The Qatar 2022 World Cup provides many materials, colorful and interesting, better and less good, and many more pages will be filled with studies in all fields about this World Cup, anthropological, sociological and behavioral studies including a return to the examination of Orientalism and what we know about the Islamic culture that resides near and among us.
I don't want to talk about how Qatar won the hosting of the World Cup, who paid and how much - all this is already history.
The Qatar World Cup put Israel in front of a very painful truth and reality for Israelis, for the first time the enthusiasts from the Arab or Persian Gulf saw and experienced firsthand the rejection, ignoring, hatred and non-acceptance of Israelis in an Arab Muslim country.
The World Cup in Qatar, photo: AP
All those who claim that the residents of the Gulf countries have no hostility towards the State of Israel are deluded and see a different reality.
The news reporters of the Israeli stations enthusiastically traveled to Qatar, set up cameras and waited for the many Arabs living in the Gulf and other Arab countries to come and praise Israel and the chosen people, but soon found themselves extorting contempt, avoidance and derision from these Arabs who have nothing against Israel and there were those who told them Because there is no such thing as Israel, there is only Palestine.
As an Israeli journalist who was and still is visiting Muslim and Arab countries, I was not surprised by the resounding disapproval from the majority of the Arab fans who did not agree to be interviewed by Israeli television.
slap
Only someone who does not understand the moods in the Arab world, among the people, the common people and the average citizen, would rush to set up a camera and beg an Arab to be interviewed by an Israeli station.
It was shameful to see an Israeli journalist pleading and begging and even hugging an interviewee live for exhorting him and saying a good word about Israel, which turned out to be referring to the Palestinians and not the Israelis.
Really a resounding slap in the face to anyone who thinks that peace is at hand and that normalization with Arab countries is only a matter of time.
The behavior of the average Arab citizen towards Israel indicates hostility that is more than 70 years old, it indicates that the root of the problem is still alive and kicking and slapping hard.
Those who don't want to see it should close their eyes, but the bitter and difficult reality and, in my eyes, the painful one, is that if the Palestinian issue is not resolved in some way, and is acceptable to all parties, we are not and will not be welcome in the Arab countries, not even in those with which we have peace and normalization agreements.
It is enough if we go back to the days of the signing of the peace agreements with Egypt to understand how we did not make progress in confronting the Egyptian people who are most hostile to Israel, and remained with the same wrong conception of agreements between the leaders only.
The Qatar World Cup will continue to provide us with good football but also an unmediated glimpse into the interesting world of the Muslim, Arab and other peoples of the region.
The writer is a journalist for the Saudi website "Ilaaf"
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