RADIO INTERVIEW: Shloime Zionce Talks About Israel - UAE Peace Deal W/ Howard Feldman 101.9 CHAI FM

101.9 high fm one nation one station it is 7 16. i'm howard feldman a very good morning to you it is the 28th of five seven eight zero it's tuesday it's the 18th of august at 20 at 20. some time ago a hasset i mean it sounds like a start of a joke but ah walked in to our studio and i had really no idea what this bloke was going to be speaking to us about he was visiting south africa at the time and uh i recall being completely blown away by his energy by his approach and by the fact that as he is in other words visually so um orthodox religious he has traveled around the world building bridges and uh i found him completely inspiring when the uae deal was announced i got hold of him and i thought uh just to to ask him to come and speak to us so the uae and israel of course as you know and as we've discussed have agreed to diplomatic relations and uh and uh we've decided uh we've asked to speak to shloymi zions he's a writer filmmaker and a peace activist good morning how are you good morning good morning hi excellent thank you lovely to chat it to you again although obviously it'd always be better in a studio either way it's absolutely awesome to speak to you when were you in south africa we zanetti and i earlier were trying to figure it out and we couldn't really remember when that was i believe it was the second or third week of january right before all the madness started this year nonsense it must have been at least it was like 10 years ago minimum it could not have been this could not have been 2020 there's just no chance uh but wow that just shows you time is completely elastic this year we've got no sense of uh we've got no sense of anything and and at the time you were in studio we spoke about your amazing travels um as a hasidic due to various parts of the world and the warmth and the the the love and the friendships that you had established have established all around the world one of them one of the places was in the uae take us through that remind our listeners who might have missed that interview okay so uh in december of sorry in september of 2019 i made it to the uae for the first time it was one of the places that i'd always wanted to go for over 10 years since i was a child i just wanted to go to dubai i thought it was the coolest place in the world i ended up there and a friend of mine had told me that you can walk around in dubai openly as a hasidic jew and no one's going to kill you and i thought oh that's so cool i gotta try that so i show up at the airport and my parents are hanging out i got my yamaka and i just show up to passport control they stamp me right in no questions asked i get out rent my car everyone's people are waving at me people are smiling but nobody's killing me so i said you know what i'll let me go to my hotel and see if i can make this work i go to the hotel everybody's nice to me and i said okay i'm gonna start wandering the streets like this and all i got were people who wanted to take selfies with me people who wanted to tell me that i was welcomed there and i was completely blown away i've returned since then uh i was there again in january the week before actually the week before i was in your studio i was in the uae again and all i've gotten was love it's a wonderful country full of tolerant people it doesn't matter if you're jewish if you're a christian if you're it doesn't matter who you are you are welcome in the uae it's incredible we spoke on on friday just as this news broke we spoke to ross creel who is one of the leaders of the jewish community then and and he he echoed the same thing is that all they see there uh in fact he spoke about it on the radio that the first time they had a a shabbat minion and they didn't have a torah but they had hashem and they were all in his lounge and there's somebody knocked on the door and they all went scuttling off in different directions to hide just in case they weren't allowed it just happened to be the gardener coming to get a glass of water but but he they soon realized that there's an incredible amount of tolerance and interest and fascination and acceptance with with uh amongst people and i thought that is really unbelievable you've been to the uae haven't you i've been to the uae yes i mean the i've been to dubai on on the on on occasion you know when i would have a let's say 12 hour layover and i would go into into the city but but i never had i've never spent considerable time there which is always the better way you know just spending a few days is how you can actually get to know the people so i've always found it uh to be to be tremendous um in your experience and you've where else have you traveled to in uh in the middle east or in in what we would have considered uh dangerous areas for a hasidic jew egypt jordan the uae saudi arabia qatar bahrain um amazing afghanistan and and what's your experience in in those places pick one or any of those and tell us about that so everyone is different i think turkey still has a way to go for tolerance obviously i'm not going to walk around afghanistan like a hasidic jew i tried the same thing in qatar it wasn't bad but it wasn't the same as the uae saudi arabia is not culturally ready to to make peace with israel in my opinion i think it's going to happen one day but i don't think they're going to be the next um really i walked around bahrain as an openly hasidic jew that was a wonderful experience they definitely might be next yes i believe that there is talk that there might be one of the countries you know one of the areas to follow who do you think would be next i don't like to make these kind of predictions i the main thing i think is important that there is going to be another one and hopefully many more i like to look at the conflict in the middle east as a metaphor for conflict all over the world and judging by what happened on thursday if the united arab emirates and israel could make peace which is a an islamic country and a jewish and the only jewish state can make peace anybody can make peace anywhere so this is super inspiring and i think we all need to internalize that and realize that all conflict is unnecessary and it can be worked out there seems to be a trend at the moment to distinguish between the people of the country and the governments of the country and we've certainly seen that in iran we see israel constantly reaching out to the people of iran and distinguishing between the two is this an observation that you've made on your travels as well so i can say in the uae i don't see much of a difference between the government and the people i think they're both super tolerant and and that's the way it is in other countries there definitely are uh differences between the governments and the people i don't like to uh spend too much time on these things because i believe and people will call me crazy but i believe that somehow somewhere someday there's