(Reaction-UK) Amb. Dore Gold - Twenty years ago, there were huge multinational charities in Saudi Arabia supporting an extreme form of Islam and providing enormous sums to jihadist organizations around the world. I wrote a New York Times bestseller, Hatred's Kingdom, documenting their support for Hamas, a Palestinian group that launched suicide bombings in Israeli cities. However, in 2021, Saudi Arabia is not giving a dime to support Hamas or any other terrorist organizations. Today the main countries funding Hamas are the Islamic Republic of Iran and Qatar. In 2001, the Muslim World League, headquartered in the Saudi kingdom, was spreading the ideology that supported the wave of global terror. Yet in 2019, the same Muslim World League issued the Charter of Mecca calling for interreligious tolerance rather than jihad. A year later its secretary general took a delegation to Auschwitz. Since Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) became Crown Prince in 2017, important reforms have reshaped key elements of Saudi Arabia. The way forward is for like-minded Saudis and Israelis to draw together to meet the challenge from Iran and its proxies. Historically, Jews and Muslims have been cousins who surmounted their differences. We must embrace that history again and set the stage for a very different Middle East. The writer, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, served as Israel's ambassador to the UN and director-general of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
2021-10-21 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive