George Deek is an anomaly: a young Christian Arab who became Israel’s first Christian Arab ambassador when he was appointed envoy to Azerbaijan in 2019.
He could have been raised to hate Jews and Israel. He could have despised America. His journey is one everyone should know. He represents a generation of young people who are becoming today’s leaders.
While attending a private event at the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem to mark the launch of Bishop Robert Stearns’s Israel Christian Nexus, a pastoral leadership network, I was captivated by the carefully crafted words of this rising diplomat.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the city’s second-youngest mayor, sits at the opposite end of the spectrum and preaches hate. He is busy contemplating whether he would arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he attends the UN General Assembly in September.
Mamdani recently skipped the Israel Day Parade, has backed congressional candidates who defend the terrorist organization Hamas, has said he would not travel to Israel, and has said he would arrest Netanyahu if he were to visit the Big Apple.
Adding insult to injury, the mayor left Jewish enclaves in Brooklyn, along with Little Italy and Irish neighborhoods, off a tourist map called the “Neighborhood Passport.”
Deek epitomizes hope. He shared the story of his grandparents fleeing Jaffa as Israel’s War of Independence was underway. He said they had been told that the Israelis would kill all the Arabs.
A year later, after fleeing to Lebanon, his grandfather realized that he had been lied to and embarked on a journey back to Israel on foot. Upon arriving, he was arrested, leaving Deek’s grandmother alone in a country whose language she did not speak.
With a baby in her arms, she went to the offices of the Rutenberg Electric Company, where Deek’s grandfather had worked, and began knocking on doors.
According to Deek, she found her husband’s former employer, who not only secured his release from jail but also gave him his job back at the company that later became the Israel Electric Corporation.
His grandfather became the first Arab to work there.
Learning from George Deek
At 42, Ambassador Deek is not a Palestinian refugee living in Lebanon but the Jewish state’s envoy to the Christian world.
He grew up in the Greek Orthodox tradition, a minority within a minority.
After studying law, Deek attended Georgetown University as a Fulbright scholar and became deeply familiar with the West.
“I am part of the Jewish State, which is a minority in the Arab Muslim Middle East,” he said.
To Deek, civilizations are colliding. Referring to the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries, he described the failure of Arab nationalism, which “promised dignity and brought repression.”
“The problem was that we were not religious enough, and that is the entry of political Islam into the fora, and the same hate that took out the Jews in the 40s and 50s is not after the Christians, Yazidis, Jews, and others in the region. The hate that begins with the Jews never ends with the Jews,” he said.
“The only difference is when they came for the Jews, the Jews had Israel. When they’re coming for the Christians, all Christians have is the airport.”
He sees Israel as central to this clash of civilizations. The world is not becoming more democratic, he said, placing the West in a predicament increasingly similar to that of the East.
Speaking to pastors gathered in the room and watching online from around the world, Deek offered his interpretation of the historical moment.
“I’m speaking as a friend of the West. I’m speaking as someone who shares the biblical heritage of the Christian world, and I speak as someone who has seen what a wrong answer to that question might bring, because at this point there are two possible answers. A culture of blame, of victimhood, or a culture of responsibility.”
Mamdani might learn from Deek’s story.
It is precisely the Deeks of the world – people who straddle the seams of identity and whose families chose truth over lies – who offer an antidote to the anti-Western, anti-Israel hatemongers challenging the foundations of democracy.
More effort and support should be directed toward those who are confronting the enemies of civilization.
There are George Deeks among us, many of them quietly waiting to be found.
The writer is president and CEO of The Media Line news agency and founder of the Press and Policy Student Program, the Mideast Press Club, and the Women’s Empowerment Program. She can be reached at ffriedson@themedialine.org.
Source:
www.jpost.com
