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“Angels of peace,” “peacemakers amid wars,” “Abraham’s promise” — these are among the descriptions the Israeli and international press use for Sharaka. The organisation’s own slogans point to ambitions that run much deeper. Phrases such as “Reshaping the Middle East together” and “healing Muslim hatred of Jews” go well beyond the role of a regional organisation seeking to whitewash Israel’s image in the Arab world.
Its slogans, partners, leadership, projects and goals reveal an extensive network of coordinated Israeli diplomatic and social activity. This network overlaps with other “Israeli-American” organisations and another aspect of the Abraham Accords: an effort that goes beyond promoting Israel in the Arab region to attacking its opponents in the West, using Arab voices to convey a Zionist message within a Zionist framework.
This article, part of the “Proxy Normalization” series, examines Sharaka’s emergence after the Abraham Accords and explores its ties to the military, political and intelligence establishments in both Israel and the US. It traces the organisation’s roles during the early years of “warm” normalisation with the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco, through to 7 October, which exposed some of those roles and added others, alongside ambitious projects for its leaders.
Sharaka: A love story waiting to blossom
In August 2021, a Sharaka delegation visited Atlanta, where it was hosted by the Israeli Consulate General in the southeastern US, the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, the Rabbinical Association, the Israel State Coalition and Americans United with Israel. The visit also included tours of several US synagogues, including Congregation Beth Jacob and Congregation Ohr HaTorah.
At the first meeting, Rabbi Adam Starr opened his remarks with the word “shalom.” Omar Al Busaidy, the Emirati CEO of Sharaka’s US branch, interpreted this as a reference to his organisation’s work to bring the UAE, Morocco, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia closer to Israel. He described its efforts to develop those relations as “a love story waiting to blossom.”
Speakers at the meeting included Najat Al Saeed, a lecturer at Zayed University in Dubai; Somaya Al Muhairi, Sharaka’s director of cultural and social affairs; Dan Feferman, Sharaka’s founder; and Yahya Mahamid, a member of the organisation in the occupied territories. Al Muhairi asked: “Why don’t we treat one another as members of one family?” Mahamid described Sharaka’s success in attracting a broad audience eager to learn about Israel. One person, he said, had even written to ask: “How can I join the Israel Defense Forces?”
This was neither Sharaka’s first nor its only event, but it was among the gatherings highlighted by Western and Israeli media, with the faces and expressions of everyone present plainly visible. Mahamid, a Palestinian Arab from Umm al-Fahm in the occupied interior, said a member of the settler Chabad movement had changed his view of Israel. Al Busaidy, meanwhile, revealed that he had been in continuous contact with Israelis in Dubai before the Abraham Accords. His longstanding, staunch defence of the accords, he said, had led Sharaka to offer him a US position linking its regional branches.
This is only one element of Sharaka’s approach. The “nonprofit, nongovernmental” organisation was founded on 15 December 2020 by individuals from Israel, the UAE and Bahrain after the Abraham Accords were signed. Its aims were to establish communication between Israeli and Gulf youth leaders, promote peace and trust between them, and lead initiatives amplifying Israel’s voice and raising awareness of it in the Arab world.
Yet its work goes beyond the “simplicity” of the account on its official website: its slogan, “Shaping the New Middle East Together,” its story of “simplifying the Abraham Accords and bringing them to ordinary people,” its mission “to foster warm peace and people-to-people normalization between Israel and the wider Middle East and North Africa region,” and its vision of “promoting dialogue, cooperation, understanding, and then friendship.”
Its first activities began on 30 December 2020, when a Gulf delegation visited the occupied territories. It comprised 11 academics and activists from the UAE and Bahrain, including Amjad Taha, Najat Al Saeed and Majed Al Sarrah. The itinerary included activities in the occupied Golan Heights, candle-lighting in Jerusalem, visits to the Holocaust museum and the Knesset, lighting the menorah at the Western Wall, and meetings with Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and President Reuven Rivlin.
Within two months, the organisation signed a cooperation agreement at Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi. Those attending included Jared Kushner, the US president’s son-in-law and “chairman of the board of the Abraham Institute for Peace,” Robert Greenway, executive director of the Abraham Accords Peace Institute; Amit Deri, Sharaka’s founder and CEO; and Majed Al Sarrah, its Emirati co-founder and CEO of its UAE branch.
