I once opposed Israel, but then I met its unlikely allies

I challenge you to name a place where a Coptic Egyptian who once considered himself anti-Zionist could spend two days in candid conversation with Jews, Druze, Muslim reformers, Iranians, Assyrians and representatives from Somaliland.

That was the scene in late June, when I traveled to London for the Tel Aviv Institute’s New Middle East Laboratory, a gathering of activists, writers and community leaders brought together to explore what a genuinely different Middle East might look like.

The goal wasn’t to manufacture consensus or paper over disagreements. It was to create a space where people whose communities have spent generations talking past—and often fighting—one another could finally speak honestly.

Two years ago, I never imagined I would accept an invitation to anything like it.

For nearly two decades, I was immersed in the “Free Palestine” movement. Like many others, I viewed Israel as the primary obstacle to peace. But the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, followed by the moral contradictions I witnessed among many pro-Palestinian activists in the West, forced me to confront assumptions I had long taken for granted. That journey led me somewhere I never expected: from seeing Israel as the villain to believing its existence is not only justified, but essential.

Even so, I arrived in London assuming that I would spend most of the time defending my views. Given my public criticism of radical Islamist ideology, I expected to be the room’s resident “Islamophobe.” Instead, I found myself seated directly across from three Muslim reformers.

We spoke candidly about Islam, history, extremism and reform. They didn’t dismiss my concerns, and I didn’t dismiss theirs. We challenged one another without questioning each other’s motives. By the end of those conversations, I realized we were united by something more important than the issues that divided us: a belief that our communities deserved a future free from those who weaponize religion to justify violence.

One encounter, in particular, changed the way I think about these discussions.

Among the participants was Hussain Abdul-Hussain, whose book The Arab Case for Israel I had enthusiastically recommended only weeks earlier. During a discussion about Islamic texts often cited by extremists, he made an observation that has stayed with me ever since: “I don’t want to encourage self-hatred.”

His point wasn’t that difficult truths should be ignored or that extremism should be excused. It was that confronting destructive ideas should never require an entire people to despise themselves or inherit collective guilt. That distinction crystallized something I had been struggling to articulate.

In the months leading up to the conference, I had begun asking whether I was communicating in the most effective way possible. I still believe radical Islamist ideology deserves scrutiny. But was I creating opportunities for reform-minded Muslims and Arabs to join that conversation? Or was I making it harder for them to hear what I was actually trying to say?

The conversations in London didn’t answer all my questions completely. They did, however, convince me that persuasion and coalition-building require more than simply being right. They require creating space for people who share your goals, even if they arrive there via a different path.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was that some of the strongest voices defending Israel’s place in the Middle East were not Jewish at all.

They were Arab intellectuals, Iranian dissidents, Muslim reformers and others who have experienced firsthand what Islamist movements do to the societies they claim to represent. They disagreed with one another on history, politics, religion, and even aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet they shared a conviction that extremism threatens all of their communities, not just Israel.

This is a story that rarely breaks through outside the region.

The Middle East is often portrayed as a collection of rigid, irreconcilable camps: Arab versus Israeli or Muslim versus Jew. Sitting in that room, I saw something different taking shape. I saw an emerging coalition of people who refused to let extremists define their identity, dictate their politics or determine their future.

Earlier, I challenged you to imagine a room where people from communities with generations of conflict choose dialogue over division.

Two years ago, I never imagined I would find myself in that room. Today, I believe the future of the Middle East depends on building many more rooms like it.