deep focus

I’d just like to throw your attention briefly to the wonderful Gulf country of Bahrain.

In the tense landscape of the Middle East, there is little room left for Jewish Arabs, a tiny minority in this country as well as in places like Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. But in Bahrain, the king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, has taken unprecedented steps for an Arab leader to show his support for his dwindling Jewish population. Last year, he appointed a Jewish woman, Houda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo, as ambassador to the United States, the first Jewish ambassador posted abroad by any Arab country.

Then he made a personal visit to London to appeal to expatriate Jews to return to Bahrain. He has also appointed Jewish business leaders to the Shura Council, which acts as an upper house of Parliament. Those measures went against the tide in a region where anti-Semitism is often preached from government-controlled mosques and hating all Jews has become interchangeable with hating the state of Israel.

The Gulf still holds fast to its charming ways:

Being Jewish in the conservative Persian Gulf region still presents challenges, even in Bahrain. Though it has preserved its last synagogue, the building has not had a religious use for decades and all Jewish symbols have been removed. Nevertheless, it is defaced with graffiti that says, in Arabic, “Death to Israel.”

Sigh… For more on the larger geopolitical issues, please read the wonderful article in the nytimes. But thankfully scraping is still legal. Choice samples:

Some people here take a cynical view of their king’s outreach. Bahrain is a close American ally of great strategic value to Washington. It is near Iran and allows the United States Navy to base its Fifth Fleet here. Many people said the king’s overtures were a safe and convenient bid to cement ties with Washington.

“We always believe here that control of America is governed by the Zionist lobby,” said Salman Kamal al-Deen, a businessman and the head of the Bahrain Human Rights Society. “The media and the money are all in the hands of the Jews. We believe if we have a Jewish ambassador and Jews in the Shura Council, this is a positive indicator for the country.”

There is also some resentment at the king’s support for the small Jewish community. Bahrain is hot with sectarian tensions: the king, a Sunni Muslim, is accused of discriminating against Shiite Muslims, who make up a majority of the native population. Shiites are barred from almost all positions in the military and security services, and they say they are not given the same employment and education opportunities as their Sunni neighbors.

Shiites complain that the 36 Jews are treated better than they are, and that the king’s Jewish outreach is intended to make Bahrain appear to be a tolerant society, papering over the systemic discrimination they say they experience.

[...]

Fouad Shehab, a history professor at Bahrain University, said it was easy to like ["Rouben Rouben, 55, an electronics dealer who proudly displays his name, a recognizably Jewish one, on the sign above all four of his shops in Manama, the capital."]. “I’ve known Rouben for years,” he said with a smile. “I go to buy from him. I don’t feel he is a Jew.”

Man, I could write paragraphs about that last sentence. Pages, books even! But this is a blog. Comment away on your favorite interpretation of the kicker, keeping in mind the historical/economic/political/social/religious context of Arab Jews, living in a predominantly Muslim country, with all the attendant controversies caused by a Jewish nationalist state in the region.