The families that I’ve interviewed locally, as well as in Jordan and Israel, have impressed me with their heartfelt desire to live in peace with Jewish neighbors, no matter where. It is the Islamic radicals across the Arab world who want to see Israel disappear from the map.
I became convinced that Arabs are not innately anti-Semitic when I was in Jordan, traveling with an American Jewish friend—at no time did I detect any animosity toward him (as long as he wasn’t moving to Israel or the West Bank).
Whenever I return to Jerusalem, I always drop by Munir MaTouk’s falafel stand, just inside Jaffa Gate in the Old City. The last time my wife Shirah and I were there, this Palestinian family insisted on taking us inside their little stall to a private back room, where they sat us down and treated us like royalty.
“God wants us to be one,” Munir once said of the Arabs and Jews. “But God is all alone now.”
Among my Palestinian sources for The Red Heifer was Samira Khatib of Blasdell. Her family is from pre-1948 Jerusalem and she enjoys both US and Jordanian citizenship. (In Jordan, I also interviewed her cousin, a former PLO fighter.) A poetess, Samira has traveled throughout the Mideast as a political writer, even interviewing the late Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Her moods today can swing from sublime to shocking.
The poetess can speak of her love for God—“Sometimes in a field, I feel so close to Him, that’s how beautiful He is.” But suddenly she can paint an apocalyptic picture—“A lot of Palestinians can reach despair and decide we are not going to die in vain; then every oil well in Arab countries is going to be exploded. . .we’ll explode the whole world if you don’t listen.”
" />
