By Menachem Wecker
The Jewish population of Bahrain -- a country of a million people -- numbers 36. One of those three dozen is the ambassador to the United States.
Meet Houda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo, the first woman to hold the top diplomat position for her nation and the first Jewish ambassador from an Arab country.
“I stand before you as evidence of new possibilities,” Amb. Nonoo told an audience of about 75 on Jan. 28 at the Elliott School of International Affairs. Her talk launched the spring semester of the school’s Middle East Policy Forum and was part of the series Distinguished Women in International Affairs. She was also recently featured in a story in the Washington Post about the increase in female ambassadors to the United States.
“Ambassador Nonoo epitomizes the goals of the forum, which include bringing important personalities involved in America’s relationship in the Middle East region to the GW campus,” said Edward W. Gnehm Jr., B.A. ’66, M.A. ’68, Kuwait professor for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula affairs and former U.S. ambassador to Australia, Jordan and Kuwait.
“The ambassador’s personal story heightens her importance – a woman ambassador from a Middle East country and a woman of Jewish faith,” says Amb. Gnehm, who directs the forum. “She is certainly a person to admire and one who can convey the longstanding close and important relationship between our two countries.”
Amb. Nonoo began her talk saying that the “fresh energy” she perceived in the room inspired her to discuss “fresh visions.” She cited the vision articulated by Shaikh Khalid Bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, Bahrain’s foreign minister, who called for “replacing conflict with dialogue, disagreements with consensus and violence with persuasion.”
“As always,” said Amb. Nonoo, “the question is not so much what needs to be done but more about how. How can we fulfill the fresh version of an age-old vision? Perhaps we should name it using IT terms: World Peace, Version 2.010.”
The ambassador also quoted Bahrain’s “most famous poet” Qassim Haddad, who wrote, “We are not an island, except to whoever sees us from the sea.” A small island located in the Persian Gulf between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain has about a million people and a GDP of $26 billion, said Amb. Nonoo.
Two of Bahrain’s major concerns, according to the ambassador, center on its location. As an island, the country needs to worry about the “causal relationship between climate change and sea level that poses serious threats to our planet,” she says, and it is situated in a “dangerous neighborhood” where the Arab-Israeli conflict and threat of terrorism loom large.
Quoting a 2009 Washington Post editorial by Shaikh Salman Bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Bahrain’s crown prince, Amb. Nonoo said, “Our biggest mistake has been to assume that you can simply switch peace on like a light bulb … The two communities in the Holy Land are not fated to be enemies. What can unite them tomorrow is potentially bigger than what divides them today.”
As to Gulf security, Bahrain’s foreign minister has called for confronting Iran’s nuclear program “in such a manner as to spare our region the threat of confrontation,” said Amb. Nonoo. “This could be achieved by giving precedence to diplomacy.
During the question-and-answer period, George Washington Today asked Amb. Nonoo to elaborate on the nature of Bahrain’s Jewish community and on how she was appointed ambassador.
As a founding member in 2004 of Bahrain’s Human Rights Watch Society, which brought Bahraini Muslims, Christians and Jews together, she was “basically catapulted into the limelight,” Amb. Nonoo said. In 2008, she received a call from the foreign minister asking her to serve as ambassador to the United States. “I remember the date. It was April 24 at 3:17 p.m.,” she said. She asked the foreign minister if he was joking. He assured her he was dead serious.
“You can’t actually turn down something like that. It’s an amazing offer to be appointed by his majesty the king,” she said. “So obviously my answer was yes, and that’s why I’m here.”
Bahrain’s Jewish community is “very small,” she added. Her grandfather, who lived in Baghdad and worked in the money exchange business, came to Bahrain in 1888 aboard a ship bound for India. The ship happened to stop over in Bahrain. “He liked what he saw, and he stayed in Bahrain,” said Amb. Nonoo.
“We keep the important holidays, so Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover and Hanukkah,” she says. “We celebrate those occasions.”
There is a synagogue in Bahrain, but it is not used because the community is so small, says Amb. Nonoo. Instead, the close-knit community gathers in a house.
Though small, the community is diverse. “My sister-in-law is actually very religious. She keeps a kosher house and flies kosher meat in from London,” said Amb. Nonoo. “It’s a feat but she does it.”
The ambassador was asked if there is a lot of intermarriage in Bahrain’s Jewish community due to its small size. “We actually go outside Bahrain to get married and then bring our spouses to Bahrain,” she said. “My cousin just got married recently in Canada to a Canadian-Iraqi Jew, and she is living in Bahrain. We are increasing our population slowly.”
Adina Friedman, assistant professor of international affairs, who attended the event and a subsequent private reception with the ambassador, students and GW faculty members, was impressed that Amb. Nonoo answered all students’ questions after the talk and directed them to others who could serve as resources.
Dr. Friedman also reacted to Amb. Nonoo’s response to a student question about particular challenges she has faced being a woman diplomat. The ambassador said that one time, colleagues introduced themselves to her husband and thought he was the diplomat, but other than that, she has not experienced any major challenges.
“I believe the ambassador is well aware of challenges facing women, even though she may not personally encounter them all,” said Dr. Friedman, who teaches a special topics course on gender, power and conflict in the Middle East. “After all, such challenges were probably much of her impetus to form the Human Rights organization in Bahrain in the first place. Although, as she said, she exemplifies new possibilities by being a woman, a Jew and the ambassador to the United States, my guess is she would like to be acknowledged for her own merit and not solely as a member or token example of the categories to which she belongs.”
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