The Weekly Lift - April 28, 2022

This week's selection of positive headlines and articles*:

Ukraine Crisis:Denouncing War, Ukrainian Musicians Unite For A World Tour

The New York Times (US) reports that "The Russian invasion has devastated cultural life in Ukraine, forcing renowned musical ensembles to disband and leading to an exodus of conductors, composers and players.

Now some of Ukraine’s leading artists, with the help of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Polish National Opera in Warsaw, are uniting to use music to express opposition to Russia’s continuing attacks. They will form a new ensemble, the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, and make an 11-city tour of Europe and the United States in July and August, the orchestra announced on Monday.

“This is something we can do for our country and for our people,” Marko Komonko, a Ukrainian violinist who will serve as the orchestra’s concertmaster, said in an interview. “It’s not much, but this is our job.”

The 75-member orchestra, which will be made up of Ukrainian refugees as well as musicians still in the country, will appear at several European festivals, including the BBC Proms in London for a televised performance on July 31. It will make stops in Germany, France, Scotland and the Netherlands, before heading to the United States to perform at Lincoln Center and at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Proceeds from the concerts will benefit Ukrainian artists.

The orchestra will be led by the Canadian Ukrainian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, who came up with the idea for the ensemble, eager to find a way to help musicians and others in Ukraine.

“We want to show the embattled citizens of Ukraine that a free and democratic world supports them,” Wilson said in an interview. “We are fighting as artistic soldiers, soldiers of music. This gives the musicians a voice and the emotional strength to get through this.”

Wilson pitched the idea to her husband, Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, who offered the company’s support and persuaded the Polish National Opera to assist as well. The orchestra will assemble in mid-July in Warsaw for rehearsals and hold an opening concert at the Wielki Theater, home to the Polish National Opera.

Gelb said it was important that artistic groups spoke out against the Russian invasion. Shortly after the invasion began, the Met announced it would not engage performers or institutions that supported President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Last month, the Met staged a concert in support of Ukraine; banners forming the Ukrainian flag stretched across the exterior of the theater, bathed in blue and yellow floodlights.

“This is a world situation that is far beyond politics,” Gelb said in an interview. “It’s about saving humanity. The Met, as the largest performing arts company in the United States and one of the leading companies in the world, clearly has a role to play and we’ve been playing it.”

The Freedom Orchestra will perform a variety of works, including the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov’s Seventh Symphony; Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2, featuring the Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova; Brahms’s Fourth Symphony; and Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony.

The renowned Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska, who is now singing the title role in Puccini’s “Turandot” at the Met, will perform an aria from Beethoven’s “Fidelio” that touches on themes of hope and peace.

The musicians represent a mix of Ukrainian ensembles, including the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, the Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra, the Kyiv National Opera and the Kharkiv Opera. Some are part of European ensembles, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, the Tonkunstler Orchestra of Vienna and the Belgian National Orchestra.

The Ukraine Ministry of Culture will allow male musicians in the orchestra to participate in the tour, despite rules barring men of military age from leaving the country, the ensemble said.

Komonko, the violinist, who left Ukraine last month with his family for Sweden, where he is playing in an orchestra, said music could be a distraction from the violence. “When you live through all of this, you look at music differently, through different lenses,” he said. “It takes my mind off the war. It allows people to keep living.”

International Relations: U.S., Cuba Hold Talks Over Migration For The First Time In Four Years

The Washington Post (US) reports that "the United States and Cuba held direct migration talks Thursday for the first time in four years, as the Biden administration seeks to stop an overwhelming surge of migrants at the southern border, in which Cubans have become the second-largest group of those seeking unauthorized entry through Mexico.

The administration is seeking to restore the terms of bilateral accords under which the United States agreed to issue at least 20,000 immigrant visas annually to Cubans, and Cuba agreed to accept deportation flights of those who arrived illegally or were deemed otherwise inadmissible. Those agreements were suspended in 2018 by the Trump administration, which partially closed the U.S. Embassy in Havana and refused any meetings with the Cuban government.

Previously held twice a year, the migration meetings were suspended as part of the Trump administration’s reversal of Barack Obama's opening to Cuba that had led to a restoration of diplomatic relations in 2015. President Biden pledged during his campaign to reverse Trump’s bans on remittances to the island, travel and diplomatic contacts, but has not done so.

The administration, while saying any substantive policy changes remain under review following a Cuban government crackdown on street demonstrations last July, has also been reluctant to antagonize politically powerful Cuban Americans opposed to any new outreach to Havana.

The U.S.-initiated migration talks mark the first break in administration refusal to meet with the Cubans. “Engaging in these talks underscores our commitment to pursuing constructive discussions … where appropriate to advance U.S. interests,” the State Department said in a statement issued after the one-day meeting n Washington between teams led by Emily Mendrala, the U.S. deputy secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, and Carlos Fernández de Cossio, Cuba’s deputy foreign minister.