an opportunity for israel and iran to become friends as well i don't know how it's going to happen but i think once people realize that it's better for everybody and if we truly have the best in mind for the people then the governments should take that action and make it happen i happen to share your view and and maybe it's incredibly naive but i do believe in the goodness of man and the goodness of people that uh that that people connect because we all essentially want the same thing what do we all want we want to live happy contented lives for ourselves for our wives for our families for our children we want to live in a world that that is filled with positive and not negative one you know i believe that there's actually very there are very few people in the world that wouldn't see those things as a priority and that means that essentially as long as you can connect on a human level and share the humor shared human experience there's nothing stopping us from doing that 100 and i want to tell you something there are certain countries for example saudi arabia where i wouldn't feel comfortable yet travelingly open traveling openly as a jew meaning that i'll have to hide my peace my kipa and wear a hat or something but there have been many times when i've been in saudi arabia and i've had a talk with a taxi driver or somebody on the boardwalk you know we're looking at the water at sunset and you can talk to somebody for 10 15 20 minutes and then you say you know by the way i'm jewish and it blows their mind because if they would have known you were jewish in the beginning they would never have spoken to you but once they see that you're human and you just want the same things as them you have an opportunity to completely change somebody's life and change the way they think about the world and they can change their family and it's a domino effect that never ends but how do we amplify the voices of the people that actually believe in peace and tolerance because it seems like a lot of media for example is you know tends to be hijacked by you know all the negative talk how do we amplify those voices so i think social media is great for this you know in the past i'd say 20 or 30 years ago if you had somebody my age living in israel i was told my whole life that the arabs hate you the muslims hate you they want to kill you and then you have some you could have somebody my age living in saudi arabia or in uae who's hearing the same thing in the media the jews are occupiers and they they like to you know kill palestinian kids or whatever and that was the narrative you believed because there was no other option but now you can log into twitter snapchat facebook instagram youtube and you see real people your age who all they want in life is to be happy and have a good time and and do meaningful things so that narrative that the media controlled once upon a time is they're losing their monopoly and you get to see real people speaking their opinions and i think this is one of the things that has contributed to the fact that so many people are open to peace because they see people on the other side and they see it real it's unfiltered it's just you know it is what it is and i think this is a great way to uh to build the connections with people on so online social media make friends reach out be open to people who are different i think it's a wonderful thing yeah just tell us about your journey how did you get to become a peace activist well it sort of happened by accident it's a long story i'll try to make it really short i i went to egypt when i was 18 years old uh i was learning in yeshiva and israel and i a friend of mine and i we decided to go to tabba which is right at the southern border of israel with a lot um we went there for 24 hours we were terrified we thought we were doing the most dangerous thing in the world and we literally called a friend in israel we told him listen we were going into egypt for 24 hours if you don't hear from us in 24 hours call the army call the cia call everybody we're in big trouble we go over the border we didn't even we turned off our phones we didn't even know that it was so close to israel that our phones would still work late that night we walked into a little mall near the beach and there were these two uh young shopkeepers one's name was sammy and one names was michael the coptic christians actually and they invited us into their shop we were terrified we're like okay keep an eye on you know where the door is how would we find an exit if we have to run they invited us in they just poured us tea and gave us cigarettes and we sat there for six hours and smoking and sipping tea and talking about our lives and we realize these people are so similar to us these people had zero haters seems to have astronomy can you hear us i hear you do you hear me oh there we go now you're back right and so you spent hours and hours there smoking cigarettes drinking tea and just talking about uh just talking about life yeah and i walked out of there with a whole new perspective on life like there's so many people who i thought hated me and now maybe they don't fast forward a couple years i just love traveling i started working for ami magazine they started sending me around the world i went to saudi arabia with the first time they opened up for tourism and after i got back i printed this article in our magazine it was all about saudi arabia the you know the jewish community loved it a couple months later an israeli newspaper called the magazine and asked if they can reprint the article so we worked out a deal they reprint the article on the on the front of their saturday edition and the whole arab world goes nuts people were upset an israeli spy was allowed into saudi arabia there's all sorts of misinformation so i made this video clearing up the issues you know explaining what happened i'm not an israeli i'm certainly not a spy i came to saudi arabia with love with friendship with curiosity i had a great time and i just you know just put my ideas out there the video went quasi-viral it's gotten over 65 000 views at this point oh the line is the line is coming and going so you're saying that the video got about 55 65 000 views and i just got so many comments from people saying welcome to my country thank you for for visiting we're inspired by this and since that experience in saudi arabia i've just decided that you know i'm able to change jewish people's minds on arab countries i'm able to change arab people's minds on jews and i think it's a wonderful thing i think we really open our eyes there's so much opportunity for making the world a better place absolutely amazing and just unfortunately we do need to leave it there but but what an amazing and inspiring story and uh just keep just keep doing what you're doing because uh hopefully the more you do it the more minds you change and the more people realize that that we really can connect on a on a human and real level that is writer filmmaker peace act