A ballroom in downtown Denver filled with several hundred people this past week for a two-day gathering built around an unusual premise: fighting antisemitism works best when the people doing the fighting aren’t Jewish. Organizers said more than 70% of attendees at the Congress to Confront Antisemitism and Preserve Democracy were not Jewish, and one of the event’s most striking speakers was a Yemeni refugee who once believed Jews and Christians were destined for hell.
The gathering, known as Together at the Crossroads, was organized by the David Merage Foundation for Confronting Antisemitism, according to cbs12.com, which described it as a national gathering focused on fighting antisemitism and building partnerships across cultural and religious lines. Attendance figures varied by outlet: Colorado Politics reported more than 300 people, most of them non-Jews, crowded into the ballroom, while the Daily Camera put the figure at 450 attendees from across the country, and cbs12.com cited the American Jewish Committee’s count of more than 450 leaders nationwide.
The conference’s emphasis on cross-faith allyship was reflected in remarks by Mohammed Al-Samawi, whom the Denver Gazette identified as a speaker before the roughly 450-person crowd. Raised in Yemen, Al-Samawi described being taught that Jews and Christians were enemies destined for hell, saying children were “trained to hate.” He told the audience he had never seen such allyship at a conference before, the Gazette reported.
A Personal Story of Cross-Faith Support
Al-Samawi’s account connected his changing views to relationships built across religious lines. The Gazette reported that, after learning English, he met a teacher named Luke in classes; they agreed that Al-Samawi would read the Bible and Luke would read the Quran. Al-Samawi read the Bible at 23. Later, he used Facebook to ask Jewish contacts why they hated Muslims, and said many answered that they did not…