Here's a nice story of brotherhood and good cheer in the Algemeiner, picked up from the Saudi-funded online news medium Elaph: a Kurdish writer, Mahdi Majid Abdullah, praises the Jews for their 'values and principles'.
The Saharane Kurdish music and dance festival in Israel
“I personally learned from the Jews that it is no exaggeration to say
that ‘if you want to live a happy life, then be like the Jews.’” So
says the Kurdish writer Mahdi Majid Abdullah in a remarkable oped published in the liberal Arab daily Elaph.
Based in London, Elaph bills itself as the Arab world’s only
independent newspaper, with a particular accent on liberal and
democratic causes. The paper has tussled with several Arab regimes in
the past, including those in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
The paper is, therefore, no stranger to controversy. But Abdullah’s
article is likely to cause a stir regardless, and not only because the
author is a member of the one Middle Eastern nation, the Kurds, with
whom Jews have always enjoyed warm relations. His views directly
challenge the prevailing climate of hostility and prejudice towards Jews
across the region.
“When I came to the European country where I live, I settled in the
city inhabited by a large number of Jews and I got to know a Jewish
family and which strengthened my relationship with other Jewish writers
and journalists,” Abdullah wrote.
He then continued:
"Jewish families teach children from a young age on the
proper goals and values and principles, which instill confidence and
facilitate the way for him and fueled by tenderness and kindness and to
make him know how to walk in the path of his life, so the Jew does not
see failure in his life. Where Jews entered a city or a country they
dominated them culturally and intellectually, politically and
economically for the greater good at this place. There is no need to
list many examples; just to know that the United States and Europe are
successful was because of the Jews who have lived there, and in the
eastern countries if we go back to the history books, we find the Arab
and Islamic countries were living in affluence in all respects when the
Jews inhabited them.
"In European countries do not see the young Jew interested in
meaningless things, while the young Muslim and Christian is interested
in pursuing football supporting his club or national team, or gasping
behind drinks and pursuing girls in the bars and nightclubs or on the
streets. You find a Jew interested in the study or the economy or in
the goal of particular benefit to himself and others. Of course, there
are also creative and responsible Muslims and Christians, but compared
with the Jews their proportions are negligible."
Read article in full
By the same author (via MEMRI - with thanks: Ranbir; Lily)
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