http://www.metimes.com/International/2008/05/30/jewish_woman_to_be_bahrains_envoy_to_us/9835/
Jewish woman to be Bahrain's envoy to U.S.
By SANA ABDALLAH (Middle East Times, with agency dispatches)
Published: May 30, 2008
AMMAN -- The tiny Gulf state of Bahrain has become the first Arab
country to appoint a Jewish woman as an ambassador to the most
im****tant world capital, Wa****ngton, D.C., in an unusual move that
could set an interesting precedent in Arab diplomacy.
Huda Ezra Ibrahim Nonoo, 43, was formally named this week by Bahrain's
King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa as an ambassador to a yet-undisclosed
country, but she confirmed to local re****ters that she would be posted
to the U.S. capital.
Nonoo, a mother of two boys, made a point of emphasizing to the media
that she was chosen to this position as "a Bahraini, first," and not
because of her religion.
Nevertheless, the fact that she hails from a religious community that
has become so scarce in the Arab world since the establishment of
Israel in Palestine in 1948, and the consequent turbulence in the
Middle East for the past 60 years, raises questions on the political
motives behind the monarch's choice.
Bahrain is said to be the only Arab Gulf state with a Jewish
community.
Nonoo's ancestral family had come from Iraq in the early 20th century
to settle in this small island state, where the Jews had mostly
immigrated from Iran and Iraq. Though their numbers grew in the first
half of the 1900s, they dwindled after 1948, when most of them left
for Israel, the United States and Europe.
Today there are 40 Jews, most of them working in the financial and
commercial sectors, a synagogue and a cemetery, in this pro-Western
country, a close U.S. ally that hosts the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet.
The majority of Bahrain's half a million population, about 65 percent,
are ****ites, ruled by a Sunni ruling monarchy.
While the kingdom has no official diplomatic relations with Israel, it
shut down an office that boycotted Israeli products in 2006, in what
seemed to be a condition for later signing the Free Trade Agreement
with the United States.
Bahraini commentators privately said that Nonoo's appointment as envoy
to Wa****ngton was a public relations stunt by Manama to further
appease the United States and to signal its readiness to open up
toward Israel, despite the widespread popular opposition toward such a
move.
Similar criticism was expressed when she was appointed a legislator
three years ago in the 40-member Shura council, the country's upper
house of parliament, replacing her cousin, Ibrahim Daoud Nonoo, who
was the first Jew to serve in the legislative council in 2000.
The new ambassador, who describes herself as a businesswoman, is also
a founding member of the Bahrain Human Rights Watch Society (BHRWS),
which has in recent years come under allegations by other rights
groups that it promotes government views at the expense of human
rights.
Nabil Rajab, vice president of the Bahrain Human Rights Center, has
described the BHRWS as a "fake non-governmental organization,"
according to The National, an English-language newspaper in the UAE.
The paper said on Friday that Nonoo and Faisal Fulad, a fellow Shura
Council member and co-founder of BHRWS, were "tossed out of a meeting
of the anti-torture committee in Geneva" in 2005.
However, Arab diplomats say the appointment of a Jew and a woman was
an aggressive message to the West, especially to the United States,
that Bahrain does not discriminate against people based on their
religion or gender.
Meanwhile, Nonoo was quoted in local Bahraini papers as saying she was
delighted and looking forward to becoming the first female ambassador
to Wa****ngton.
She becomes the third Bahraini woman ambassador, after Princess Haya
al-Khalifa, representative at the United Nations, and Bibi al-Alawi,
the kingdom's ambassador to China.
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