The following article was published by AnalystNews on November 6, 2023. It reports on a meeting a week earlier at a mosque in Haifa, Israel. The 600 Jews, Muslims, and others present there called for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The event took place in response to the month-long, brutal Israeli assault on Gaza. Tel Aviv unleashed its attack after the October 7 pogrom by Hamas that killed about 1,400 Israelis.

The Israeli bombings and ground invasion of Gaza have killed more than 10,000 Palestinians, including thousands of children.

The Israeli government, and the Biden administration, have rejected all calls for a ceasefire and a halt to the carnage. Netanyahu had also rejected U.S. suggestions for a “humanitarian pause” in the conflict. On November 9, responding to that pressure, Israel announced it would allow short pauses, limited in time and area, in operations inside Gaza to allow more civilians to head south. But outside these pauses the relentless and increasingly genocidal death and destruction go on.

At the same time the Israeli military and armed settlers are terrorizing Palestinians in the West Bank.

“In the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers and settlers have continued to intensify their attacks on Palestinians, with over 150 killed since October 7,” Democracy Now reported on November 8.

“Hundreds of Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes and lands due to violent threats by Israeli settlers. More than 1,400 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli forces in the last month, including prominent human rights activist Ahed Tamimi, who was taken into custody Monday [November 6] after another round of overnight Israeli raids and fighting in the West Bank. Tamimi is being accused of ‘inciting terrorism’ and calling for the killing of Israeli settlers on social media. Her mother, Nariman Tamimi, denied her daughter ever wrote such a post.”

The October 30 meeting was a rare but powerful event in Israel today. Its significance can only be understood by considering the atmosphere in which it occurred. Israel is at war. A large majority of Israelis support the war. The government of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also unleashed a widespread crackdown on anyone inside Israel opposing or even questioning the conduct of the war, or advocating peace.

“Since the October 7th attack, Palestinians and peace activists in Israel have increasingly been targeted by employers, universities, government authorities, and right-wing mobs,” reported the November 8 issue of the New Yorker magazine, in the article Inside the Israeli Crackdown on Speech.

“The Jewish Israeli activists,” the New Yorker continued, “invariably noted that their troubles paled in comparison to the punishment their government was inflicting on Palestinians — in Gaza, certainly, and in the occupied West Bank, but also inside Israel. While Jewish activists are targeted by right-wing mobs with what appears to be the tacit approval of the government, Palestinians experience the full force of the government’s repressive apparatus.”

We publish the article below with the headline, photos, and disclosure at the end as they appeared in the original. As the disclosure notes, AnalystNews is affiliated to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. This is a relatively small religious group, representing 10-20 million people among the 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide. There are about 2,200 Ahmadi Muslims in Israel. World-Outlook has not been able to find estimates for the number of Ahmadis in Gaza and the West Bank.

The article quotes one of the event speakers, Alon-Lee Green, a leader of the Israeli peace organization Standing Together. At the end of the meeting, Green posted a video on X (formerly Twitter), showing scenes from the gathering and describing its meaning. World-Outlook transcribed Green’s remarks in this video; we are publishing them below as an insert supplementing the AnalystNews article to give a fuller view of what transpired.

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600 Jews and Muslims just met at a mosque in Israel to call for peace. Here’s what they said.

As the death toll from Israel’s war in Gaza surpasses 10,000, a rare but powerful moment of Jewish-Muslim solidarity in Israel shows the way forward.

By The Analyst News Team
November 6, 2023

On Oct. 30, the Haifa Laboratory for Religious Studies and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Haifa, Israel, held a rare multi-faith solidarity gathering at the community’s mosque amid the country’s war in Gaza. More than 600 members of Haifa’s Muslim and Jewish communities, as well as Christian and Buddhist representatives, overflowed the mosque hall, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to civilian killings. Since Oct. 7, more than 1,400 supporters have attended solidarity events hosted at the mosque.

“This is the only way — the only way — to create a different reality here,” Alon-Lee Green, national co-director of the Arab and Jewish peace organization Standing Together, said about Jewish and Arab dialogue. “It’s the only way to create a reality where we’re not going from one war to the other, from one violent escalation to another violent escalation.”