That same year, a nine-member Bahraini delegation visited the occupied Palestinian territories under Sharaka’s auspices. It was led by writer Fatema Al-Harbi, who later became vice president of the organisation’s Bahrain branch. Its itinerary included Jerusalem, the Old City, the Holocaust museum and the Western Wall, as well as meetings with Israeli government officials.
A Sharaka delegation representing Gulf states, Morocco and Syria also gathered in the US. It organised group visits to synagogues, Jewish cultural centres, San Jose State University and the Commonwealth Club of California, as well as meetings with local students and activists. These sought to encourage “moving beyond political polarization between Palestinians and Israelis” in discussions of the Middle East.
Within a year and a half, the organisation had gained a foothold in academic and youth circles in several Arab and Muslim countries, including Pakistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey and Morocco. Delegations travelled internationally, visiting the Holocaust museum and Jerusalem’s Old City and meeting Druze, Bedouins, Arabs and Israeli officials under the banner of tolerance and peace. But the visits provoked controversy in most countries.
Pakistani officials publicly disavowed a 15-member visit whose participants were mostly Americans of Pakistani origin. They included Fischel Ben Khalid, “the last Jew in Pakistan,” and Pakistani journalist Ahmed Quraishi, who was subsequently dismissed from his job because of the visit. Sharaka and the American Muslim & Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council jointly organised the trip.
There were also varied indications of its success. These ranged from broad participation in the 2022 March of the Living commemorating the Holocaust, with delegations from Lebanon, Syria, Morocco, Turkey, the Palestinian territories and Gulf states, to the launch of the “Abrahamic Studies Program” at the University of Connecticut in the US. The programme was established in cooperation with the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life, the Muslim Student Association and the Consulate General of Israel.
These efforts also culminated in agreements to establish cross-border groups, including the “UK Abraham Accords Group”, chaired by British MP and former defence and trade secretary Liam Fox. The group identifies influential figures in the media, society, academia, business and other fields and hosts reciprocal visits between Israel and the Arab world. These take place in “partnership” with delegations from the UK to develop regional cooperation.
Notably, the British Abraham Accords Group delegation includes the chairs of the International Trade Committee, the Committee on Arms Export Controls, Conservative Friends of Israel, Labour Friends of Israel and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Foreign Affairs, as well as the managing director of British Telecommunications. This extends beyond simply establishing relations and dialogue to building a network of protection and connections capable of “reshaping the Middle East,” as envisaged by the organisation.
A long-term mission
Questions arise not only from the organisation’s activities and the branches it has established, but also from its founders. Beyond the fact that its Arab representatives are carefully selected by the Israeli side, the security and military backgrounds of its Israeli leadership cannot be ignored.
Its president, Amit Deri, is an Israeli entrepreneur and former director of the Tavor pre-military academy in Upper Nazareth. He is also executive director of several active Israeli organisations whose work overlaps on multiple levels. These include Reservists on Duty, an Israeli non-profit organisation backed by the government, which works against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement by involving university students in projects intended to contain it.
Its activities range from exposing boycott supporters to sending volunteers, including special forces soldiers and members of Arab and Druze minorities, to US universities to combat anti-Israel propaganda. Their mission also includes building relationships with pro-Israel communities and acting as ambassadors for its reputation and image.
Its work has the support of Knesset members and contributions from more than 600 Israeli officers and soldiers through what it describes as “Gideon Groups”. Much of their activity focuses on American Jews and cooperation with US universities to hold events under the title “Week Against Racism Against Israel.”
Deri’s organisation targets an extensive list of organisations. These include the rights groups Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem, as well as the newspaper Haaretz, which it accuses of supplying BDS with reports used to defame Israel and its army.
Deri also commands a reserve company in the occupation army and regularly serves in the Palestinian territories. The Western press photographed him during a confrontation in the Hebron area, firing rubber bullets and tear gas at Palestinians.
Among the organisations Deri founded and heads is DiploAct, which trains young diplomats to improve Israel’s image internationally and organises annual diplomatic missions to universities and hostile communities. It has visited 150 universities through more than 200 diplomatic missions and trained 1,000 young people. Its slogans include “I stand with Israel, know more” and “I serve in the Israeli army, ask me anything.”
He also heads Atidna, which takes this work further than the other two organisations. Its staff and volunteers promote the Israeli narrative by deepening Arabs’ integration into Israeli society. They do so under the slogan of an Arab-Jewish “partnership” based on equality in a Jewish democratic state, with a strong Arab “community” integrated into Israeli society.
