“I went from someone who said that Israel and the Jewish people were cursed to saying, ‘How beautiful are your tents, Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel’,” Loay Alshareef, an Arab activist who campaigns for peace in the Middle East, told JNS on Thursday.
Alshareef, a self-described recovered antisemite, was invited by the Montreal-based Jewish community organization Federation CJA to share his experience in Canada and participate in the March for Jerusalem earlier this month.
Alshareef was born and raised a religious Muslim in Saudi Arabia. In 2010, he decided to take part in a language immersion program in France. Against all odds, he was placed with a Jewish family.
“Religion was something very personal in France at the time. I remember I could choose whether I wanted to stay with a family who had pets, whether I wanted a single or double room, but nothing about religion,” he said.
“When I saw a big Star of David in their living room, I realized they were Jewish. Before them, I never had an encounter with a Jewish person,” he continued.
“At the time, we only knew about Jews from extremist scholars. I was very anti-Jew, anti-Israel and even anti-Christian because of my education,” he added.
At first, Alshareef wrote an email to the school asking to be moved elsewhere as he did not feel comfortable.
“When you see the Star of David, what comes to mind immediately is Egyptian TV, Arabic songs that associate it with the [Israeli intelligence Agency] Mossad, ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ the Israeli armed forces; it is scary,” he said.
He ended up living with the family for a couple of months, during which he had the opportunity to speak freely and learn about another culture.
“I was able to ask the family all my questions about Judaism and Israel, this was really the trigger to make me want to learn more. I fell in love with the Hebrew Bible,” said Alshareef.
“I still practice Islam, I’m still a Muslim, but I have different ideas from the dangerous ones I had when I was young,” he added.
Alshareef only started being outspoken about his journey in 2017, seven years after the original encounter in France that triggered his transformation.
“You receive a lot of hate. I defend the idea that Israel is an entity that existed 3,000 years ago and was reborn in 1948. It is very ironic that we, as Muslims, name our kids after prophets, kings and heroes who are Jewish but we don’t connect the dots,” he said.
“There is zero contradiction between feeling the suffering of the Palestinians and believing that Israel has the right to exist. I love the Palestinians as much as I love the Israelis, I support their right to live in dignity and to exist peacefully side by side,” he continued.
Alshareef said that while the situation in Gaza was not ideal before Oct. 7, the war sparked by Hamas’s massacre made things worse.
“I’m against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and all those monsters who want to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews,” he said.
“There was no occupation of Gaza on Oct. 7. Israel unilaterally withdrew in the summer of 2005. There was a siege but only because of threats coming from Gaza,” he added.
“There was room for improvement but the way to reach it is through peace in the same way that Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat did it [in 1979], not through wars but through negotiations,” he continued.
To Alshareef, the timing of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre was no coincidence.
“Iran issued a command to Hamas to launch its assault because Saudi Arabia was so close to normalizing relations with Israel,” Alshareed explained.
Alshareef currently lives in the United Arab Emirates and believes in the Gulf country’s example set with the Trump administration-brokered Abraham Accords.
“Countering Iran means having more peace treaties with Israel. It means integrating Israel more into the region,” he said.
“Once Israel becomes what it should be as part of the Middle East, the enemies of peace will be put in a tight corner and isolated. This is how we defeat Tehran and this is what I hope happens,” he added.
During his trip to Montreal, Alshareef tried to secure an engagement with an Arab audience. One organization turned him down, saying the audience was not interested in hearing his views, deemed too supportive of Israel.
“I want people to listen to someone who held their views in the past but changed them with knowledge, facts and the truth. I want them to hear an Arab and Muslim speak openly, receive criticism and have a healthy discussion,” he said.
Regardless, Alshareef, who will be engaging students at Berkeley before heading back to the UAE, remains positive.
“I am very optimistic about the future of the Middle East. I believe that God assigned us with a mission to fix the world, heal the world, ‘Tikkun Olam’. This holy mission is our fuel,” he said.
