“‘Sprouts can cause bouts of flatulence in animals and humans. But I don’t think any of us were prepared for a smell that strong.”

- Michael Riozzi of Chessington Zoo in Surrey, after the zoo apologized to visitors for the stench coming from a gorilla enclosure after feeding the animals sprouts.

From a plastic chair on his front porch Samir looked out over a garden neatly planted with rose bushes. In this house Samir, his wife, and five of their children are living a new life, surrounded by Jewish Israeli neighbours and, like them, in the firing line of the makeshift Palestinian rockets that target the Israeli town of Sderot. Last year one of these Qassam rockets fired only a couple of miles away in Gaza crashed into his garden, sending shrapnel up the front of the house.

Samir is not his real name, for this heavy-set, 52-year-old Palestinian is scared to reveal his true identity. This is his fresh start, his reward after working for more than 20 years in secret in his native Gaza as a collaborator with the Israeli security forces. “I don’t regret any of my story,” he said. “I’m very happy that I helped the state of Israel. Here everything is straightforward, not like with the Arabs. Here there is a law and there are rights.”

Many of Sderot’s residents are trying to sell their houses and move to safer towns beyond the reach of the rockets. But Palestinians such as Samir are moving in, in part because property is cheaper but also because there are others like them here, a community of perhaps 80 collaborators – they prefer to use a Hebrew word that translates as “assistants” – and their close relatives.

Most arrived before the rockets, when Sderot was simply an inexpensive Israeli town close to the Gaza border and convenient for occasional family visits. Those visits are now too dangerous and most of the Palestinians in Sderot now acknowledge they can never go home.

Samir was caught in 1994, the year that Yasser Arafat returned to Gaza in the wake of the Oslo peace accords. A friend and distant relative had given up Samir’s name during a brutal interrogation. Samir had spent years giving the Israelis whatever information he could find about the armed groups and their planned attacks, work he kept secret even from his wife. But Palestinian collaborators risk death if they are caught by their own people.

Lucky escape

Samir was lucky: he was held in jail for four years, tortured and then forced to give up his savings, sell his land and his wife’s jewellery to buy his way out of jail. Eventually one morning in 2000 he escaped into Israel and asked his handlers for help. He was given an Israeli residency permit, which he must renew every two years, and was allowed to bring out his wife and five youngest children. The five older children, who were all married, had to stay behind.

At first the family lived in Haifa and then they moved to Sderot about seven years ago. The Israeli security forces paid for the house and left Samir to restart his life.

Today his children study at the local Hebrew-language school, speak the language fluently, dress more like Israelis than Palestinians and count Jewish Israelis among their friends. One of his sons spent nearly four years working as an interrogator with the Israeli security forces at a nearby prison, questioning Palestinian detainees.

Most of those in Sderot were recruited during the years of Israel’s full military occupation of Gaza, before the Oslo accords and long before the settlers were withdrawn in 2005. Some were arrested for drug-trafficking or other criminal offences and were offered work as informants as a way to escape jail time, others were uniformed policemen working for the Israeli occupation. Few seem to have started for the money.

Samir began after his brother was wrongly accused of being a collaborator and killed in the early 70s. By giving information on the groups who killed his brother he sought revenge. “Because of what they did to my brother I decided to work for the Israelis. He was so strong, so beautiful and they killed him for something he hadn’t done.” He hid documents in his roof and speaks proudly of how for years he operated in complete secrecy.

On the other side of town is another collaborator, who used the pseudonym Subhi. He arrived in Sderot in 1996 and now runs a successful business, drives a BMW and boasts of his contacts with the “dignified people of Sderot”. He wears gold jewellery, including a bracelet engraved with Hebrew lettering.

He left eight children in Gaza. The eldest son was jailed for being a collaborator, until he escaped during the factional fighting last year, and the second son was shot in the shoulder and nearly killed, again because of his father’s work over 20 years for the Israeli security forces. “I don’t regret what I’ve done but I want my children to come out and be with me,” said Subhi, 54.