Led by Israeli Jews from the nationalist Zionist camp, the movement targets Arab Palestinians — the country’s indigenous inhabitants, whom it regards as a “community” — from an early age through activities and mixed camps with Jews. These range from Holocaust remembrance events to technology camps and youth mentoring, and extend to teachers, educators and businesspeople.
The number of Arab students involved is estimated at more than 5,000, both male and female. Alongside this are 100 scholarships annually and more than 367 high-tech job opportunities, with salaries of at least $4,000 a month. The number of Arabs in the sector is expected to rise to more than 10,000 over the next three years.
According to Haaretz, the organisation conceals more than it reveals, as it is run by the “far-right Zionist camp,” beginning with Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, who previously called for residents of Wadi Ara, Tayibe, Kafr Qasim and Baqa al-Gharbiyye to be transferred to the West Bank.
According to the Hebrew version of its website, it is also headed by Erez Eshel, a resident of the Kfar Adumim settlement and architect of the pre-military academy project. He founded Hashomer Hachadash, or “The New Guard”, an organisation that trains and arms settlers in the Negev and Galilee. It has six boarding schools and a youth wing with 22,000 members who actively carry out organised attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.
Serving alongside Amit Deri on the board is content director Hanan Amor, a right-wing journalist who advocates expelling Arab residents from Israel and has described Arabs as “the most barbaric nation in the world.” The team also includes Yifat Sela, head of the religious Zionist women’s organisation Emunah.
Deri plays a central role in this overlapping network, which operates locally within Arab society in the occupied land, regionally through Sharaka and internationally through DiploAct. The network can be understood through the initial question Mahamid relayed “about joining the IDF,” and Atidna’s core objective: “creating a generation of Arab Zionists as a pathway to recruiting them into the IDF.”
Sharaka: Dialogue built on security
These connections extend beyond Amit Deri to other members of the organisation, making it appear less like a body devoted to dialogue and mutual understanding than one rooted in security and intelligence work in the Arab and Islamic world. Sharaka’s co-founder and head of international relations, Dan Feferman, served as an intelligence officer in the occupation army for eight years before becoming a security analyst with the rank of major and earning a master’s degree in security studies from Tel Aviv University. This enabled him to work in the Israeli army’s public relations department until 2021. His involvement in Sharaka has not prevented him from continuing to serve in the reserves.
Like Deri, Feferman uses his intelligence experience to whitewash Israel’s image internationally through several active organisations and associations while continuing his reserve service. He also co-founded Reservists on Duty, DiploAct and Atidna, and established several research forums pursuing similar work.
Among these is the Gulf-Israel Policy Forum, a network of policymakers and influencers established jointly by the Moshe Dayan Center and the UAE-Israel Business Council. Its members come from Israel, the UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. They produce research and analysis and share knowledge to help decision-makers shape policy.
Sharaka’s managing director, Noam Merov, is an Israeli social activist and security analyst who served for more than seven years in the occupation army’s Unit 8200 intelligence division and remains a reserve officer. He oversees joint cross-border programmes, interfaith dialogue delegations and diplomatic missions.
His work overlaps with his position at DiploAct and his role as executive director of the Abraham Academy, which emerged from the Abraham Accords. Drawing on his technology-sector experience, he leads projects targeting academics, policymakers and businesspeople in Gulf states and Muslim-majority countries. The latest of these projects was in Indonesia.
Another director, Lior Dabush, is also a former analyst in the same unit. Between 2013 and 2016, he wrote intelligence reports and processed and decoded information before taking a job at the Bahraini Embassy in Tel Aviv.
Ofir Ohayon also combines technology-sector experience with administrative work at DiploAct. A technology executive, he previously worked in the occupation army’s public diplomacy and digital media division and has expertise in digital strategies and tracking technological infrastructure.
He also trains young people to reshape digital discourse. He previously worked as a software developer at NICE Technologies and an Android developer at Uptown. He now writes about ways to provide Israeli soldiers with legal protection against systematic online digital tracking, and trains Sharaka and DiploAct volunteers in digital warfare and open-source intelligence.
The Sharaka team also includes Israeli American Rachel Brennan, who holds a degree in international relations from the University of Maryland. She oversees programmes connecting North American audiences with the Israeli narrative about the Middle East. Her responsibilities include ensuring warm relations unlike those established by Egypt’s and Jordan’s treaties with Israel.
Through her network of university, cultural and religious contacts in the US and Canada, she organises diplomatic tours supported by the Texas Holocaust, Genocide, and Antisemitism Advisory Commission (THGAAC). She has appeared alongside Arabs from Gulf states on regional podcasts, including “The Schmooze”, to discuss Arab-Israeli coexistence, the situation after 7 October and regional stability.
Another member of Sharaka’s staff is Alyssa Enis, a 26-year-old British Israeli who grew up in Manchester before moving to occupied Palestine with her parents as a teenager. Instead of serving in the army, she completed her service at the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, leading international groups learning about the Holocaust.
She studied at Reichman University and was the first to lead an Israeli student delegation to Morocco after the Abraham Accords were signed. She also organised conferences there titled “Israeli United Nations.” As Sharaka’s Holocaust education programme director, she manages international delegations from the Arab and Islamic worlds, organising activities in Israel, Poland and Germany to study Holocaust history. She also seeks to develop “contemporary Arab engagement to combat Holocaust denial.”
Although the organisation’s main website names its team members, it provides information only about its director, Amit Deri. Beyond their roles in the organisation, details about the other members are absent.
According to Alan MacLeod, a writer for the open-source investigations platform MintPress News, Sharaka is more than a non-governmental organisation. It is a central pillar of Israeli public relations, directly promoted by the Israeli government and Benjamin Netanyahu himself. Netanyahu has repeatedly posted videos of its members and participants praising him and thanking the “State of Israel.”
MacLeod traces Sharaka’s undeclared connections to Lorena Khatib, an Israeli Druze woman working in the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s digital diplomacy department. Her pro-Israel public relations work targets Muslims and Arabs. Her influence has earned her a place on a list of the world’s 30 most influential pro-Israel activists.
Khatib hosts radio programmes including “Voice of the Druze” and “The Arab Voice,” and runs the “Together, Arabs for One Another” association, which overlaps with Atidna. She also founded the “Druze on the Frontlines of Communication” project to train Druze youth in advocacy in Israel and abroad.
Another figure is David Brog, an American Jew and former executive director of the evangelical organisation Christians United for Israel. He has been active in Sharaka’s regional visits, particularly those to the UAE.
Sharaka’s undeclared connections also include Jerusalem’s deputy mayor, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, who describes herself as a supporter of the centre-right Likud party. She leads the UAE-Israel Business Council and the Gulf-Israel Women’s Forum. Another Sharaka volunteer is Yoseph Haddad, an Arab Christian who served in the Golani Infantry Brigade and became prominent in Israeli hasbara, particularly after participating in Holocaust remembrance ceremonies in the UAE.
Among the local organisations involved, alongside Atidna, which conceals itself behind the language of cooperation, is Habaith, or The Home. It is headed by Yishai Fleisher, spokesperson for the Kiryat Arba settlement in central Hebron, who advocates forcibly imposing sovereignty over and annexing the West Bank.
The Home was among the first groups to approach Emiratis sympathetic to Israelis. At the time, one of its leaders, Rudy Rochman, presented Emirati businesspeople with “Sidra,” a head covering resembling the Arab keffiyeh, but in blue and white.
On Arab Zionists
In September 2024, Sharaka organised a trip for 23 Moroccans to occupied Palestine, the first since 7 October. According to Sharaka director Feferman, the group faced harassment and criticism from media outlets in Morocco and Algeria, while petitions called for the “expulsion of the Zionists” from Morocco. Media coverage in those countries ignored Israel’s perspective, he said, leading to a narrative sympathetic to Hamas.
After praising the delegation’s “courage,” Feferman discussed the diplomatic and media responses of the Abraham Accords countries after 7 October. He said that “despite ensuring the safety of their citizens who engage with Israel they took no measures to punish harassment or online incitement (with the exception of the United Arab Emirates), and allowed extremist anti-Israel propaganda to spread widely across social media.”
In his view, this explains “the brave delegation’s yielding to pressure and its commitment to silence upon returning,” because their countries did not offer sufficient protection for them to share what they had seen on the border of the Gaza Strip and the conclusions they had drawn through their “human” engagement.
Feferman’s remarks also illustrate how Sharaka operates. Its approach, which has succeeded more in the UAE than elsewhere, rests on supporting engagement with Israel and overcoming caution in the face of public pressure to shape favourable regional and local opinion.
According to Feferman, this involves using state-controlled media to present news about Israel, giving Israeli guests access to their platforms, sending journalists to Israel to report, and engaging sympathetic influencers. It also involves ensuring that those “with bad intentions” are not allowed to spread misleading and extremist information.
While Feferman cautions against using “Zionist” or “Zionists” in his own remarks, some Arabs readily describe themselves as “Arab Zionists” and express sympathy with Israel. Among them is Dalia Ziada, an Egyptian graduate of Cairo University who insisted on standing by Israel and dedicating her life to “combating extremist Islamists and promoting dialogue between Arabs and Israelis.”
After 7 October, Ziada worked to counter the narrative of “the Israeli bombing of the Nova festival party,” prompting harassment and attacks against her. She subsequently joined the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies, where she recently became executive director, and became one of the Arab participants in Sharaka’s activities.
Another Egyptian is lecturer Haitham Hassanein, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a researcher at The Washington Institute. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, The Hill, the New York Daily News and The Jerusalem Post. He holds a master’s degree in Middle Eastern and African history from Tel Aviv University and was awarded top honours in his graduate class by an Israeli academic institution.
From Bahrain comes Fatema Al-Harbi, an activist whose sympathy for the entity has exceeded that of others. She promoted claims that she had personally seen videos of Israeli children with severed heads and women being raped in front of their families on 7 October. Al-Harbi worked at Bahrain’s Ministry of Education before the Abraham Accords, but became known as the first Bahraini woman to visit Israel. This qualified her to become deputy director of Sharaka’s Bahrain branch under Ahmed Al-Khuzaie. When he left to take up a regional position at HSBC Bank, she succeeded him as branch director.
Al-Harbi is highly active in defending Israel. She has appeared in recorded interviews with the far-right, Islamophobic US organisation PragerU, whose CEO, Marissa Streit, served in Unit 8200, defending the “model of ethnic and religious harmony in Israel.”
She also published a book titled “Fatema’s Journey to the Land of Abraham,” and has warm ties with the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Knesset members. She has given interviews to the pro-Israel Daily Wire, which advocates displacing Palestinians. She also recruits Bahraini youth by inviting them to joint activities with Israelis in Europe and Arab countries as a first step towards drawing them into normalisation.
Her defence of Israel has brought her a dozen opportunities, beginning with her appointment as a resident scholar at the University of Oxford in 2022, supported by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP). She was also selected as a peace ambassador for the European Commission and represented Bahrain at the UN Global Youth Summit for Change in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2023. In 2024, the Foreign Ministry nominated her for the prestigious International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), a US channel for shaping decision-makers worldwide.
Sharaka’s Arab Zionists also include Moroccan marketing and advertising entrepreneur Youssef El Azhari, founder of the “Fihriya” girls’ education project and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Leaders programme. Another is Ibtissam Al Azzawi, a member of Sharaka’s advisory council in Morocco, an academic and a municipal councillor in Rabat who is active in international diplomatic and political initiatives. The Amazigh artist Chamae Mchtaly is also among them.
From the UAE come blogger Hassan Sajwani and the Bahraini-Emirati-British Amjad Taha, who obtained Emirati citizenship shortly after the Abraham Accords and British citizenship a year later. Taha presents himself as a model Arab Zionist, defending Israel through his position as regional president of the British Cultural Center for Middle East Studies and Research.
He also participates in a series of events directly linked to the Jewish National Fund in Australia and Britain. After 7 October, he actively defended the occupation army, saying, “Humanity should thank Israel’s soldiers who are fighting terrorism,” and contributing articles and interviews to Israel Hayom and Israel’s Arabic-language Channel 24, as well as his YouTube channel. He regularly participates in Israeli events and Holocaust commemorations and has been particularly insistent in calling for the inclusion of the Holocaust in Arab school curricula.
Another figure is Majed Al Sarrah, an Emirati lecturer, public policy expert and Sharaka founder who led the first Emirati delegation to the Israeli entity. He has repeatedly expressed deep admiration for the occupation army, describing it as a “protector of children and women.” Alongside him from the UAE is linguist and social activist Luai Ahmed.
From Iraq comes Sheikh Ghaith Al Tamimi, an Iraqi Shia cleric. The “non-Arab Zionists” include Pakistani Sharaka board member Anila Ali, journalist Ahmed Quraishi and Faisal Khalid. Four years after contracting with The Jerusalem Post, Khalid discovered that his mother was Jewish. He then changed his name to “Fischel Ben Khalid,” launched a campaign to defend the Jewish cemetery in Pakistan and promoted himself as the country’s last Jew.
