activists would show up in the main square of Shfaram with bits of rubble, as if the rubble were from Gaza. They carried big signs too, as if they were trying to say, ‘Look what the army that is calling on you to enlist is actually doing in the Gaza Strip.’ Some of the activists would even paint their faces red, as if they were injured, while they tried to relay their message of ‘Don’t enlist!’ to young Bedouin, Druze, Christians and Muslims. I decided to respond to them on Facebook, so I made a page called ‘TZaHaL bistahal’ [‘The IDF is worth it’], but instead of getting responses from the young Arabs to whom I was directing my personal campaign, I started to get photos and texts from young people around the Arab world. My jaw dropped.”

The photos and video clips sent from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and other countries can be found on the Facebook page “BeTzaHaL” (“I n the IDF”), and there are lots of them. One young woman from Saudi Arabia filmed a green Saudi passport. Her voice plays in the background, against a street scene in Jeddah, with a message for the people of Israel: “Good evening. I am a young woman from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. I am a member of one of the better-known tribes of the Hijaz, and I am showing you Darajeh Square, a famous landmark in Jeddah. I’d like to send a message of peace and love to Israel and its dear citizens. I know it is surprising that a Saudi Arabian citizen sends a message to the people of Israel, but it is a basic principle of democracy that everyone is free to voice an opinion. I hope the Arabs will be sensible like me and recognize the fact that Israel also has rights to the lands of Palestine.”

A young man from Iraq shot a picture of his passport along the Tigris River. “I want to send a message of peace and love to the dear Israeli people,” he says. “I decided to shoot this video and tell you, ‘True, we are two countries that do not have friendly relations, but that doesn’t matter. I believe that the number of people who support Israel here will grow consistently.’”

Other young people send M. photos of their passports with handwritten messages in Hebrew, Arabic and English. It is always the same: “We love Israel.” One Egyptian police officer took it a step further by including his police cap along with his passport in the shot and wrote in Arabic, “We love, love, love Israel and its army.” He even added a picture of a heart with a Star of David in the middle of it.

Read the rest.

Call me Morpheus if you’d like, but the dominant paradigm that all Muslims are eager, and willing, ISIS recruits is flat wrong. Did I ever tell you about the time Pope Francis met the King and Queen of Jordan? No? How about Pope Benedict XVI?

“In truth, I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him. You know the word [that] he sent to the Israelites as he proclaimed peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all, what has happened all over Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the holy Spirit and power. He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”

Then, as now, that’s the beginning of a great, paradigm changing, story.

More photographs like the one above can be found on the Facebook page, The Real Face of the IDF!

UPDATE

Here’s a message St. Peter, and Sun Tzu, can appreciate:

“I would rather have Muslims learning about Islam from a Christian like Archbishop Fitzgerald than from a propagandist for an organization like ISIS.”

Read the rest at Deacon Greg’s place.

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