The U.S. interest that the administration hopes to advance is finding a way to ease political and logistical strains along the border, where immigration arrests from all countries have soared to an all-time high. Authorities have made more than 1 million detentions over the past six months, and they are bracing for those numbers to go even higher as the administration prepares to lift pandemic-related border restrictions next month.

Record numbers of Cubans are a growing share of that surge, with more than 32,000 taken into custody along the southern border in March, according to the most recent U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, up from 16,500 in February. The Cuba numbers are second only to Mexico, and surpass Guatemala and Honduras. CBP authorities are on pace to detain more than 155,000 Cubans during the 2022 fiscal year, a fourfold increase from 2021.

At least 65,000 Cubans have reached the United States since November, when Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, a Havana ally, lifted visa requirements on Cuban travelers. Commercial and charter airlines ferry planeloads of one-way travelers to Managua multiple times per week.

After landing in Nicaragua, the Cuban migrants travel overland to the southern border. CBP records show that the vast majority enter the United States at Yuma, Ariz., where there are open gaps in the border wall, or wading across a shallow portion of the Rio Grande in the Del Rio, Tex., area."

Previous Cuba migrations have tended to be across the 90-mile straits between Cuban territory and Florida. The U.S. Coast Guard, under existing agreements, continues to return those apprehended at sea to Cuba. But the Cuban government has largely refused over the past several years — as agreed in a January 2017 accord signed with the Obama administration a week before Trump’s inauguration — to accept deportation flights from the United States.

Since consular services in Havana were shut down by Trump, Cubans applying for U.S. visas have been required to go to the embassy in Guyana.

That system is expected to continue, even though there are plans to reopen the consulate next month with a skeleton staff. It is unclear whether the administration plans to return to compliance with agreements to issue 20,000 immigrant visas to Cubans annually.

In the meantime, those Cubans who cross the land border illegally face little risk of being sent back. Enforcement data obtained by The Washington Post show U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has deported just 20 Cubans since November, down from 95 during the 2021 fiscal year and 1,583 in 2020.

Immigration attorneys say a growing share of their Cuban clients are receiving a form of provisional legal status known as humanitarian parole as they are released from CBP custody. It is the same protection authorities have used to allow tens of thousands of Afghans to quickly enter the country since the fall of Kabul, and more recently it’s been used to wave through Ukrainin fleeing the Russian invasion. Homeland Security officials say humanitarian parole is granted on a case-by-case basis.

For Cubans, humanitarian parole offers the most direct path to a U.S. green card under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, which is only available to applicants who have been legally admitted to the United States.

Cubans who do not receive parole after crossing illegally are generally released from CBP custody with a notice to appear in court at a later date. From there, they can apply for protection through the badly clogged U.S. asylum system, or pursue other legal pathways that would qualify them for permanent residency status under the Cuban Adjustment Act.

Civil Rights: Harvard Pledges $100 million To Atone For Role In Slavery

The Los Angeles Times (US) reports that "Harvard University is vowing to spend $100 million to research and atone for its extensive ties to slavery, the school’s president announced Tuesday, with plans to identify and support direct descendants of dozens of enslaved people who labored at the Ivy League campus.

President Lawrence Bacow announced the funding as Harvard released a new report detailing many ways the college benefited from slavery and perpetrated racial inequality.

The report, commissioned by Bacow, found that Harvard’s faculty, staff and leaders enslaved more than 70 Black and Native American people from the school’s founding in 1636 to 1783. For decades afterward, it added, scholars at Harvard continued to promote concepts that fueled ideas of white supremacy.

In a campus message, Bacow said many will find the report “disturbing and shocking,” and he acknowledged that the school “perpetuated practices that were profoundly immoral.”

“Consequently, I believe we bear a moral responsibility to do what we can to address the persistent corrosive effects of those historical practices on individuals, on Harvard, and on our society,” he wrote.

Alongside its findings, the 130-page report includes recommendations that Bacow endorsed. The university will create a new $100-million fund to carry out the work, which includes building stronger relationships with historically Black colleges and expanding education in underserved areas.

It also called on Harvard to identify the direct descendants of enslaved people and engage them through dialogue and educational support. “Through such efforts, these descendants can recover their histories, tell their stories, and pursue empowering knowledge,” the report said.

Harvard is among a growing number of U.S. universities working to acknowledge and reckon with their historical ties to slavery. 

Harvard began its work 2016 when former President Drew Gilpin Faust acknowledged that the school was “directly complicit in America’s system of racial bondage” and created a committee to study the topic. Bacow commissioned the new report in 2019, building on that work.

“The Harvard that I have known, while far from perfect, has always tried to be better — to bring our lived experience ever closer to our high ideals,” Bacow wrote. “In releasing this report and committing ourselves to following through on its recommendations, we continue a long tradition of embracing the challenges before us.”