From Africa come the South African activist Jimmy Mighty and Gabi Farber, a student council member at the University of the Witwatersrand. From India come Makarand R. Paranjape; Subuhi Khan, a Muslim Supreme Court lawyer and founder and coordinator of the Rashtriya Jagran Abhiyan national campaign; Yusuf Taher Unjhawala, a researcher at the Takshashila Institution; Swapan Dasgupta, a former Rajya Sabha member and member of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s national executive; and Arif Hussain Thiruvath Mohammed, a doctor and former soldier.
These names rarely appear in the Arab and Islamic press, and few have anything resembling a credible career path. As soon as a “spirit of sympathy” for the occupation is detected, they are thrust into prominent regional and international positions. Hasbara uses them as evidence of a missing “humanity” and of cooperation with no real basis.
“Nonprofit”!
According to its official website, Sharaka has an astonishingly diverse range of local, regional and international partners. They include the local Youth Organizations Council, the humanitarian arm of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, the Regional Peace Conference, the Abraham Accords Group, the Abraham Accords Institute and the American Council for Muslim and Multifaith Women’s Empowerment.
The website does not disclose, however, the extensive support from official sources and Israeli government bodies, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, the military spokesperson, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Unit 8200. In the US, it also enjoys support from the Anti-Defamation League, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the American Jewish Committee, the pro-Israel US organisation StandWithUs, the Wilson Center, and several American Jewish federations and Israeli consulates.
In Britain, the organisation has ties to the UK Abraham Accords Group, the public affairs firm and international liaison officials in several British parties. In Germany, it is connected to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, and the German Holocaust education programme.
Its academic partnerships include Boston University and the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies; Brandeis University through the Hillel Center; Northwestern University; Emory University; and the University of California, Los Angeles, through the Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. Alongside its relationships with Israeli media, it also has strong ties to the right-wing platform PragerU.
Sharaka thus emerges as a unique model of Israeli public diplomacy, backed by Israel and the US. It is highly effective at conducting soft diplomacy and countering Arab and Muslim voices of resistance in universities and academic forums. It seeks to entrench warm normalisation and turn cold normalisation into something warmer.
The organisation also succeeds in presenting genocide through appeals to humanitarian feeling from the perpetrator’s perspective. At the same time, it foregrounds the Holocaust narrative and Israel’s desire to secure a place in the Arab region: a religious space, a space for understanding and cooperation, or an economic and academic space.
Yet it failed after 7 October. Its activities came to be identified by numbers, with names and individual identities absent, while its events were confined to a West that had lost its confidence. Efforts long directed at the Arab heartland seemed to have been fatally blindsided in the Western heartland. Reliance on Arab Zionist puppets appeared to offer the surest way to restore the image of a gentle Israel and its “humanitarian” narrative.
Sharaka in a time of mangled bodies
In his introduction to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, Jean-Paul Sartre writes: “The colonizer does not merely produce his jailers and firing squads; he also produces from among us those who justify that imprisonment and those executions.” Perhaps this offers one way to understand Sharaka: as another form of political production rather than a place for people to meet.
The organisation works through delegations and activities instead of cannons and knives, recruiting Arab Zionists instead of mercenaries to deliver a narrative that can reach further than bullets. Yet it does not reach the people of the land. It reaches Westerners, parliamentarians and academics searching for “Arabs who are not our Arabs” — faces that do not carry the pain of the victims of Israel and its wars or evoke the memory of colonialism that has set other parts of the world ablaze for centuries.
For such people, 7 October marks a turning point after which it is difficult to imagine Israel as a warm-hearted state. Images of mangled bodies and fires accumulate from the Gaza Strip, while the only mobilisation Sharaka can boast of is a silent delegation with no names, no fanfare and no impact.
Why does this amount to failure?
Because warm normalisation, and the institutions, networks and Sharaka it produced, set out to prove that Israel could be such a state. Instead, they proved that its very existence is a burden bearable only through coercion or payment. Despite its scientific and technological superiority, Western character and imperial roots, it still needs to “buy Arab tongues” to persuade the world of its legitimacy.
No natural entity borrows its enemies’ voices to prove itself. In no logical world does a state have a “partnership” that amounts to self-annihilation. No nation lives in fear and anxiety, mounts a security operation behind a diplomatic facade, then calls it a “partnership”!