1 00:00:02,260 --> 00:00:08,020 I was born to hate Jews. It was part of my life. I never questioned it. 2 00:00:08,020 --> 00:00:15,000 I was not born in Iran or Syria. I was born in England. My parents moved there from Pakistan. 3 00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:19,700 Theirs was the typical immigrant story: Move to the West in the hope of making a better 4 00:00:19,700 --> 00:00:22,200 life for themselves and their children. 5 00:00:22,200 --> 00:00:26,560 We were a devout Muslim family, but not extremist or radical in any way. 6 00:00:26,560 --> 00:00:32,280 We only wished the best for everyone -- everyone except the Jews. 7 00:00:32,280 --> 00:00:37,040 The Jews, we believed, were aliens living in stolen Muslim land, occupiers who were 8 00:00:37,050 --> 00:00:40,120 engaged in a genocide against the Palestinian people. 9 00:00:40,120 --> 00:00:43,460 Our hatred, therefore, was justified and righteous. 10 00:00:43,469 --> 00:00:48,080 And it made me and my friends vulnerable to the arguments of radical extremists. 11 00:00:48,080 --> 00:00:52,860 If the Jews were as evil as we had always believed, mustn’t those who support them 12 00:00:52,860 --> 00:00:57,640 – Christians, Americans, and others in the West – be just as evil? 13 00:00:57,640 --> 00:01:02,940 Beginning in the 1990s, speakers and teachers at mosques and in schools began to endlessly 14 00:01:02,940 --> 00:01:06,260 repeat this theme: We were not Western. 15 00:01:06,260 --> 00:01:07,780 We were not British. 16 00:01:07,780 --> 00:01:10,600 We were Muslims, first and only. 17 00:01:10,600 --> 00:01:13,880 Our loyalty was to our religion and to our fellow Muslims. 18 00:01:13,880 --> 00:01:17,160 We owed nothing to the Western nations that welcomed us. 19 00:01:17,160 --> 00:01:19,740 As Westerners, they were our enemies. 20 00:01:19,740 --> 00:01:24,100 All of this had its desired effect; at least, it did on me. 21 00:01:24,100 --> 00:01:26,619 It changed the way that I saw the world. 22 00:01:26,619 --> 00:01:32,899 I began to see the suffering of Muslims, including in Britain, as the fault of Western imperialism. 23 00:01:32,900 --> 00:01:37,380 The West was at war with us, and the Jews controlled the West. 24 00:01:37,380 --> 00:01:42,820 My experience at university in Britain only enhanced my increasingly radical beliefs. 25 00:01:42,820 --> 00:01:45,300 Hating Israel was a badge of honor. 26 00:01:45,300 --> 00:01:51,860 Stage an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian rally and you were sure to draw a large, approving crowd. 27 00:01:51,860 --> 00:01:57,660 While at university I decided the protests and propaganda against Israel were not enough. 28 00:01:57,660 --> 00:02:00,520 True jihad demanded violence. 29 00:02:00,529 --> 00:02:03,329 So I made plans to join the real fight. 30 00:02:03,329 --> 00:02:07,360 I would leave college and join a terrorist training camp in Pakistan. 31 00:02:07,360 --> 00:02:12,200 But fortunately for me, fate intervened...In a bookstore. 32 00:02:12,200 --> 00:02:17,700 I came across a book called The Case for Israel by Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz. 33 00:02:17,700 --> 00:02:19,620 The case for Israel? 34 00:02:19,620 --> 00:02:21,340 What case could there be? 35 00:02:21,340 --> 00:02:27,160 The title itself made me furious, and I began to read the pages almost as an act of defiance. 36 00:02:27,160 --> 00:02:32,060 How ill-informed, how stupid could this guy be to defend the indefensible? 37 00:02:32,060 --> 00:02:34,720 Well, he was a Jew. 38 00:02:34,720 --> 00:02:37,060 That had to be the answer. 39 00:02:37,060 --> 00:02:38,820 Still, I read. 40 00:02:38,820 --> 00:02:43,900 And what I read challenged all of my dogmas about Israel and the Jews: I read that it 41 00:02:43,909 --> 00:02:49,209 wasn't Israel that created the Palestinian refugee crisis; it was the Arab countries, 42 00:02:49,209 --> 00:02:53,120 the United Nations, and the corrupt Palestinian leadership. 43 00:02:53,120 --> 00:02:57,849 I read that Jews didn’t exploit the Holocaust to create the state of Israel – the movement 44 00:02:57,849 --> 00:03:01,999 to create a modern Jewish state dated back to the 19th century – and ultimately to 45 00:03:01,999 --> 00:03:05,559 the beginnings of the Jewish people almost 4,000 years ago. 46 00:03:05,560 --> 00:03:09,880 And I read that Israel is not engaged in genocide against the Palestinians. 47 00:03:09,880 --> 00:03:14,840 On the contrary, the Palestinian population has actually doubled in just twenty years. 48 00:03:14,840 --> 00:03:17,380 All this did was make me angrier. 49 00:03:17,380 --> 00:03:21,680 I needed to prove Dershowitz wrong, to see with my own eyes how racist and oppressive 50 00:03:21,680 --> 00:03:23,859 Israel really was. 51 00:03:23,859 --> 00:03:29,199 So I bought a plane ticket. I would travel to Israel, the home of my enemy. 52 00:03:29,200 --> 00:03:31,500 And that’s when everything changed. 53 00:03:31,500 --> 00:03:32,960 Everything. 54 00:03:32,960 --> 00:03:38,320 What I saw with my own eyes was even more challenging than what Dershowitz had written. 55 00:03:38,320 --> 00:03:43,220 Instead of apartheid, I saw Muslims, Christians and Jews coexisting. 56 00:03:43,220 --> 00:03:46,580 Instead of hate, I saw acceptance, even compassion. 57 00:03:46,590 --> 00:03:54,720 I saw a raucous, modern, liberal democracy, full of flaws, certainly, but fundamentally decent. 58 00:03:54,720 --> 00:03:59,580 I saw a country that wanted nothing more than to live in peace with its neighbors. 59 00:03:59,590 --> 00:04:02,819 I saw my hatred melting before my eyes. 60 00:04:02,819 --> 00:04:05,849 I knew right then what I had to do. 61 00:04:05,849 --> 00:04:11,069 Too many people on this planet are consumed with the same hatred that consumed me. 62 00:04:11,069 --> 00:04:15,650 They have been taught to despise the Jewish State – many Muslims by their religion; 63 00:04:15,650 --> 00:04:19,239 many others by their college professors or student groups. 64 00:04:19,239 --> 00:04:25,519 So here is my challenge to anyone who feels this way: do what I did, seek out the truth 65 00:04:25,520 --> 00:04:27,120 for yourself. 66 00:04:27,120 --> 00:04:31,000 If the truth can change me, it can change anyone. 67 00:04:31,000 --> 00:04:35,040 I’m Kasim Hafeez for Prager University.