In a recent meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution pointed out that certain governments are inclining toward the Zionist regime. Imam Khamenei emphasized that “Despite certain governments’ interest in the Zionist regime, nations totally oppose this usurper.” Prior to that, the Leader told Bashar al-Assad in a meeting with the Syrian President, “Some of the heads of neighboring countries meet with the heads of the Zionist regime and drink coffee with them. However, the people of those same countries pour into the streets on [International] Quds Day chanting anti-Zionist slogans. This is the reality of the region today.”
During a meeting in June with a group involved in organizing the Hajj ceremony, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution clarified that “These Arab and non-Arab states that have gone against the will of their nations, have moved toward normalizing relations with the Zionist regime at the order of the United States. They should know that these meetings will leave them with nothing but their being exploited by the Zionist regime.” Even though some of the heads of state in the region have chosen the path of normalizing relations with the Zionist regime, the rising anti-Zionist feeling in their nations - which has been manifested in the various demonstrations and protest marches that have been held – revealed the depth of the nations’ opposition to the policy of normalizing relations.
At present, officials from six different countries have officially signed an agreement to normalize relations with the Zionist regime despite public opposition. The agreement for Egypt to normalize relations with the Zionist regime, known as the Camp David Accords, was signed on September 17, 1978. After Egypt’s agreement, on October 26, 1994, the second Arab country, Jordan, signed an agreement known as the Wadi Araba Treaty to normalize relations with the Zionists.
In addition to these, on September 15, 2020, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed an agreement in Washington titled The Abraham Accords to normalize relations with the Zionists. Maghreb and Sudan also signed the Abraham Accords on December 10, 2020, and January 06, 2021, respectively. Even though Saudi Arabia has not yet signed an agreement to normalize relations with the Zionists, efforts are currently underway to finalize such an accord. In this regard, Yair Lapid, the interim Prime Minister of the Zionist regime, said a while ago that, “Israel is making arrangements with the US and [Persian] Gulf countries in order to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia.”
The surveys that have been conducted by various think tanks and organizations regarding the general population’s opinion about the agreements to normalize relations with the Zionist regime so far have clearly shown the people’s opposition to establishing any sort of relations with Tel Aviv. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy [WINEP] announced that this year’s poll, which is titled Arab Public Opinion on Arab-Israeli Normalization and Abraham Accords, shows that the level of public support for the Abraham Accords has significantly decreased compared to the previous year, i.e., in 2021. According to the survey by WINEP, 71 percent of those who were asked in Bahrain about their opinion of the Abraham Accords have declared that they are against this agreement. 76 percent of the respondents in the UAE and 75 percent in Saudi Arabia have also declared their opposition to the Abraham Accords.
On the other hand, a high degree of public opposition to the normalization of relations can be seen in Jordan even though it was the second country where officials signed an agreement to normalize relations with the Zionist regime. The results of a survey showed that 80 percent of Jordanians are against any form of relations between Arab countries and the Zionist regime. Another survey titled Taking Arabs’ Pulse on Normalization of Ties with Israel was conducted by the website of an independent, non-partisan research center known as Arab Barometer. This survey indicates a wider public opposition in Jordan to the normalization of relations with Tel Aviv. In this survey, which was conducted in October 2020 (a month after the signing of the Abraham Accords), 97 percent of Jordanian respondents said they were against any compromise with the Zionists.
The results of the survey by the Arab Barometer in other countries is also worth taking note of. Based on these results, 93 percent of people in Libya, 92 percent in Tunisia, 91 percent in Algeria, 91 percent in the Maghreb, and 80 percent in Lebanon are against the normalization of ties with the Zionist regime. Furthermore, among the different groups of Lebanese people, 50 percent of Christians, 89 percent of Druze, 94 percent of Sunnis, and more than 99 percent of Shi’as oppose the normalization of relations with Tel Aviv. In Egypt, a survey was conducted in 2019 and 2020 – i.e., 40 years after Cairo had signed a peace treaty with the Zionist regime. The results indicated that 87 percent of respondents had stated they were against relations with Tel Aviv.