He gave little away about how he started as an informant, saying only he did not work for the money and that he believed it was the right thing to do. His experience has left him believing there can never be peace between Israel and the Palestinians. “The only choice is an Israeli military occupation to clean the area of weapons,” he said. “But I don’t believe there can be real peace.”

Some of the Israelis of Sderot, a poor town built on Jewish immigrants from Morocco and the Soviet Union, accept the Palestinians as neighbours and acknowledge their work. Many others, however, have few good words to say about them. “I don’t know how to accept them. We’re afraid that Sderot will be filled with Palestinians from Gaza,” said Sara Peretz, 58. Several Palestinian families have moved into her street. “It’s complicated. Their people are also trying to kill us.”

Several of the Palestinians are represented by Natan Shrayber, a lawyer who used to work in the Israeli security forces and is trying to bring the rest of their families out of Gaza. “Their contribution is considerable but the problem is we can’t make public what they have done so often they are seen as a burden on society,” he said. “But they have made an enormous contribution to state security: they are one of the main means of getting intelligence … no state can manage without people on the other side but the difference is that in Israel people know about it.”

Not far from Samir’s house is another Palestinian who spent years working for the Israeli security forces before he too fled Gaza in 1993. He was granted Israeli citizenship, and claims that he not only informed on Palestinian militants but also killed several members of Hamas.

“When the Israelis ruled Gaza people lived like kings,” said the man, who is aged 58. Like other Palestinians here he takes a hard line on Gaza, saying only a major Israeli invasion will halt the rockets. “Only when the army go into Gaza can they finish it,” he said. He accepts now his life is in Israel, where he boasts of his children’s good school grades and his large Mercedes car. He too understands he can never go back to Gaza. “They would make a kebab out of me,” he said. “They’d chop me into pieces.”

The time for violence has come to an end, and the era of peace and dialogue between Muslims and Jews has begun – that was the message delivered by Maulana Jameel Ahmed Ilyasi, secretary-general of the All-India Association of Imams and Mosques, during an interview with Ynetnews.

Ilaysi’s organization represents half a million imams, who are the main religious leaders of India’s 200 million Muslims.

In an extraordinary visit to Israel, organized by the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) India office, Ilaysi arrived as part of a delegation of Indian Muslim leaders and journalists.

Asked to address Hamas’s call for jihad to destroy Israel, Ilaysi said, “I believe in peace and this is the message I take. I don’t believe in anything that destroys another country.”

The religious leader also said the time had come for Pakistan to establish official relations with Israel. “This is the right thing to do,” he added.

Ilaysi’s arrival was not trouble-free, however, as a number of protests held by Indian Muslims were held in opposition to the visit.

“Indian Muslims do not have a very good impression of the Israelis. The protesters were saying, you are going to Israel, a country which humiliates the Muslims. That’s the impression that they have,” Ilaysi explained. He said the protests symbolized the natural opposition which arises to positive acts. “When you do good deeds, you are bound to have challenges and hurdles,” he added.

“My impression was initially that the Israelis are certainly dominating Muslims out here. Once I came here, that impression completely changed,” Ilaysi said. “I saw the reality on the ground, the mutual respect Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews have for each other. Constant conflict is not the reality here,” Ilaysi said, describing his visit to the Israeli-Arab village of Abu Gosh, frequented by Israeli Jews.

A visit to Jerusalem’s holy sites only served to reinforce what Ilaysi described as his “pleasant surprise.”

“I saw that Muslims, Christians and Jews lived side by side happily, not at each other’s throat,” he said.

Ilaysi added that the Indian government has lessons to learn from Israel on how to deal with Muslim minorities. “I was pleasantly surprised to know that Sharia (Islamic law) code is being supported by the Israeli government, whereas in India only local Muslims implement it. That is unique,” he said.

“The Jews I have met here say that we are all children of Abraham, part of the same family. This is something I didn’t hear in India. The Muslims in India should come and see things for themselves,” Ilaysi said.

