Published: 8 February 2022
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Gadeer Kamal Mreeh is not your average Jewish Agency envoy. But this former TV presenter and lawmaker has never believed in following the standard path in life
NOT LONG AFTER taking up her new post in Washington, Gadeer Kamal Mreeh was out hiking in nearby Great Falls Park with her family when she noticed her younger son racing ahead on a dangerous stretch of the trail. “Slow down,” she called out to him in Arabic, “slow down.”
A hiker passing by identified the language and asked whether the family was from Morocco. “No,” Kamal Mreeh responded, “we’re from Israel.”
Her interlocutor offered to correct her. “You must mean Palestine,” he said.
“No, I mean Israel,” said Kamal Mreeh.
“Did you mean to tell me there are Arabs in Israel?” the hiker asked, visibly surprised.
“We actually make up 20 percent of the population,” Kamal Mreeh responded. “There are two million of us in Israel.”
Kamal Mreeh, 37, is the first member of the Druze community – an Arabic-speaking religious minority – to be appointed a senior envoy, or shaliach, of the Jewish Agency. She is the first non-Jew, in fact, ever to hold such a high-ranking position in the organisation.
The unconventional Druze woman introducing US Jews to ‘another Israel’ (Haaretz)
Photo: Gadeer Kamal Mreeh (Emil Salman)
