Ambassador Meir Shlomo, consul general of Israel to the Southwest, was interviewed earlier this month during his visit to Little Rock. This is an edited, abridged version of Shlomo's conversation with former Arkansas Democrat-Gazette religion editor Frank Lockwood, who now serves as politics/Washington editor.
Q. What brought you to Arkansas?
A. The consulate is in charge of five states and Arkansas is one of the five states, so we have to educate ourselves about what's going on in Arkansas politics and other spheres of life. There's a Jewish community here, so we try to touch base with as many people as we can on a regular basis.
Q. Were you meeting with candidates as well?
A. Yes. I met quite a few candidates for the senatorial race, congressional race, governor's race, lieutenant governor, on both sides of the aisle.
Q. And what message did you have for the political candidates that you met?
A. Well, first and foremost, I came to listen. Of course we spoke about the Middle East and the concerns we have about the state of Israel.
Q. You were going to visit Arkansas a few months ago, but I'm told you and your colleagues were on strike.
A. Yes sir. Honestly, it's the first time since the establishment of the state of Israel that we went on strike. It's not like we do it every Monday and Thursday. You know, Israel is a democracy, a lot of places are unionized, among them all the ministries of the government and when we had an issue with the government, thought that it was not taking care of [us] the way it should, we exercised our democratic right to strike.
Q. Arkansas has a lot of evangelical Christians. How much support does the state of Israel receive from evangelicals and how important is that support?
A. We get an immense support and love and sympathy from the evangelical community. We're proud and happy to have them as our friends. It's important for us that all aspects of American society support Israel, so the evangelical is one of the very important ones. But it's not only the evangelicals. We have support in a lot of parts of American society.
Q. How often have you been to Arkansas and what has surprised you most about this state?
A. Actually I've been quite a few times in Arkansas. Not only in my professional capacity, but my family and myself took our vacation here. We liked it the first time, so we came back for a second time. What a great place to have a vacation.
Q. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee visited your country pretty recently. He gets his passport stamped in Israel quite a bit, I think. Is that correct?
A. He's been there dozens and dozens of times. He's a great friend of Israel and he visits every couple of months. And you're right, his passport must be full of Israeli stamps.
Q. What worries Israel most?
A. If you ask any serious Israeli politician that question, he will tell you that there are three main threats against Israel -- Iran, Iran and Iran. We are extremely worried about the possibility of Iran going nuclear.
Q. Do you think we'll see peace in the Middle East in our lifetime?
A. You know, in the Middle East, you have to be an optimist; otherwise you cannot survive. I think that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is manageable and I think we can solve it. And I'm pretty confident that in our lifetime we will have peace between Israel and Palestine. We will have two states -- an Israeli state and a Palestinian state -- that at least will live peacefully with each other ... I think we can achieve it. It's not something that is science fiction.
Religion on 07/12/2014