{"id":6346,"date":"2015-05-03T21:07:11","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T03:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=6346"},"modified":"2015-05-03T21:07:11","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T03:07:11","slug":"young-arabs-across-middle-east-use-social-media-to-express-their-love-for-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=6346","title":{"rendered":"Young Arabs Across Middle East Use Social Media to Express their Love for Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"span8\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"span1 hidden-phone hidden-print\">\n<ul class=\"tags\">\n<li><a class=\"article-side-ad\" href=\"http:\/\/jerusalemstone.theisraelboutique.com\/?utm_source=UWI&amp;utm_medium=site_ads&amp;utm_content=js-rotating-ad-article-inner-side&amp;utm_campaign=article-inner-side\" data-ga-label=\"js-rotating-ad-article-inner-side\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"attachment-full\" src=\"http:\/\/unitedwithisrael.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/80x500xjs-skyscrapper.jpg.pagespeed.ic.JURTkf3Ig_.webp\" alt=\"js-skyscrapper\" width=\"80\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"span8\">\n<section class=\"post_content\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-90950\" src=\"http:\/\/unitedwithisrael.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/300x163xEgypt-300x163.jpg.pagespeed.ic.gHhgM-1Q44.webp\" alt=\"Egypt love Israel\" width=\"300\" height=\"163\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"lead\"><em><strong>Arab youth across the Middle East including from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and other countries are posting\u00a0photos and videos on Facebook expressing their love for Israel.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>In a new and surprising trend, young Arabs from around the Middle East, including Muslims, are expressing love and support for Israel on social media, the <em>Al-Monitor<\/em> news site reports.<\/p>\n<p>The trend, which has been around\u00a0for over a year, began by chance as a personal project by a young Israeli-Arab Muslim who lives in northern Israel. He wanted to use social networking to convince others from his community\u00a0that the IDF is\u00a0not a\u00a0force of evil and that its soldiers are not the bloodthirsty animals\u00a0depicted in<a href=\"http:\/\/unitedwithisrael.org\/jerusalem-arabs-arrested-for-social-media-incitement\/\" target=\"_blank\"> Arab propaganda<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"hidden-print hidden-phone\"><\/div>\n<p>His project soon transcended Israel\u2019s borders and he began\u00a0receiving messages of peace and love from young men and women from across the Arab world, including Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.<\/p>\n<p>Mohammed, who initiated the trend, is an Israeli-Arab Muslim who served in the IDF. He spoke to <em>Al-Monitor<\/em> on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-90954\" src=\"http:\/\/unitedwithisrael.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/169x300xIraq-169x300.jpg.pagespeed.ic.IRPAJK2dG1.webp\" alt=\"Iraq love Israel\" width=\"169\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Last year, he came across a series of billboards sponsored by an\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/unitedwithisrael.org\/druze-lawmaker-tells-arab-colleagues-to-focus-on-their-community-and-stop-assault-on-israel\/\" target=\"_blank\">Israeli-Arab party<\/a> as part of its campaign against the recruitment of Israeli Arabs into the IDF. He decided to fight back. \u201cI saw the signs that were hung in Arab villages, and I kept track of the Facebook campaign being run by activists of Balad and the other Arab parties under the name <em>Tzahal ma bistahal<\/em> [\u2018The IDF isn\u2019t worth it\u2019 in Arabic]. It infuriated me,\u201d he told<em>Al-Monitor<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cActivists would show up in the main square of Shfaram [an Arab village in northern Israel] with bits of rubble, as if the rubble were from Gaza. They carried big signs too, as if they were trying to say, \u2018Look what the army that is calling on you to enlist is actually doing in the Gaza Strip.\u2019 Some of the activists would even paint their faces red, as if they were injured, while they tried to relay their message of \u2018Don\u2019t enlist!\u2019 to young Bedouin, Druze, Christians and Muslims. I decided to respond to them on Facebook, so I made a page called <em>Tzahal bistahal<\/em> [\u2018The IDF is worth it\u2019], but instead of getting responses from the young Arabs to whom I was directing my personal campaign, I started to get photos and texts from young people around the Arab world. My jaw dropped.\u201d<\/p>\n<h1>\u2018Israel Also has Rights to the Lands\u2019<\/h1>\n<p>Sent from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and other countries, the photos and clips were posted on the Facebook page <em>BeTzahal<\/em> (\u201cIn the IDF\u201d), and there are lots of them.