It was the height of the second intifada in 2001 when Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, then in her late 20s, decided to move from London to Jerusalem with her husband. Their parents thought they were crazy, she said, but the young couple knew there was no such thing as a “perfect time” to make aliyah.
It was apparently the right move. Hassan-Nahoum today is a public figure who served for six years as Jerusalem deputy mayor, helped launch a business council promoting cooperation with the UAE, and this year was named Israel’s special envoy for innovation. On Tuesday night, she spoke to about 170 people at Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco at an event celebrating Mizrahi Heritage Month — which is her heritage as well.
“I think my Moroccan mother prepared me for life in Israel,” Hassan-Nahoum said.
Hassan-Nahoum was born in London and raised in Gibraltar, a British territory and city on the tip of the Iberian Peninsula. Her mother, Lady Marcelle Bensimon, was of Moroccan and Portuguese descent. Her father, Sir Joshua Hassan, was a Moroccan Jew whose family immigrated to Gibraltar in 1728. He also served as Gibraltar’s first mayor and first chief minister.
Hassan-Nahoum sat for a conversation Tuesday with Sarah Levin, executive director of JIMENA, to discuss her diplomacy work in the Persian Gulf, the importance of showing pride in Mizrahi heritage and issues affecting American Jews. The event was presented by JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) and the Consulate General of Israel to the Pacific Northwest.
Levin pointed to the “intentional erasure” of Mizrahi and Sephardic narratives, particularly in leftist and anti-Zionist circles in the U.S. “How can we ensure that Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews are seen and heard in these conversations?” Levin asked Hassan-Nahoum. “Should we even be trying to be in these conversations around diversity and intersectionality?”
Hassan-Nahoum described such discourse on the left as a “poison chalice.”
“I don’t like when [outsiders] try and divide us as a people,” Hassan-Nahoum said. “We have to talk about the beautiful diversity of the Jewish people with pride.” She later added: “People respect people who respect themselves. I learned that from my Arab friends.”
This week’s event marked 10 years since Israel established Nov. 30 as its national day to commemorate the 850,000 Jewish refugees displaced from Arab countries and Iran in the years following the United Nations vote to divide British Mandate Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. After years of escalating violence toward Jews in the Middle East and North Africa, the vote on Nov. 29, 1947, triggered waves of expulsions of Jewish citizens from Arab countries.
In an interview with J., Hassan-Nahoum said that the descendants of those Jewish refugees still lack enough public representation in Israel.
“There are still a lot of glass ceilings to break,” she told J. “We haven’t had a Mizrahi prime minister. There are certain positions in government [and] national institutions that have never been Mizrahi. These things do bother me.”
Hassan-Nahoum’s tenure as deputy mayor ended in March, but her public role did not. She has been appointed secretary-general of the Kol Israel faction in the World Zionist Congress and became the first special envoy for innovation in the Israeli Foreign Ministry. This new role will allow her to continue her efforts to normalize relations between Israel and the Arab world.
In 2020, Hassan-Nahoum helped establish the UAE-Israel Business Council just a month before the Abraham Accords were signed by Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Hassan-Nahoum led the first delegation of Israeli officials and entrepreneurs to both countries.
During the UAE visit, she also organized the inaugural meeting of the Gulf-Israel Women’s Forum, a division within the business council. She described the forum as “one of the most meaningful” initiatives she has been involved in.
“It was such an incredible moment,” she said. “We met these women who were like us, mothers and working women. We realized we have so much more in common than we have that divides us. We have a lot of hope for a better future for our children. And I haven’t lost that hope. It’s going to happen and… continue happening.”
Though the forum is currently made up of only Israeli and Emirati women, Hassan-Nahoum is optimistic that more countries from the Persian Gulf and other regions of the Muslim world will eventually join.
“The next stop is Saudi Arabia. After Saudi Arabia? Indonesia, Oman, you name it,” she said.
As she responded to questions from audience members concerned about the influence of Qatar money on American universities and the Muslim Brotherhood’s campaigns to spread antisemitic messaging, Hassan-Nahoum also reminded them that there are people in the region who still strive for peace.
“I think the most meaningful thing for a lot of us in the advocacy space, especially since Oct. 7, is that we have so many allies, so many people who call themselves Arab Zionists,” she said. “That’s a blessing to the Jewish people.”