(Click here to read his bio & stories: www.chabad.org/search/keyword_cdo/kid/16157/jewish/Eliyahu-R-Mordechai.htm)
Here's the link to the shiur in Hebrew:
How to Speak in Arabic
www.torahanytime.com/#/lectures?v=263822
But first, a little historical background:
It seems the encounter described in the shiur occurred in 1967 or 1968.
Until that point, Jews endured 700 years of a ban forbidding them from going beyond the 7th step outside the Cave of the Patriarchs.
Only Muslims could pray inside the structure, at the tombs of the Jewish forefathers & mothers. (Yitzchak Avinu & Yaakov Avinu are not their forefathers at all, nor any of the four mothers, but Muslims still refused to allow Jews access.)
So Jews suffered this cruel ban from 1267-1967, never ceasing in the yearning to reunite in prayer with the beloved forefathers and mothers.
(Personal note: The first time I davened next to the tombs of Avraham Avinu & Sara Imeinu in Chevron/Hebron, I reached the initial words of Shemoneh Esrei — "Elokai/God of Avraham, Elokai Yitzchak, v'Elokai Yaakov" — and was struck with the feeling of coming full circle. A looping chain of nearly 4 thousand years came circling back in closure. These names no longer remained as cherished personalities in our holy books. They were here right next to me. We were together again physically, as well as in heart and soul. One of the most powerful and heart-opening Shemoneh Esrei experiences ever.)
So there Rav Mordechai Eliyahu stood with Chaim Herzog, Moshe Dayan, and the Muslim governor Besoq.
And Sheikh Jabari was there too.
Here is my English translation of that shiur:
When we came to Chevron after they conquered Chevron — we came there for the first time — there was the gaon Chief Rabbi of Israel, the Rav Yitzchak Nissim alav hashalom, and there was the local ruler Besoq and the military ruler was Chaim Herzog, who afterward became the President of the State.
So we came to Chevron there and we wanted to daven Mincha.
There were [Muslim prayer] rugs there.
Sheikh Jabari came and started to curse us – in Arabic.
And I'm listening to him and watching how everyone remains silent before him.
What happened?
The Minister of Security was [Moshe] Dayan and he placed Sheikh Jabari in charge. And he started cursing us in Arabic!
I told him, “You people are the sons of the maidservant [Hagar] and we are the sons of the lady [Sara Imeinu] – and you dare speak this way?! Get out of here!”
So he got angry and went to his corner.
They said to me – Besoq, Chaim Herzog: "We don’t want to quarrel with him. We want to appeal to him. He’s Sheikh Jabari, he’s the Sheikh of the place. Dayan said, 'Stay on his good side – we need him'."*
I said, “Why? He should demean us?”
After a few minutes, Sheikh Jabari asks, “Who’s that person who spoke with me?”
I was then a dayan, [rabbinical judge] so they told him, “He's a kadi.” [Islamic judge]
He invited me in to him.
They told me, “Don’t go in! He’ll kill you!”
I said, “What’s going to kill me? Are we like you guys? That I should be be afraid of him?!”
I went in.
He said to me [in an appeasing tone of voice], “Listen, we’re cousins...people shouldn’t talk that way...”
He started speaking to me like a human being.
“Now you’re starting to speak like Yishmael – not like the son of Hagar. You’re speaking to me now like Yishmael, with proper sensibility – and not like the lowlifes.”
“Ah, we have lineage!” he said. “I have lineage all the way back to Yishmael.”
I told him, “That’s all well and good. And from now on, we are giving an order to the soldiers that when they come to pray, they need to roll up all the rugs and put them to the side. We don’t need rugs. We need to stand on holy ground. You guys need rugs that act as a barrier between you and the Avot.” [Jewish forefathers]
He said to me, “No, it’s more respectful...”
"Ahh, it’s respectful or not respectful...you want to prostrate on the floor, you guys don’t want to insult, to kiss the floor of Avraham Avinu – you want rugs? You’ll have rugs! We come in and stand on the ground of Avraham Avinu.”
And then we went inside [to the hall of Avraham Avinu], we started davening...baruch Hashem, the first tefillah we davened there – it was Mincha.
If you know the personalities of our true leaders, the brilliant and good Torah Sages, you know that Rav Mordechai Eliyahu's inner fortitude and fearlessness stand out as the norm.
(Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld was equally fearless: a-review-of-guardian-of-jerusalem-the-life-times-of-rabbi-yosef-chaim-sonnenfeld-why-it-challenged-everything-i-thought-i-knew-about-the-modern-history-of-eretz-yisrael.html. Both Sages exhibited both the fearlessness and geniality according to necessity, as Rav Mordechai Eliyahu above.)
Rav Mordechai Eliyahu clearly surpassed the much-ballyhooed general in the rav's fearlessness and unwillingness to compromise on Torah values.
Casting aside politics, Rav Mordechai Eliyahu asserted Jewish rights on the grounds of...Judaism. He referred to the Torah only — Sara Imeinu and Hagar.
In other words, his fortitude came from the Torah itself — the simple assertion of the Jewish right to our own land, our bought-and-paid-for burial grounds, and the right to rejoin our own fathers and mothers.
And that's all we need.
I grew up brainwashed into revering Moshe Dayan as an Israeli hero.
In reality, he combined a certain aggression and shrewdness with a lack of principles and little to no appreciation for Jewish Law.
He could not get along with his own father, disinherited all his children in favor of his second wife (which, regarding his ignoble daughter, was well-deserved, considering how appallingly she turned out), and remained an incurable womanizer.
As is well-known, he failed Am Yisrael regarding the Yom Kippur War.
When Shlomo Goren conquered Chevron, Goren hung an Israeli flag outside and brought in a sefer Torah.
Moshe Dayan ordered him to take down the flag, remove the sefer Torah, then insisted that all who enter remove their shoes because "the building is a mosque."
Goren refused.
So Moshe Dayan sent an officer to remove the items, but after doing so, a car accident killed that officer on his way back.
Moshe Dayan retracted the order.
And as you can see in the above interaction, this hotshot military superstar refused to stand up to a simple sheikh, leaving Rav Mordechai Eliyahu to do it all on his own, winning the Sheikh's cooperation with his uncompromising RELIGIOUS stance.
Moshe Dayan: the hero who wasn't.
https://torasavigdor.org/tag/rav-goren/
https://picryl.com/media/-jnf038936-103f62