How Does Israel Turn Arab Voices Into a Tool for Defending Its Crimes?
TEHRAN (Defapress) - Rassool Hussein Abu al-Sabbah - While the Zionist regime’s war machine is targeting land and people in Palestine and Lebanon, and the blood of martyrs is flowing on the earth in defense of the dignity of the Islamic nation and its sanctities, another battle is also underway behind the scenes that is no less dangerous than a military war, a cognitive and media war that aims to distort the consciousness of nations and reconstruct cultural and religious concepts in the region.
At the head of this soft system is the “Sharaka” organization, a diplomatic institution that was formed after the so-called Abraham Accords in 2020 and began its activities with attractive slogans such as “peacemaking” and “curing Muslim hatred of Jews.” But beyond these seemingly humanitarian titles, this organization seeks to purify the face of the occupation in the Arab world and gradually transform a group of Arabic-speaking figures into defenders of the Zionist narrative in international arenas; People who, although they speak Arabic, are carriers of the Zionist discourse in content and orientation.
The Partnership Organization was founded with the participation of a number of young activists from the Zionist regime and some Persian Gulf and North African countries, claiming to "build bridges between nations." However, a close examination of its communications network, financial resources, and American partners shows that this organization has extensive ties to Israel's political, military, and security structures. Therefore, it cannot be considered an independent NGO, but rather should be considered part of the "warm normalization" or "cultural and social normalization" project, a project that aims to bypass official agreements and directly influence the cultural and historical context of Arab societies.
To advance its goals, this organization pursues a targeted strategy of attracting young Arab elites, content producers, and media activists. Within this framework, organized trips to the occupied territories are prepared for these individuals, and participants meet with Israeli political and military officials in intensive programs to present them with a one-sided and distorted narrative of the regional conflict.
The ultimate goal of this process is to influence the mentality of the younger generation and distance them from their national and Islamic identity. Then, these same individuals are used in the battlefield of narratives to confront the Resistance movement and defend the Zionist regime through cyberspace and international circles, in such a way that support for the occupation is presented as a position arising from Arab and Islamic voices.
The danger of this cultural influence is compounded when such institutions attempt to establish themselves in diverse religious environments and undermine the social bases supporting the resistance. From this perspective, Shiite communities need to be more vigilant than ever about the political goals and contexts of these movements. The partnership’s approach is based on the strategy of “changing the enemy,” which means convincing Arab and Islamic public opinion that the Zionist regime is no longer the main enemy and instead presenting the Resistance forces as a threat.
Within this framework, concepts such as “Abrahamicism,” “interfaith dialogue,” and “coexistence” are purposefully used to convey specific political themes that ultimately undermine the fundamental values of Islam—both Shiite and Sunni—in confronting oppression, supporting the oppressed, and resisting occupation.
The network also tries to attract figures and elites from Shiite communities in the Persian Gulf countries, Iraq, and Lebanon, and present them as symbols of "openness" and "moderation", but the real goal of this process is to create a gap in the ideological and political consensus of the currents opposing the occupation and to instill the impression that these communities have also joined the normalization train.
If in previous years, the partnership had managed to hide its activities behind slogans of peace and coexistence, the developments after the Operation Al-Aqsa Storm on October 7th revealed many realities. Since the start of the extensive war against Gaza, this organization has practically become the propaganda arm of the Zionist regime, and some figures affiliated with it have worked to justify Israel's military actions, discredit the victims, and confront solidarity movements in universities and Western capitals.
This trend further highlights the fact that confronting Israel's regional projects is not limited to the military arena, but also requires a comprehensive confrontation with its cultural, media, and cognitive tools. "Proxy normalization" should be considered one of the most important identity and intellectual challenges of the Islamic world, a challenge that requires continuous awareness-raising, enlightenment of elites, and exposure of soft influence mechanisms in Islamic societies.
In such circumstances, the responsibility of scholars, thinkers, and media activists becomes more important than ever, because maintaining public awareness and preserving the historical memory of nations will be the most important barrier against the Zionist regime's soft and hard projects.
