Professor Shmuel Moreh .. .keeping the channels openA pall of thick antisemitism, denial and hostility to Jews and Israel weighs heavily upon the Arab world. Now and again, however, chinks of light pierce through the darkness: Arab Muslims who take a sympathetic and serious academic interest in Jews of the Middle East.
Thus it was with undisguised pleasure that for the first time Professor Shmuel Moreh, of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, received emails from two Iraqi Muslims written in perfect Hebrew.
Dr Jabbar Jamal al-Din is a professor of Jewish philosophy at Al-Kufa University in southern Iraq. Mr. Fakhri Issa researches Hebrew literature at the University of Berlin.
Dr Jamal al-Din and Mr Fakhri Issa were responding to an invitation in Hebrew to an event featuring the writer Eli Amir and the poet Jacob Jacob at the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in Israel. Here is an extract from Mr Issa's email in Hebrew:
שלום רב לחברי היקר אדון מורה,
מה שלומך
אני מקווה שהכל אצלך בסדר
תודה רבה על ההתענינות שלך במחקר שלי
עכשיו אני לומד בברלין וכותב על התכונות הלאומיות בנובלה העברית בשנות ה 40-וה50
והמורה שלי גם היא מארץ ישראל
...כל טוב
פקרי
All credit to Professor Moreh for keeping the channels of communication open to men of goodwill.
Telegraph Journalist Ed White:
ReplyDelete"everyone knows that large numbers of Jews fled from Europe and in particular the Nazis, and that as a consequence roughly one million Arabs fled Palestine in 1948. Yet few BBC viewers would know that 750,000 Jews fled from Arab countries during the same period, a historical fact that completely alters the issue (the difference is that they’re not still in camps)."
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100079201/why-does-media-coverage-of-conflicts-such-as-ivory-coast-ignore-history-religion-and-demographics/#