The Indian sub-continent is no stranger to religious conflict between nations and ethnic groups. Within India, Muslims and Hindus have fought one another in bloody conflicts , while India and neighboring Muslim Pakistan have fought a series of wars spanning decades.

Ilaysi’s message is simple: “The time has come to sit and resolve all problems by dialogue, and to completely abandon violent ways using guns and bombs. Islam never says you should fight with another person. This concept is wrong,” he said.

Asked whether he was concerned by the prospect of a revolution by al-Qaeda sympathizers in Pakistan, a scenario which worries Western analysts, Ilaysi replied: “Pakistan will not fall in al-Qaeda’s (hands) because people are sick and tired of violence, they want normalization. You do not see much support for violent activities in any part of world, esepcially in Pakistan.”

Priya Pandon, the AJC’s representative in India, said Ilaysis’ visit forms a watershed in Muslim-Jewish relations.

“I think this is a landmark visit, it’s unprecedented,” she said, adding: “To take a message of peace to other countries is important. This organization (the All-India Association of Imams and Mosques) also has an influence on imams in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. India has good relationship with Arab countries, and it is a very close ally of Israel now. It’s the right time.”

In a meeting with President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem on Sunday, Ilyasi said that “Islam does not give permission to kill, murder, or harm, and we want to sit together and talk.”

It’s not every day that a Muslim intellectual puts his own head on the line to defend Israel’s right to exist. But that is exactly what Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born Italian writer and journalist, has been doing for years. He recently published a book whose name alone is enough to endanger his life: “Long Live Israel – From the Ideology of Death to the Civilization of Life: My Story.”

Allam defends Israel even though Hamas condemned him to death in 2003, after he denounced the group’s terror attacks. Because of this threat, the Italian government has provided him with round-the-clock bodyguards. But Allam is not afraid. He finds it hard to “live an armored life,” but he tells Haaretz in an interview, “I’m willing to pay the price in order to continue to be who I am, to write and speak freely.” Those who cut out tongues and slit throats will not subdue him, he writes in the book.

Allam, 55, is the assistant editor of Corriere della Sera and the 2006 Dan David Prize laureate. His new book, which immediately became a best-seller in Italy, is part of his consistent and uncompromising fight against extremist Islam and for Israel’s right to exist. In addition, he is trying to convince people that “the culture of hatred and death that the West now attributes to Muslims is not embedded in Islam’s DNA.”

In “Long Live Israel” (“Viva Israele” in Italian), Allam directly links the denial of Israel’s right to exist to the death cult being nurtured in fundamentalist Islamic circles, and refers to “the ethical erosion that has led to even the denial of the supreme value of the sanctity of life.” Allam sees Israel as “an ethical parameter that separates between lovers of civilization and those who preach the ideology of death.” The sanctity of life, he writes, “applies to everyone, or to no one.”

Sanctity of life

In recent days Allam’s attention has been focused on another major event – the birth of his son, Davide, brother to Sofia, 27, and Alessandro, 23. Allam says he and his wife Valentina Colombo chose the name Davide “because in the battle for life during the pregnancy, Davide subdued his Goliath, and because it meshes with the name of my new book.”

And speaking of names, weren’t you afraid when choosing such a strong, even provocative name for the book?

“Those who like me and more or less agree with me see it as a provocation. ‘What did you need this for, don’t you have enough problems?’ they asked. Those who don’t like me and condemn me for my opinions see this as additional proof that I am a traitor to the Arab cause and an enemy of Islam, have sold myself to Israel and work for the Mossad. But for me, ‘Viva Israele’ is a song of praise to Israel’s life and to everyone’s life. My book opens with the words: ‘What you are about to read is a declaration of faith in the sanctity of life, ‘the sanctity of life of every human being.’”

