San Francisco Beduoin

A refreshing story from "Yid with Lid"

Here is some nice Shabbos reading for the Peanut President and Tutti Fruti. Israel just announced a new consul in San Francisco, Ishmael Khaldi. And what do ya know! Mr. Khaldi is a Bedouin Muslim Arab Israeli.

Gee I wonder how many Arab Countries have a Jewish Consul? ... OH WAIT I REMEMBER That number would be ZERO. I wonder how many of those Islamic States have Jews in a high-ranking position in their foreign service...THAT Would Be Zero too. Any High Ranking Government Position?

SF's newest consul enjoys being Bedouin, proud to be Israeli
By Matthew Kalman 11/30/06

Ishmael Khaldi lived in a Bedouin tent until he was eight years old, walked four miles round trip to school each day and still goes home on weekends to what he calls the "Middle Ages" to tend to flocks of sheep.

But next week, Khaldi will leave his tiny village of Khawalid - population 450 - in the northern Galilee region and fly to San Francisco to become Israel's first Bedouin diplomat and the nation's first Muslim to rise through the ranks of the Israeli foreign service.

Of the more than one million Israeli Arabs, only 170,000 are Bedouins, many of whom were once nomadic desert dwellers. In recent years, Arab radicals in the Israeli parliament and Islamic movements who deplore the existence of the Jewish state have dominated Israeli-Arab relations, and the six-year-long Palestinian intifada has stretched their allegiance to Israel to a breaking point.

But Khaldi, while conceding that the situation of Arabs in Israel "is not perfect," is an unrepentant Israeli who says he is not betraying his Arab "brothers" by becoming the new Israeli consul to San Francisco.