Wall Street Journal |Yaroslav Trofimov: Sunni monarchies, led by Saudi Arabia, increasingly see the Jewish state as a partner in a common struggle against Shia Iran
For decades, rejection of Israelsometimes mixed with outright anti-Semitismhas been a defining theme of Arab politics, uniting bickering countries against a common foe.
Former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader who was deposed in a 2013 coup, had gone on TV three years earlier to brand Jews as descendants of apes and pigs. In 1988, the Palestinian militant group Hamas adopted a covenant that cited the notorious anti-Semitic forgery known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as proof of a global Jewish conspiracy.
But attitudes are beginning to change in some parts of the Arab world. Mohammad bin Abdul Karim al-Issa, the secretary-general of the Muslim World League, a Saudi-based global organization that has been accused of spreading extremism, recently pointed to a lesson in coexistence from Islams past. The neighbor of the Prophet [Muhammad] was a Jew, and when that Jew was ill, the Prophet visited him and gave him kind words, said Mr. al-Issa, who is also a former Saudi minister of justice. The hard-liners dont wish to know that.