Allam was not always a defender of the Jewish state. “‘Zionism’ was a dirty word for me,” he admits in his book. For years he considered Israel an aggressive, racist, colonialist, immoral entity, and he accepted the methods of the Palestinian struggle and its leader Yasser Arafat, “without criticizing the fact that Fatah adopted the path of terror extensively inside and outside Israel.” After emigrating from Egypt to Italy in 1972, he even enlisted actively for the Palestinian cause, writing, lecturing and participating in demonstrations by the Italian left: “I also shouted ‘Long live Palestine! Long live the Palestinian resistance!’” he writes in the book. “My passion for the Palestinian cause was strong, as was my enthusiasm for Arafat’s personality.”

In his new book he describes his long road from profound admiration for Arafat and “the prophet of pan-Arabism,” Gamal Abdel Nasser, and strong support for the Palestinian cause, to his unreserved support for Israel. “I want to tell you about my slow and tortured path from the ideology of lies, tyranny, hatred, violence and death, to the culture of truth, freedom, love, peace and life, until it ripened into absolute certainly that defending the sanctity of life is more than ever in keeping with defending Israel’s right to exist,” he writes. At the end of this “slow and tortured path” he reached the conclusion that the Arab countries’ refusal to recognize Israel during the 1950s and 1960s hurt the Palestinians, and that Arafat was a tyrant, a megalomaniac, corrupt and corrupting, and the worst disaster to befall them.

Regarding the present situation in Gaza, Allam says he never had any illusions about Hamas. “I thought it was a big mistake to allow a terror organization to participate in elections. Condoleezza Rice and Tony Blair deluded themselves in believing that Hamas’ very participation in the government would turn the group into a pragmatic political power,” he says. “Instead, it turned out that Hamas will never recognize Israel’s right to exist, will not relinquish terror and will not honor international agreements signed by the Palestinian Authority. Hamas wants absolute rule in order to impose sharia and to revive the international Islamic caliphate. As it pushes for absolute rule, it does not hesitate to massacre its Palestinian brothers in Gaza. It will try to do the same thing in the West Bank.”

Do you believe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be solved before the “ideology of death” is uprooted – that even if Israel returns all the territories it occupied in 1967, it will continue to live by the sword?

“The Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and Gaza demonstrates that the problem is not the need to withdraw from territories occupied in preemptive wars, but rather the Arabs’ lack of desire to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Israel erred in 1967 when it accepted the formula of territory for peace, and thus placed its very existence up for public auction. Experience teaches that the right to life cannot and should not be a subject for negotiation and bargaining. No negotiations should be held with extremists and terrorists who deny Israel’s right to exist.”

Interrogation trauma

Allam believes the defeat of the Arabs during the Six-Day War was the watershed between the waning of pan-Arabism and the rise of pan-Islamism. Allam, who was then 15, remembers the war, the brainwashing, the deceptive Egyptian propaganda machine, the blind admiration of Nasser and the masses he joined in the streets calling on Nasser not to resign. He devotes a substantial part of his book to the war: three autobiographical chapters seasoned with the fragrances, sounds, colors and flavors of his beloved Aunt Adreya’s home and the streets of Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo – a colorful, pluralistic and tolerant city where girls wore miniskirts and boys sported Beatles haircuts.

This was the city where he was detained, interrogated and imprisoned at age 15 by the Muhabarat, the secret services, on suspicion of spying for Israel, because of his relationship with a Jewish girl, also 15 and “the first true love of his life.” “The trauma of that interrogation at the Muhabarat barracks accompanied me until that day on Christmas Eve 1972, when I left Egypt to continue my studies in Italy.”

In the book you lovingly describe your childhood. Do you miss Egypt? Do you visit often?

“I miss an Egypt that no longer exists and that continues to live inside me thanks to the memories, the songs of Umm Kulthum, the novels of Naguib Mahfouz and the films of Yusuf Shahin. I long for the social fabric that embodied a genuine love of others and a simple life where emotion was more important than money. Unfortunately, for reasons of personal security, I haven’t been back to Egypt since 2002.”

