In Conversation with Professor Mohammed Dajani Daoudi Part Two 15 July 2020

Welcome back to our campaign, "Give Peace a Chance!"

Watch episode two of our conversation with Professor Mohammed Dajani Daoudi, Palestinian Scholar, Peace Activist & Founder of the Wasitia Movement, a moderate Islamic movement in the Middle East, which is slowly gaining momentum in other parts of the world!

In this episode, we continue discussing extremism and how it manifests in both Palestine & Israel.

Dajani also explains how the extreme voices dominate over the more moderate Muslims who are much larger in number in the world.

Thank you for joining us & warm regards

In July 2020 we kicked off our campaign with Professor Mohammed S Dajani Daoudi, a Palestinian Scholar & Founder of Wasatia in Jerusalem.

"I was a revolutionary, I am still a revolutionary, but I am a revolutionary for peace. Before I was a revolutionary for war, now I am a revolutionary for peace. There comes a time when I was very angry in my life, very bitter, it was us or them, because my family, my conflict and my people were in 1948 subjected to a very brutal experience, and there was a lot of anger and bitterness. We did survive in terms of persistence, We survived to keep our identity and then we depended on the Arabs to help us liberate Palestine, and then in 1967 the June war proved that the Arabs were not up to the responsibility so the Palestinians took it upon themselves to liberate Palestine by armed struggle and for a long period of time I believed in that and was part of that resistance movement but yet also I went through a period of going to the United States studying there, I had two PHD’s there, which gave me a lot of time to think and mellow – I was forbidden from returning to Israel and Palestine between 1967 and 1993, so when I came back my personal experiences helped me shift from being angry from wanting to revenge to wanting to co-exist through personal experiences which awakened me to the humanity in the other.

I think being able to see the other in terms of the human essence for the other is very important so I stopped seeing Israel as one entity, but I saw Israel as several entities, there is the good, there is the bad, there are those who are for peace and those who are against peace, and so that is why I felt the need to co-operate, with the peace camp in order to achieve peace for all and address extremism, radicalism that prevail within this conflict, in order to bring an end to this conflict."