This week, a six-person delegation of journalists from Arab countries visited Israel at the invitation of the foreign ministry. Among them was the Saudi blogger Mahmoud Saud, a vocal and public supporter of both the Jewish state and Benjamin Netanyahu. While en route to pray at the al-Aqsa mosque, Saud found himself physically attacked. Ruthie Blum writes:
Calling him a “traitor,” an “animal,” a “normalizer,” and a “Zionist,” these violent [Arab] hecklers cackled at him to “go to synagogue.” As if this weren’t bad enough, they also spat in his face and threw sticks and chairs at him.
[This incident] brings us to a key factor in the pointlessness of peace deals with the Palestinian leadership. Unlike Israel, which has a burgeoning understanding with many of its Arab neighbors based on a shared interest in preventing the Iranian regime from acquiring nuclear weapons, the Palestinians have been kissing up to Tehran.
In a meeting in Tehran on Sunday with the head of Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, the Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri reportedly said, “We are on the same path as the Islamic Republic—the path of battling the Zionist entity and the arrogant ones.” This followed a visit to Iraq late last month by Nabil Shaath, Mahmoud Abbas’s adviser for international relations, during which he told local Shiite leaders that “Palestinians don’t have a problem with Iran, as Iran has been supporting the Palestinian struggle. We seek to strengthen our relations with Tehran, and we don’t consider it an enemy. The enemy is Israel.”
Read more on JNS: https://www.jns.org/opinion/spitting-in-the-face-of-cooperation-with-israel/