Regarding the question of the Islamization of Europe, Allam says, “Europe is already a bastion of Islamic extremism. Just look at attack on Mike’s Place in Tel Aviv, which was carried out by British suicide bombers drafted by Hamas; the massacre by Islamists in Madrid and in London; the slitting of director Theo Van Gogh’s throat in Amsterdam; and the dozens of Islamic terror attacks that were prevented in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Holland.

“This bastion exists thanks to a widespread network of mosques, Koran schools, financial bodies and charitable institutions linked to the Muslim Brotherhood; Moroccan, Tunisian and Algerian Salfists; Saudi Wahabis; Al-Qaida jihadis and Pakistani groups. This multicultural Europe, which has trampled its values and betrayed its identity, is satisfied with reacting to the obvious terror, which is only the tip of the iceberg, but is afraid to deal with terror’s ideological and organizational roots.”

Why don’t we hear the voices of the moderate imams?

“Because they’re afraid. They’re a minority and they’re afraid. Only a handful of Islamic intellectuals, journalists, women and clerics have shown courage and condemned terror and Islamic extremism, and as a result they were sentenced to death by the terrorists. But make no mistake, even those moderates who condemn Islamic terror often legitimize terrorists who massacre in Israel. They feel there is good terror, which massacres Israelis, and bad terror, which threatens their lives.”

What do you believe is the best way to deal with the Iranian threat?

“Israel has to prevent the Nazi-Islamic government of [Ali] Khamenei and [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad from acquiring nuclear weapons. I don’t place my faith in the United Nations and I have no illusions about the Bush administration, which now wants only to leave Iraq without losing face. And of course I don’t count on a weak, cowardly and divided Europe. I believe Israel is the last bastion in Islamic terror’s war against all of human civilization. Therefore I hope Israel will have a strong national unity government, determined to confront the most serious threat to world security since World War II.”

Last year, when he came here for his fourth visit, in order to receive the Dan David Prize, he visited Yad Vashem. This was “an experience that left an indelible impression on me,” he says. “I hope that some day Israel will capture Ahmadinejad and force him to live the rest of his life between the walls of Yad Vashem.”

Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 11:49:11 +0300
From: “E S” <xxxxx@gmail.com>  
To: “israellycool@yahoo.com” <israellycool@yahoo.com>
Subject: Regarding israellycool

 

I’ve been a frequent visitor to your site for a while, and I learned quite a lot about Israel from it. It convinces me that our opinions (as Arabs) regarding Israel are completely skewed and mislead. I currently lead a blog where I was hoping I could get a representative from Israel who will contribute articles about Israeli politics and culture. The blog is visited by a lot of Arabs who make no secret of their hatred towards Israel as a country and its “violent” nation.

 

I think you have the ability to change these opinions, including mine. I link to your website through my group blog, but it will be very effective to actually have an Israeli representative join the scene. I try to inform people more about your views, but they never listen. They seem to enjoy resorting to hatred and ignorance instead. You, however, can change that. I hope you’ll make some time for us. I’m not asking for much, perhaps a weekly article is fine.

 

The blog is located here http://www.mideastyouth.com (and it’s still heavily under construction.) Many of us are moderate Muslims, but certainly not all of us. I understand that you’re not an Israeli at heart, but your opinions after living there for the past couple of years matter. We have never been to Israel (most of us aren’t even legally allowed) so we rely on our media to tell us what Israel is and what Israelis think. These are things that a lot of people here fall for. “Down with Israel” is still being chanted, and it really hurts our image as educated and normal people (which we clearly aren’t, but I’m working towards that as well) if we burn the Israeli flag and wish death upon its citizens merely because we blame everything that goes wrong here on Zionist conspiracies and Israel’s evil leadership and public. Again, the traffic I get from the site shows that most people who read it are Arabs, some of which lead hateful anti-Israel websites. With your help, we can at least prove these people wrong. So please consider doing this, I don’t think I will find someone as understanding as you seem to be. You can maintain your anonymous status.

At a time when the Muslim world seems to have been taken over by Islamic extremism, worshipping shahidim and virulent hatred of Israel and the west, Sheikh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi is an outspoken critic of this fanaticism, suicide bombings and jihad and supports the “Jewish divine right” to the Land of Israel.

 

With a doctorate in Islamic sciences from the Institute for Islamic Studies and Research in Naples (by authorization of the former Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia), and ijazzah (authorization to teach) both Koranic exegesis and Islamic law from the prestigious University of al-Azhar as-Sharif in Cairo, Palazzi backs his somewhat surprising positions with citations from the Koran and traditional Muslim sources.

 

The 45-year-old Sunni scholar was in Israel earlier this month, his first visit since shortly before 9/11, to attend a meeting of the newly-reconstituted Sanhedrin (religious high court, led by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz), lecture on Wahhabi terrorism and visit the Jewish community in Hebron.

 

Speaking with In Jerusalem, Palazzi states that he views the dominance of Saudi Arabia and its Wahhabi heresy as the main problem facing the Islamic world today. He views Wahhabi as a “totalitarian cult that stands for terror, massacre of civilians and permanent war against Jews, Christians and non-Wahhabi Muslims.”

 

Since the rise of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia, some 300 years ago, Sunni scholars have written hundreds of books and issued thousands of fatwas declaring Wahhabism to be a heretical cult, refuting its mistakes and exposing its deviances. And, by virtue of his ijazzah, Palazzi believes it is not only his right but also his duty to publicly refute this heresy.

 

In this, he is not alone among Muslim scholars. What distinguishes Palazzi is his views on Jews and the Land of Israel.

 

Palazzi believes that Israel exists by “divine right” and that the Koran clearly states (Sura 5:21) that God granted the Land of Israel to the Children of Israel and ordered them to settle there. In addition, it is predicted that before the end of days, God will bring the Children of Israel to retake possession of the Land, gathering them from the different countries and nations (Sura 17:104).

 

Oddly enough, Palazzi’s reading of the Koran is backed up by, of all sources, Al Qaida.

 

The Al Qaida website recently carried an article entitled, “The Jews Are Unworthy of the Promised Land. As translated by DEBKAfile.com, the article reads, “Allah decided to test the Jews when they were still an oppressed people [while in Egypt]. He seeks to lead them to the path of faith and victory and therefore urges them to conquer the Land of Israel. They [the Jews] are even more afraid to fight for the Promised Land than they are of God. For this reason, the Jewish People does not find it hard to break the covenant between God and Abram which awarded the Land of Israel to the Jewish People for all generations.”

 

But while Al Qaida comes to the conclusion that the Jewish People has not lived up to its end of the bargain and therefore the covenant is abrogated, giving Muslims the right to the Land, Palazzi believes that the covenant is still very much in force.

 

“In 1919, when the Hashemite Emir Feisal first heard of Zionism, he exclaimed that he was seeing what was announced in the Koran – the Jews coming back to the land.” Palazzi points out. “And this was one of the reasons he signed his historic agreement with Chaim Weizmann.”

 

He blames the British for fomenting discord between Muslims and Jews and maintaining a “divide and conquer policy.”

 

According to Palazzi, until two decades ago, Arab opposition to the State of Israel was based on nationalism, not Islam. “The propaganda in Nasser’s Egypt was based on Israel as a denial of Arab nationalism and the unity of the Arab world,” he explains. “There was no idea of a revolutionary party based on Islam. Islam was considered a religion not related to politics.” This changed with the collapse of Nasserism, the rise of oil-rich Saudi Arabia and the Iranian revolution.

 

“When Arab nationalism was destroyed, this left a void, which was filled by Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism,” he continues. “Because Israel borders on the Arab countries and is in the center of the Middle East, it is a more direct threat to Arab regimes. They are afraid that if there were normal relations between their countries and Israel, their citizens would be able to compare between the democracy and advanced society in Israel and their own backwardness.”

 

As for Jerusalem, although not mentioned by name in the Koran, Palazzi cites Islamic sources to prove that the city is the site of Solomon’s Holy Temple.

 

“Today, official Palestinian Authority propaganda denies any connection of the Jews to Jerusalem,” Palazzi says. “In doing so, they are not only revising history but also classical Islamic sources. The Koran presents the same history as the Bible. This was clear to Muslim scholars for centuries – Al Aksa and Solomon’s Temple are in the same place. When the Caliph Omar first arrived in Jerusalem, he called the city Bayet Al Makdis – Beit Hamikdash or the House of the Temple. This was shortened to Al Quds.”

 

While in Israel, Palazzi also took the time to travel to Hebron to visit the Jewish community. “I am particularly sensitive to Hebron,” he claims. “This is a place that clearly reflects historical discrimination against Jews. If there is one place about which no one can question the right of Jews to live – even more so than Jerusalem – it is Hebron. To suggest that Jews should not live in Hebron is defiling Jewish heritage. Yet the world seems to ignore this.”

 

He continues, “Every political power seems to be interested in making Hebron free of a Jewish presence, as well as various Israeli governments. I am afraid that after Gaza, Hebron will be next. I went to visit the Jewish community to tell them that they are living in the land where Jews have more right to be than anywhere else.”

 

Palazzi was born in Rome to a non-observant Muslim family of Syrian origin who had been living in Italy for more than a century. He had no special interest in religion when he was growing up, but he was interested in spirituality and metaphysics. This led him to study philosophy at the State University of Rome.

 

During this period, he became interested in Islam. Upon graduation, he went to Cairo to study.

 

“There I studied under Sheikh Muhammed al-Mutawali as-Sharawi, one of the most outstanding Islamic leaders. He felt it was necessary for the Muslim world…to return to the days of Andalusia [the Golden Age of Spain] when we had good relations with the Jews. Sharawi was the one who convinced Sadat to open relations with Israel.”

 

Returning to Rome in 1984 after four years in Cairo, Palazzi found a changing Muslim community. Whereas most Muslims were once from Somalia and Afghanistan, the community had begun to experience mass immigration from the Middle East.

 

“The extremists starting arriving and began to try to take control of the community,” he relates. “That is when I started to distinguish my position from theirs. I took a clear stand on the Middle East – that there is no problem with the existence of Israel – and on developing good relations with the Jewish community.”

 

Palazzi feels that the level of propaganda under the repressive Arab regimes is so massive that people are not free to learn the truth. “The main role of Muslims in free countries is to speak out,” he proclaims. “We have to convince the world of the nature of the threat of Wahhabism before it is too late.”

 

Palazzi’s lecture on Wahhabi terrorism was sponsored by the Root and Branch Association, a small non-profit group that claims to promote cooperation between “B’nai Israel (Children of Israel) and B’nai Noach (Children of Noah) in Israel and abroad” and supports a largely right-wing and religious program.

 

Palazzi is co-chair of Root and Branch’s Islam-Israel Fellowship, which “promotes cooperation between Jews and Muslims both within the State of Israel and abroad, and between the State of Israel and Muslim nations, based upon a correct Jewish understanding of the Bible and Jewish tradition, and a correct Muslim understanding of the Qur’an and Islamic tradition.”

 

Palazzi made light of the risks inherent in making his opinions public, although on other occasions he has cited the names of Muslims leaders killed for proclaiming similar ideas.

 

“My task is to help Muslims understand that Muslim fundamentalism contradicts the principles of our religion,” he has written. “Doing so is not a theological game and risks lives.”

 

“Palazzi has been speaking out for years,” notes Raphael Israeli, a professor at the Hebrew University’s Truman Institute and Department of Middle East and Islamic Studies. “He is a lonely voice who is shunned by orthodox Islam. There are things written in the Koran as he cites them but then there are also contradictory things written. It all depends on where you put the emphasis.”

 

Says Israeli, “Not many Muslims are paying attention to him. Islamic fundamentalism is the winning direction. Maybe there are other Muslim intellectuals who think like him, but they are not heard. Maybe they are afraid to speak. If he lived in an Islamic country, he would have been killed long ago. But he is in the West, so he can speak.”

 

Adds Prof. Moshe Sharon, also of the Hebrew University’s Department of Middle East and Islamic Studies as well as the Institute of Asian and African Studies, “Palazzi is talking about the true Islam, based on his understanding of the Koranic texts. What others use for fanaticism and war, he is saying can be read to show peaceful coexistence and the rights of the Jews to Israel… If you interpret the text correctly, you will find the positive. What he is doing is a wonderful thing.”

At a time when the Muslim world seems to have been taken over by Islamic extremism, worshipping shahidim and virulent hatred of Israel and the west, Sheikh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi is an outspoken critic of this fanaticism, suicide bombings and jihad and supports the “Jewish divine right” to the Land of Israel.

 

With a doctorate in Islamic sciences from the Institute for Islamic Studies and Research in Naples (by authorization of the former Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia), and ijazzah (authorization to teach) both Koranic exegesis and Islamic law from the prestigious University of al-Azhar as-Sharif in Cairo, Palazzi backs his somewhat surprising positions with citations from the Koran and traditional Muslim sources.

 

The 45-year-old Sunni scholar was in Israel earlier this month, his first visit since shortly before 9/11, to attend a meeting of the newly-reconstituted Sanhedrin (religious high court, led by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz), lecture on Wahhabi terrorism and visit the Jewish community in Hebron.

 

Speaking with In Jerusalem, Palazzi states that he views the dominance of Saudi Arabia and its Wahhabi heresy as the main problem facing the Islamic world today. He views Wahhabi as a “totalitarian cult that stands for terror, massacre of civilians and permanent war against Jews, Christians and non-Wahhabi Muslims.”

 

Since the rise of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia, some 300 years ago, Sunni scholars have written hundreds of books and issued thousands of fatwas declaring Wahhabism to be a heretical cult, refuting its mistakes and exposing its deviances. And, by virtue of his ijazzah, Palazzi believes it is not only his right but also his duty to publicly refute this heresy.

 

In this, he is not alone among Muslim scholars. What distinguishes Palazzi is his views on Jews and the Land of Israel.

 

Palazzi believes that Israel exists by “divine right” and that the Koran clearly states (Sura 5:21) that God granted the Land of Israel to the Children of Israel and ordered them to settle there. In addition, it is predicted that before the end of days, God will bring the Children of Israel to retake possession of the Land, gathering them from the different countries and nations (Sura 17:104).

 

Oddly enough, Palazzi’s reading of the Koran is backed up by, of all sources, Al Qaida.

 

The Al Qaida website recently carried an article entitled, “The Jews Are Unworthy of the Promised Land. As translated by DEBKAfile.com, the article reads, “Allah decided to test the Jews when they were still an oppressed people [while in Egypt]. He seeks to lead them to the path of faith and victory and therefore urges them to conquer the Land of Israel. They [the Jews] are even more afraid to fight for the Promised Land than they are of God. For this reason, the Jewish People does not find it hard to break the covenant between God and Abram which awarded the Land of Israel to the Jewish People for all generations.”

 

But while Al Qaida comes to the conclusion that the Jewish People has not lived up to its end of the bargain and therefore the covenant is abrogated, giving Muslims the right to the Land, Palazzi believes that the covenant is still very much in force.

Some 20,000 people took to the streets in the western German city of Cologne on Sunday, waving German and Turkish flags, to protest against the use of violence in the name of Islam.

 

The marchers had two starting points — a mosque and a cathedral — and converged in the middle of the city for the event organized by the Islamic-Turkish Union with the slogan “Hand in Hand for Peace and Against Terror.”

Owaidah explained that he decided to work with Israel “because of the injustice we saw when we were under Jordanian rule before the 1967 war.”

 

“When the Jews came to Jerusalem, I saw how they were treating the people in a humane way,” he said. “By comparison, we had been oppressed by the Jordanians when they were here. Look how the Jews have built a modern and democratic state, and look where the Arabs still are.”