A Palestinian Arab author condemned anti-Semitism last month, Palestinian Media Watch reports Tuesday – defying, on Palestinian Authority (PA) official television, the constant undercurrent of hatred against Jews the PA instills in its national consciousness.
“The world is trying to split us apart,” author Ounallah Abu Safieh stated in a March 14 interview. In his novel, Servant of the One God, a Muslim man from Gaza decides to marry a Jewish woman.
While Europe, Russia, and other Western nations have moved toward unity, Abu Safieh laments, the Middle East is rife with discord.
“Why are we specifically sentenced to be divided?” he said. “Why do we accept this? So that one will become president and another a king? I, as a cultured person, with a national awareness, my job is to preach that we need to unite.”
Part of his views are religiously-motivated, he noted. “I also see that all of us are from one source, even the religions,” he said. “Servant of the One God has a theory about the matter of religious division. The source of religion is one, and what is added was created by man in his opinion.”
“It is something that we men created, which caused one to be a Shi’ite, one to be a Sunni, one a Christian, and one a Jew,” he continued. “Originally He is one. As the source is one, what prevents me from praying in a church, or a mosque, each one according to his way?”
“The West and our enemy do not want us to unite,” he added. “How will we win? By uniting.'”
“I say the homeland is wide enough for everyone,” Abu Safieh insisted. “In the days of the great Islamic state, in the days of Salah Al-Din [Muslim leader and Sultan of Egypt and Syria who defeated the Christian crusaders and conquered Jerusalem in 1187], Salah Al-Din’s doctor was a Jew. In the kingdom of Muslim Spain, all of the advisors in Muslim Spain, the advisors of the kings and rulers were Jews, those in charge of the treasury and economy and information.”
“Why now, in the present situation, do I hear that I have to hate the Jew because he is a Jew? No!”
