Dr. Fayez Sayegh on Historic Coexistence: Arabs and Jews Lived Together Before Zionism
December 14, 2025“Until the rise of Zionism, it was perfectly normal for Jews and Arabs to live together in our part of the world.”
In this clip from Firing Line, Dr. Fayez Sayegh answers William F. Buckley Jr.’s question on the possibility of coexistence between Arabs and Jews under a single government in historic Palestine. He criticized the international community’s failure to recognize Palestinian collective rights and advocated for one democratic state where Palestinians, Christians, Muslims, and Jews could live together, dismantling the Zionist apparatus.
Sayegh, a Syrian-Palestinian-American scholar and diplomat, was a pioneering voice on Middle East politics and Palestinian rights. In his seminal work Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, he argued that Palestinian people would never accept “a fraction of rights in a fraction of their homeland” and identified Zionist racial principles—segregation, exclusivity, supremacy—as the foundation of apartheid in Palestine.
For centuries, Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews lived alongside Arabs in North Africa and the Levant, sharing language, customs, and traditions—proof that coexistence was historically normal.
#Palestine #EndApartheid #JusticeForPalestine
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