The Jew is Not My Enemy Quotes

“Moshe Dayan’s closing remarks to the students in Haifa in 1969 echo what Ehud Barak told his audience in 2010. Forty years ago, Dayan – the man who, I was told as a teenager, was “the one-eyed Dajaal,” or Antichrist – uttered words of wisdom that have gone unheeded. “We have to supply the people [Palestinians] with employment and services, give them civil rights, and not treat them as enemies. The question is: What are we aiming for? Shall we be an occupying power, keeping the Arabs as an oppressed population of second- and third-class citizens and tell them: ‘You won’t do this, you won’t do that, you won’t study at the university, and if you protest, we shall impose curfew?’ Or should we aim at a common life, with Jews learning to live together with Arabs? If so, we have to be neighbours, and not conquerors.”16”
― Tarek Fatah, The Jew is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism

“Recent history shows us the difference between victors who have earned the friendship of the vanquished and those who have conquered and sown the seeds of hate. Israel still has a chance to choose. It can emulate the example of the United States, which in defeating Japan and Germany made them its allies, or that of Russia, which, even in liberating Poland and Hungary, created revulsion towards Moscow.”
― Tarek Fatah, The Jew is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism

“If Israel is to survive as a nation state, not a pariah, it will have to get Palestine off its back; otherwise, the prognosis for the two is mutual annihilation. There is no other alternative but to end the occupation, with a complete separation of the two states. For too long, Israel has depended on cheap Palestinian labour to build the very settlements they hate. What is created by this bizarre interaction of profitability and hate is two dysfunctional societies that have put a gun to each other’s heads.”
― Tarek Fatah, The Jew is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism

“In 2008 I visited Israel and spent time in Muslim towns and villages meeting clerics, politicians, and young Muslim men wearing distinctly Israel Defense Forces trousers. At every meeting I asked a blunt question: “As a Muslim, do you feel you live in an apartheid state?” Invariably, the answer was a firm no. As one man in his twenties, in the northern town of Shibli (where a sign reading “Allahu Akbar” graces the entrance), told me, “Wallah al azeem” – as God is my witness – “I will never wish to trade my Israeli citizenship for any of those wretched Arab countries who do not know how to treat their own citizens with dignity.” I asked the same question of Imam Mohammad Odeh outside his spectacular mosque north of Haifa. He grinned before admitting, “We Muslims have difficulties, there is no doubt, and we feel Israel should end the occupation of the West Bank, but to say we Muslims are living in an apartheid state is a lie.” After a tour of the mosque, where we prayed, he invited me to his home. What followed was a long, heartfelt story of a Palestinian living as an Israeli citizen, the imam of a mosque and leader of a community of two thousand. Hurt was written on his face, but his complaints were aimed not at Israel but towards the intellectual bankruptcy of the men who lead the Palestinians. I asked him if he truly, in his heart, felt Israeli, and without hesitating he said, “Yes.”
― Tarek Fatah, The Jew is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism