By Alexander Maistrovoy ——Bio and Archives--June 4, 2025

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The war in Gaza and the “sinat chinam” in Israel itself, when the elite openly turned against its own people, made me remember an interview I conducted almost 20 years ago, in the now distant year of 2007. My interlocutor was the historian Asher Eder from Jerusalem. He was not so famous, he was not invited to prestigious world conferences, forums, TV studios; he had no titles or positions. But I think he could give them all a head start in erudition.

His story was amazing: an ethnic German, a former member of the Hitler Youth, who dreamed of flying a Messerschmitt, he, having learned about the crimes of his people, converted to Judaism and moved to Jerusalem. A Torah scholar and Jewish site guide, he carefully studied Islamic texts, rightly believing that the path to peace lay only through the Islamic clergy's acceptance of the special role and purpose of the people of Israel. Modest, but unusually disciplined and persistent, he was engaged in the spreading of suras of the Quran, which contained positive and even laudatory reviews of the Jews; where the Jewish state in the future was predicted and........

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