As the Israel-Hamas war threatens to throw the entire Middle East into chaos, one group of Israelis and Arabs is seeking to help end the decades of conflict between the two groups.
Sharaka, a group born out of the historic Abraham Accords in 2020, has been traveling the world and taking to social media to combat decades of misinformation and stigma between Israelis and Arabs, which has only gotten worse since Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack.
“It’s clear that Oct. 7 was meant to torpedo the peace talks that were happening in the region,” Sharaka Executive Director Dan Feferman told The Post Thursday.
“People need to understand that Hamas has no positive vision for our society.”
Following the terror attack, Feferman said his group has faced opposition from anti-Israel protesters who have united under “a mythos” that Hamas are liberators rather than an Iran-backed terror group seeking war rather than coexistence with Israel.
Sharaka posits that Hamas and Iran-backed militias are outliers in the Arab world, with members from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Bahrain and Morocco saying that the greater Muslim community is changing and open to peace.
Loay Sharif, a Saudi-born social media influencer, said he once held tight to the antisemitic views he grew up around, to the point where he was offended to be living with a Jewish family when he was studying abroad in France in 2010.
The experience, however, changed him, with Sharif now fluent in Hebrew and well-versed in the history and culture of his Israeli friends.
“I’m ashamed now of who I was, but I know now that people can change,” Sharif said. “Now it’s our responsibility to save our fellow Muslims from thinking like that.”
Fatema Al Harbi, a Bahraini author and influencer, said encounters like the one Sharif had is the key to bridging differences as opposed to accepting all the negative views popularized in the media.
“We have to choose a way to humanize each other, whether that’s meeting with the other or visiting Israel,” she said.
The group agreed that for peace to take root in the Middle East, Hamas needed to be dismantled and the Abraham Accords expanded to include more nations, with Saudi Arabia seen as the top country to reel in to help normalize Arab-Israeli relations.
The Abraham Accords, signed under the Trump administration, currently include the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