In addition to the general public’s opinion, various groups in society have continued to express their opposition to the Zionist regime in different ways. As an example, athletes in various sporting fields and from different countries have refused to compete with representatives of the Zionist regime in sports competitions as a show of their support for Palestine and their opposition to Israel. Over the past decades, tens of athletes from the Arab world have refused to compete with Zionist athletes. They even chose to pass on the rewards and medals that were awaiting them.
A few days ago, Algerian football player Ahmed Touba refused to accompany his team, Istanbul Basaksehir, to Occupied Palestine to play with the Zionist team as a sign of support for the Palestinian nation and opposition to the normalization of relations with the Zionist regime. At the same time, the public opinion still hasn’t forgotten the name of the famous Algerian judo player Fethi Nourine who withdrew from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics due to her refusal to face the representative of the Zionist regime. Meanwhile, Abdel Rahman Ben Emadi is another Algerian judo player who refused to compete with a Zionist rival. In 2019, the female Tunisian boxer, Misa Al-Abasi, refused to compete with her Zionist opponent in support of Palestine and in opposition to the Zionist regime. Iraqi athlete Ali al-Kinani, Lebanese athlete Yousef Al-Aboud, Algerian athlete Sabrina Latrash, Saudi athlete Judy Fahmy, Libyan athlete Muhammad Al-Hadi Al-Kuwaiseh, Egyptian athlete Muhammad Abu Trikeh, Kuwaiti athlete Abdullah Al-Anjari, Jordanian athlete Raafat Al-Sradih and many other athletes have refused to compete with Zionists in order to declare their support for Palestine.
On the other hand, boycotting the Zionist regime in various scientific, cultural, academic, economic fields, etc. is also considered to be another dimension of anti-Zionist approaches. This approach became more evident in 2005 with the establishment of the global campaign to boycott the Zionist regime, which was known as the BDS movement. In creating this campaign, the Palestinian civil society called on the world to widely boycott the Zionist regime. During the beginning of its campaign, the BDS movement was able to isolate the Zionist regime in academic, cultural, political, and to some extent economic fields. This is exactly why the Zionist regime considers this campaign “a strategic risk” to itself.
Many scientific and academic centers joined the BDS movement in support of Palestine and in opposition to the Zionist regime. For example, the International Association of University Professors in the UK welcomed the idea of a scientific and academic boycott of the Zionist regime in 2006. It was in February 2015 that five universities in South Africa announced that they had stopped their academic and cultural activities and cooperation with the Zionist regime. The heads of these universities announced during a joint press conference that they had made this decision in response to the Zionist regime’s killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
In November 2015, the United States’ largest academic center, the American Anthropological Association, announced that it was boycotting all the academic institutions and organizations of the Zionist regime. This center consists of 12,000 academics and researchers. In December of that same year, the university in the city of Barcelona in Spain also announced the termination of all relations with the universities of the Zionist regime. This progressed to such an extent that even the Zionists themselves described the expansion of the boycott on Tel Aviv in various fields to be a threat. In this regard, a former president of the Zionist regime, Reuven Rivlin, admitted that “academic boycotts against Israel are a strategic threat.”
Kuwait and Algeria prevented the broadcast of the movie Death on the Nile because the main role was played by a female who used to serve as a soldier for the Zionist regime’s army.
The main role in this movie was played by Gal Gadot, a former female soldier of the Zionist regime’s army. Gadot had previously dismissed the killing of Palestinian children in [Israel’s] 2014 War on Gaza as being insignificant. Social media activists in Kuwait and many Arab countries have protested the selection of Gadot to play the main role in this movie.
Furthermore, Irish author Sally Rooney has not allowed the translation of her new novel titled Beautiful World, Where Are You into Hebrew in order to declare her solidarity with the Palestinians. The Times newspaper in the UK has announced that Rooney has joined those who have culturally boycotted the Zionist regime and that she opposes the translation of her new novel into Hebrew.
What’s been mentioned is only a small part of the movement to boycott the Zionist regime. It shows that contrary to some heads of states’ eagerness to normalize and publicize relations with the Zionist regime, various sections of the public opinion are deeply opposed to these relations, and they’ve shown this opposition in many different ways.
