Bahrain appoints Jewish ambassador

Bahrain broke several barriers at once in late May by appointing a Jewish woman to be its new ambassador to the US. Houda Nonoo, a member of the Shura Council for three years before the appointment, has thus become Bahrain's and the entire Arab world's first Jewish ambassador. Nonoo is also the first female Bahraini ambassador to the US, and the third woman to become a Bahraini ambassador to any country.

Bahraini Jews are said to number 37 people among about 530,000 Bahraini citizens (the country's total population is about 1,047,000 people). Bahrain is the only Gulf Arab country with any Jewish citizens. Manama has one synagogue, which was abandoned after the establishment of Israel, but is now once again in use.

Nonoo's ancestors moved to Bahrain from Iraq over a hundred years ago. Her family has been active in public affairs in Bahrain for several generations.

According to Nonoo, Bahraini Jews are religiously observant: "We keep Rosh Hashana and Pessah and the other holidays in our homes". It seems, though, that there are no rabbis within the community; Nonoo once flew a rabbi over from Britain for her son's bar mitzvah.

Nonoo said she would serve in her position "first of all as a Bahraini" (BBC, ArabianBusiness.com, Jerusalem Post).

I think this is a great step towards the re-normalisation of the role of Jews in Arab and Muslim society.

What would be even more impressive is if Israel had an Arab Muslim Israeli citizen serve as ambassador to Egypt or Jordan (it has already had two Arab Muslim consuls in the US).

Israeli rabbi calls for massive bombing of Gaza

In a letter he sent to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in late May, the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Mordechai Eliyahu, has declared all the resident of Gaza collectively guilty for the firing of rockets at Israel by some of their number. The letter was later distributed in synagogues across Israel. Eliyahu used texts from the Bible, and from Moses Maimonides's Biblical commentary, as proof for his statement.

Commenting on Eliyahu's statement, his son Shmuel Eliyahu, who is the chief rabbi of the Israeli city of Sefed, said that Mordechai Eliyahu advocated bombing the area from which the rockets were fired, no matter how many Palestinian lives were lost as a result.

According to Shmuel Eliyahu, "If they don't stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don't stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop" (Jerusalem Post).

I should mention that Qassam rockets fired by Palestinian militants have killed 12 Israelis since 2001. Just so that we are clear about the enormity of what the Eliyahus are saying, it seems that they would not mind seeing a million Palestinians killed to avenge these 12 people.

These statements demonstrate in a rather chilling fashion that extremism and the perversion of religious teachings are not the sole preserve of any one group.