(Jewish Group) Bahrain signed a treaty with Israel. Now it wants to make friends with American Jews.
Sitting in front of a group of rabbis in New York City, the undersecretary for political affairs at the Kingdom of Bahrain’s Foreign Ministry explained that he first learned his country would be signing a diplomatic treaty with Israel on a Saturday.
Except he didn’t say “Saturday.” He said “Shabbat.”
Likewise, the undersecretary, Shaikh Abdulla bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, told a story to the group about encouraging an Israeli official to wear his kippah at a conference in Manama, Bahrain’s capital, last year. And he chuckled about going diving this year with the director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry in an Israeli town close to the Lebanese border, just miles away from territory controlled by the terror group Hezbollah.
It was all part of a two-day trip meant to meet, connect with and charm leaders of the American Jewish community in New York City. The trip came against the backdrop of Bahrain’s normalization agreement last year with Israel, called the Abraham Accords, which also established full relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Al Khalifa also made a direct pitch to American Jews: He wants them to invest money in Bahrain and travel to the country as tourists. In addition — following criticism of Bahrain’s human rights record and authoritarian government — he wants American Jews to spread the message of, in his words, “the values of coexistence and acceptance and tolerance that Bahrain has been upholding for so long.”
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