‘End Occupation of Millions in Palestine’

By Alon-Lee Green

“We just had an amazing event tonight with hundreds of Jewish and Palestinian citizens coming together and speaking in a very direct way about an Israeli-Palestinian peace, about Jewish-Arab partnership, about resisting killing innocent children and people in Gaza, and this is the only way, the only way, to create a different reality here. It’s the only way to create a reality where we’re not going from one war to another, from one violent escalation to another violent escalation.

“We say to our government, stop leading us into more of this. Start talking to us about life. The only way to achieve safety and security is by ending the occupation of millions of people in Palestine. And, yes, we need to deal with Hamas. But we shouldn’t strengthen Hamas. And whenever we kill more innocent children it strengthens the extremists, like Hamas. So please, dear Israeli government, let us go in a different direction. Our way is the only way for peace, the only way for life.”

Unedited transcript of remarks by Alon-Lee Green, national co-director of the Arab and Jewish peace organization Standing Together, from video posted on X (formerly Twitter) at the end of Oct. 30 Haifa event. World-Outlook did the transcription.

Below is a lightly edited transcript of the speech given by Muhammad Sharif Odeh, head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in the Holy Land, at the event. Originally delivered in Hebrew, these remarks have been translated for publication. Watch a short video of the event here.

In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful.

It’s quite interesting that there haven’t been two nations that lived together in harmony and coexistence in the history of the world aside from the Arabs and the Jewish people. I am not saying this as Muhammad Sharif, an Arab or a Palestinian.

I am saying this based on this quote by Vanderbilt University professor David Wasserstein, who says: “Islam saved Jewry. This is an unpopular, discomforting claim in the modern world. But it is a historical truth.”

This professor has a lot of knowledge and has taught hundreds of historians. He currently lives in the U.S. Other topics mentioned in this article: Islam gave Jewish people security and the right to exist; where else did Jewish people get equal social and economic rights? the attitude of Muslims towards Jewish people that lived under their rule; the revival of the Hebrew language in the Islamic world; how and when the Jewish people lived in harmony with their neighbors; and the thriving of Jewish culture side by side with Islamic culture.

So, we have a beautiful picture. Why aren’t we, as Jews and Arabs, telling this story? And why, if we were able to live like this for 1,400 years, why can’t we live like this now?

Two things: The ideology. And I say this in all my lectures — we can’t fight ideology with force. We fight ideology with an alternative ideology.

I am asked about the 7th of October, this horrible day that doesn’t only hurt me as a Muslim and Arab but also as a citizen of the state of Israel. I am asked, do you condemn Hamas? My dear! I have been condemning Hamas since 2009! And I created TV shows, we wrote and published articles.

We can’t fight ideology with force. We fight ideology with an alternative ideology.

Our community was established to fight this radicalization of those political movements in Islam. God did not send prophets to establish countries. God didn’t send prophets to be politicians. A country is for all of its citizens. On the first day that he wrote the first constitution in Medina — it was between the Muslims and the Jewish people, you can go back to Google and confirm for yourselves — the Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, told all of the citizens of Medina: “We are all equal.” He told his followers: “Whoever hurts them (the Jews), hurts me, and I will be their enemy on the day of judgment.”

That’s why Jews lived in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and here, too. That’s why we need to give a correct definition to the term “jihad.” In the Holy Quran, the word “jihad” was never mentioned in the context of war, not in one Quranic verse. And I’m not sugar-coating things because I live on Mount Carmel in Haifa. Every Ahmadi Muslim in the world believes the same thing.

Today I spoke with the head of our community in the West Bank, who used to identify with the ideology of Hamas. He is against them now. We also have members of our community living in Gaza, and I am worried for their safety. We need to worry for all human beings, and love all human beings like the love a mother has for her children, if not more. If we don’t, something is wrong in our humanity.

I was never asked in which house I want to be born. I had no choice, and I assume you didn’t have this choice either. The Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, taught us this: “All creations are the children of God, and the most beloved by Allah is whoever benefits all human beings.” He didn’t say Arabs or Muslims. That’s why we need to make an effort to bring happiness toward the other.

Without this, we will become emotionally numb — and this is the most dangerous thing facing us in the future. That’s why we need to make an effort to bring a change. Thank you, and may God bless you.

Disclosure: AnalystNews is affiliated with the international Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. To learn more about our ethics and standards as an editorially independent journalism organization, see our about page.

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