<\/p>\n<p>One young woman from Saudi Arabia took a picture of a green Saudi passport. She addresses the Israelis: \u201cGood evening. I am a young woman from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. I am a member of one of the better-known tribes of the Hijaz, and I am showing you Darajeh Square, a famous landmark in Jeddah. I\u2019d like to send a message of peace and love to Israel and its dear citizens. I know it is surprising that a Saudi Arabian citizen sends a message to the people of Israel, but it is a basic principle of democracy that everyone is free to voice an opinion. I hope the Arabs will be sensible like me and recognize the fact that Israel also has rights to the lands of Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A young man from Iraq shot a picture of his passport along the Tigris River. \u201cI want to send a message of peace and love to the dear Israeli people,\u201d he says. \u201cI decided to shoot this video and tell you, \u2018True, we are two countries that do not have friendly relations, but that doesn\u2019t matter. I believe that the number of people who support Israel here will grow consistently.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<h1>Always the Same: \u2018We Love Israel\u2019<\/h1>\n<p>Other young people sent photos of handwritten messages in Hebrew, Arabic and English. It is always the same: \u201cWe love Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One Egyptian police officer took a step forward by including his police cap along with his passport. \u201cWe love, love, love Israel and its army,\u201d he wrote in Arabic. He even added a picture of a heart with a Star of David in the middle of it.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-90958 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/unitedwithisrael.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/225x300xMorocco-225x300.jpg.pagespeed.ic.aE2xwf-jcb.webp\" alt=\"Morocco love Israel\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Mohammed told <em>Al-Monitor<\/em> that the whole thing began with a young <a href=\"http:\/\/unitedwithisrael.org\/analysis-will-egypts-new-president-rescue-our-coptic-girls\/\" target=\"_blank\">Coptic Christian<\/a> woman from Egypt who immigrated to the United States, where she experienced racism and manifestations of hatred toward Copts. \u201cI quickly learned that she also speaks Hebrew, like many young people who studied Hebrew at Cairo University,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I said to her, \u2018Why don\u2019t you do a little something to spread the message, so that people in other countries will see and hear that there are other voices in the Middle East?\u2019 She sent a photo of her passport, and pretty soon I started getting pictures of passports from all across the Arab world. The very next photo came from Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mohammad also engages supporters of Israel in private conversations. \u201cAfter I got the video from Baghdad, I asked the person who sent me the clip what it was that caused him to express support for Israel. He responded, \u2018You\u2019d be surprised. I\u2019m not the only one. There are a lot of young people here who think like me. Everything that is happening to us here in<a href=\"http:\/\/unitedwithisrael.org\/isis-destroys-ancient-and-rare-artifacts-in-iraq\/\" target=\"_blank\"> Iraq<\/a> \u2014 the killings, the terrorism, the veritable bloodbath \u2014 showed us that Israel has nothing to do with it. There are many young people living in Iraq today who have no religion. They are fed up with the religious wars between Sunnis and Shiites and want to live their lives without religion,\u201d he told <em>Al-Monitor<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><em>By: United with Israel Staff<\/em><br \/>\n<em>(With files from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.al-monitor.com\/pulse\/home.html\" target=\"_blank\">Al-Monitor<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arab youth across the Middle East including from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and other countries are posting\u00a0photos and videos on Facebook expressing their love for Israel. In a new and surprising trend, young Arabs from around the Middle East, including Muslims, are expressing love and support for Israel on social media, the Al-Monitor [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6349,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[104,114],"tags":[403,193],"class_list":["post-6346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-world-2","tag-arabs","tag-israel-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/download-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2SfUR-1Em","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6351,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6346\/revisions\/6351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}