History is being made today, in 2020, as Israel makes peace throughout the Muslim world. Peace – for peace – which benefits all people and is best for all interests in the region. With hope of a better tomorrow, Morocco, Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates have all signed peace agreements with Israel in recent weeks.
Against this backdrop, two famous quotes today from Israeli Prime Ministers ring true. Prime Minister Golda Meir once said, “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” And it is clear that today thankfully for many, that day has arrived.
And as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel’”, and reflecting that, as The Washington Post reported this week, in the two weeks since commercial flights began between Tel Aviv and Dubai and Abu Dhabi, more than 50,000 Israelis have visited the region – in the midst of a global pandemic.
Iconic Israeli singers Omer Adam and Eyal Golan visited, as have the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, and countless others across the political spectrum, right-wingers, left-wingers, Orthodox and non-Orthodox – Israelis are flocking to this Muslim country.
Here in New York, we feel it as well. Well-respected local Rabbi Elie Abadie has moved to the UAE to become the senior rabbi for the Jewish Council of the Emirates. Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Gilad Erdan lit the eighth candle of Hanukkah with the Moroccan Ambassador at a special ceremony in New York, where he was proclaimed, “There is no alternative to peace. We are all the sons of Abraham and the sons of Abraham, they always at the end of the day will sit together to make peace together and to build a future together for the next generation.”
What an amazing thing for the world and for the Jewish state – tourism, billions of dollars in foreign investment in high tech, agriculture and arms. Safety, peace and prosperity.
And yet, many in the Palestinian Arab world continue to advocate terrorism, as radical extremists in the United States like The New Israel Fund support a boycott against Israel. The extremists are those who support boycotts of Israel and terror – not peace-seeking Israelis or Zionists who all support these peace-efforts with the Muslim world.
The map and political paradigm has forever been shifted, and the world is better off for it.
