Bahrain had its first Jewish wedding for over 50 years last month, when the son of Huda Noono, former Jewish Bahraini ambassador to the US, got married, before honeymooning in the UAE. It’s a reason for the Egyptian journalist Suleiman Gouda (via MEMRI) to hail Jews occupying high office in Arab countries as a sign of pluralism. Disappointingly, however, he falls back on the old distinction between Jews and Zionists, which the Abraham Accords are meant to erase. (With thanks: Lily)
In an article in the London-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Egyptian journalist Suleiman Gouda writes with nostalgia about the Jewish presence that once existed in the Arab countries. Noting that Bahrain recently saw its first Jewish wedding in 52 years, he uses this as an opportunity to express his views on Jews from Arab countries, on normalization with Israel and on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mentioning that this wedding was momentous not only because it was the first Jewish wedding in Bahrain in over a century, but also because the groom was the son of Houda Noono, Bahrain’s former ambassador in Washington, he states that Jews in high-ranking positions used to be a fairly common phenomenon in Arab countries. This is perfectly natural, he says, because Jews are citizens of these countries, no different from other citizens.
According to Gouda, the reversal in the attitude towards the Jews in Arab countries was caused by Israel’s policy, and that today there is confusion between a Jew, namely a follower of the monotheistic religion of Judaism, and an Israeli Jew, who espouses a political ideology that harms the rights of the Palestinian people. Stating that the true homeland of the Arab Jews is not Israel but rather the Arab countries in which they were born and raised, he contends that social pluralism is a source of strength and not a source of weakness.
