Barbara Kay: A seed of hope for the return of Muslim Zionism

There are historical and contemporary models for how Jews and Arabs can live together in peace

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Published Sep 22, 2024  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  4 minute read

Iraqis attend a conference of peace and reclamation in Erbil, Iraq, on Sept. 24, 2021. Photo by SAFIN HAMID/AFP

As the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 pogrom in southern Israel approaches, Jewish communities feel mounting dread, imagining the nefarious ways in which our enemies may choose to “commemorate” it.

Earlier this month, a Pakistani man in Canada on a student visa was intercepted near the U.S. border, allegedly en route to New York with a “stated goal of slaughtering, in the name of ISIS, as many Jewish people as possible,” according to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

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This was not a Palestinian, or someone affiliated with Hamas — just some random antisemitic Islamist eagerly answering the call to “globalize the intefadeh” on what jihadists consider a glorious anniversary. How many others are out there who aren’t under RCMP surveillance? It’s rational to wonder.

But this column did not arise from a wish to amplify our legitimate fears of radical Islam. Encouraging despair isn’t helpful. It’s exactly at times like this when we have to look at the bigger picture in the Middle East. And in that, there is hope to be found.

Consider another important anniversary a few days from now of a little-known event that may, in the course of time, be remembered as the second pivotal moment in relations between Israel and the Islamic world. The first, of course, was the Abraham Accords (for which any leader other than Donald Trump would have received the Nobel Peace Prize).

On Sept 24, 2021, 312 Iraqis from all over the country — a mix of religious leaders, academics and youth activists, including both Sunnis and Shiites — met in the northern city of Erbil. Though fully aware of the wrath they would incite from Iran — and did: IRGC-backed militias launched a campaign of violent intimidation against the participants — they courageously demanded that Iraq join the Abraham Accords and normalize relations with Israel.

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Encouragingly, the conference recognized the necessity of reconnecting with the (mostly Israeli) descendants of Iraq’s Jews. Before their expulsion, Jews constituted a third of Baghdad’s population and were leaders in science, culture and finance. Then came the 1941 Farhud (massacre) and subsequent ethnic cleansing that left Iraq Judenrein.

In a column published in the Wall Street Journal the same day as the Erbil conference, Wisam Al-Hardan, leader of the Sons of Iraq Awakening movement, linked the loss of Iraq’s Jews to the country’s decline and rejected “the hypocrisy in some quarters of Iraq that speaks kindly of Iraqi Jews while denigrating their Israeli citizenship and the Jewish state, which granted them asylum.”

Is reconciliation between Iraq and Israel — or any other Arab country — an impossible dream? No. The Abraham Accords offer a successful model. The young Emiratis of the United Arab Emirates, impatient with Islamism’s costly and culturally self-destructive trends, have already achieved a stunning turnaround in their attitudes toward Jews and Christians.

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In fact, ironically, the U.A.E. is today arguably the safest country in the world beyond Israel for Jews to live openly Jewish lives without fear of antisemitism. Although the war in Gaza has put a strain on the relationship, direct flights bring tourists to and from Israel and the Gulf state. Economic and scientific co-operation are flourishing.

Significantly, as proof of their good faith, the UAE has jettisoned its antisemitic and anti-Israel teaching materials in schools (something the Palestinians refuse to do), which tells us their friendship goes beyond the political self-interest of Egypt’s and Jordan’s cold-peace model. In short, they are saying that Israel belongs where it is.

Leading Zionism exponent and former Knesset member Einat Wilf, a hard-headed realist on the dysfunction that accompanies extreme anti-Zionism in the Arab world, is optimistic about this unprecedented thawing of what was assumed to be permafrost. Wilf believes that the Gulf states are “a cultural model of a moderate and tolerant Islam.” In a 2020 article she co-authored with two Emiratis, they argue that, “It is time to dispense with the idea that to be a proud Arab and Muslim one must be an anti-Zionist.”

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Today, Muslim Zionism sounds like a revolutionary notion. In fact, it is merely a revival of a once uncontroversial viewpoint. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Iraqi King Faisal I signed an agreement with Arthur Balfour’s Zionism muse, Chaim Weizmann, who would become Israel’s first president.

“Mindful of the racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people, and realizing that the surest means of working out the consummation of their national aspirations is through the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab State and Palestine,” they agreed to “encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil.”

A subsequent string of broken promises on Britain’s part to both Jews and Arabs prevented the realization of Faisal’s enlightened vision. But his words and the good faith they emanate prove that Arab and Jewish aspirations for national self-determination are inherently compatible. The Erbil conference is a green twig telling us that radical Islam buried Muslim Zionism in the Middle East, but it did not kill it. Where there is life, there is hope.

National Post
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