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Meet Israel's Unofficial Arabic Language Spokesperson

(State of Tel Aviv) Vivian Bercovici - Beirut-born Dr. Edy Cohen, who lived there until age 19, has more than 550,000 followers on Arabic-language Twitter. "Because I'm a native son of Lebanon, from the Jewish community in Beirut, and my mother tongue is Arabic, I'm kind of one of them. More or less. Other than religion. I understand them. I understand the mentality....I'm the only Israeli Jew with so many followers in the Arab world." I interviewed Cohen shortly after the conflict in April at the Al Aqsa mosque during Ramadan. Speaking to more than 9,000 people directly on Twitter Spaces on the days following, he explained, "I sent them proof of the 1994 Peace Agreement between Jordan and Israel governing conduct and access to the Al Aqsa compound, and more." "I showed them Article 9 of the Agreement, where it is clearly written that Israelis and Jordanians are permitted to access the holy sites on the Temple Mount." This agreement was a watershed recognition by an Arab leader that the al Aqsa compound is also important to Jews. When he explained this fact to his listeners, "They were in shock. They didn't know that there's an agreement between Israel and the Jordanians; that all Israelis...are permitted to go to the Temple Mount." The writer is a former Canadian Ambassador to Israel.
2023-06-08 00:00:00
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