MidnightCall Magazine
News From Israel MagazineJewish Woman Is Named Ambassador to Washington
Bahrain’s king has appointed a woman believed to be the Arab world’s first Jewish ambassador as the country’s envoy to Washington.Lawmaker Houda Nonoo said she was proud to serve her country “first of all as a Bahraini,” adding she was not chosen for the post because of her religion.
“It is a great honor to have been appointed as the first female ambassador to the United States of America, and I am looking forward to meeting this new challenge,” Nonoo told The Associated Press by telephone.
The decree issued by King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa and reported by the official Bahrain News Agency had not specified where Nonoo, a 43-year-old mother of two boys, would be posted. But her appointment to the U.S. ambassadorship was rumored for months.
Bahrain – a pro-Western island nation with Sunni rulers and a Shiite majority – is a close U.S. ally and hosts the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.
The Jewish community in Bahrain dates back to ancient times, and the country contains the only synagogue in the Persian Gulf. It has about 50 Jewish citizens among a population of roughly half a million people.“We keep Rosh Hashana and the other holidays in our homes,” Nonoo said. “When my son had his bar mitzva, I flew a rabbi over from London for it.”-Jerusalem Post, 29 May 2008, pg. 2
A Jewish woman becomes an ambassador for an Arab nation, whose population is 80 percent Muslim, 9 percent Christian, and 10 percent listed as various other religions. This shows the tendency and progress that is being made toward the acceptance of Jews and thereby Israel into the family of Middle Eastern nations.
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