Environment: California Wants To Lead The World On Climate Policy

The Economist (UK) writes that "the global energy crunch brought about by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has given Joe Biden’s presidency a slogan usually associated with Republicans crowing about energy independence: “drill, baby, drill”. In addition to releasing 1m barrels of oil a day from America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the Interior Department will resume new lease sales for oil and gas drilling on public lands, reneging on Mr Biden’s campaign promise to end the practice. Sounding less like a Republican, the president has also suggested that long-term energy independence would come only from weaning America off fossil fuels.

The pain at the pump is most agonising in California. On April 20th the average price of a gallon of petrol in America was $4.11; in highway-laden Los Angeles it was $5.79. Yet for all its gas-guzzling, California also claims to be America’s greenest state. In a recent speech Gavin Newsom, its Democratic governor, proclaimed that “California has no peers” on climate policy. His proposed annual budget includes a $22.5bn climate wish-list that would invest in electrifying transport, shoring up public-transit infrastructure and protecting people from droughts and fires. This follows decades of ambitious environmental policy that has influenced officials in other states, in the federal government and abroad. How will the Golden State’s green reputation hold up at a time of deepening energy worries?

Two policies stand out for their impact within the state and beyond. First is California’s unique ability among America’s states to set its own standards for vehicle emissions. In the 20th century, Los Angeles’s booming population, topography and sprawling port contaminated its air. The sky was so filthy one summer day in 1943 that Angelenos worried they were victims of a gas attack related to the war. Officials enacted exhaust-emissions limits in 1966 to try to tame the city’s noxious smog.

Because California’s rules predated the Air Quality Act of 1967 and the Clean Air Act of 1970, when federal officials first set national standards for air quality, the feds granted the state waivers which allowed it to set its own, stricter pollution rules. California has applied for more than 100 waivers since 1967. Today, states can choose to adopt the Environmental Protection Agency’s (epa) rules for vehicle emissions, or California’s. By 2022, 16 states followed California’s standards. The state’s laser focus on car exhaust stems from twin concerns: local air pollution and the global climate crisis. Transport accounts for 29% of greenhouse-gas emissions in America and fully 41% in California.

Los Angeles’s air quality is still often foul, but it has improved a lot over the past 40 years (see chart 1). Yet the Trump administration revoked California’s waiver in 2019, arguing that it should not set standards for other states. The decision was the most serious manifestation of President Donald Trump’s resentment of California’s environmental leadership, says Richard Revesz of New York University. The epa restored the waiver last month around the time it announced new federal pollution limits for buses, vans and lorries—based on similar rules in California.

The second landmark policy dates back to 2006, when California passed a law requiring it to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Britain was the first country to set a legally binding emissions target, but not until 2008. Six months after the bill’s passage Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor at the time, was on the cover of Newsweek balancing a globe on one finger. Mary Nichols, a former boss of the California Air Resources Board (carb), the state’s air-pollution regulator, recalls giving a lecture in Switzerland to crowds of people “wanting to hear what California under Arnold Schwarzenegger was going to be doing about climate change”.

The target was achieved early, in 2016. Lawmakers then required the state to cut emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. Today California still has the second-highest total emissions (after Texas) among the 50 states. Yet as of 2016 only New York had lower emissions per person.

California was early on emissions-cutting for several reasons. First, it enjoys rare bipartisan support for bold climate action. carb was created during Ronald Reagan’s governorship in the 1960s. “Arnold Schwarzenegger was pretty lonely among Republican governors who believe deeply in the need to address climate change,” says Bill Ritter, a former governor of Colorado who runs the Centre for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University. States without Democratic supermajorities or climate-conscious conservatives cannot hope to move as fast. Voters are also on board. In a recent poll 68% of Californians said the effects of climate change are already being felt, and nearly three-quarters said they support the 2030 target.

Second, California has the cash and manpower to invest in climate mitigation and adaptation. The Golden State is the world’s fifth-largest economy. Thanks to a colossal budget surplus, Mr Newsom’s $22.5bn climate blueprint is almost twice the size of President Joe Biden’s 2023 budget request for the epa (although the epa is just one of many federal agencies that formulate climate policy). More than 1,700 people work for carb.

Lastly, Californians have been suffering the effects of climate change for years. Wildfires have incinerated towns and their smoke has dirtied the air. Drought has dried up water supplies. Extreme heat has baked cities and farms. And rising seas threaten coastal towns."

Few dispute California’s past successes. But recently some have argued that its big achievements—such as implementing a cap-and-trade system in 2013—are long past. The state’s politicians are used to being badmouthed by their counterparts in Texas and Florida, but on climate the toughest criticisms often come from within. “It’s one thing to set goals, which we’ve done a great job of,” says Anthony Rendon, the Speaker of California’s state assembly. “It’s another thing to actually attain those.”

Scepticism about the state’s ability to reach its climate targets may be warranted. Last year a report from the state auditor said carb has failed to measure accurately the success of its incentive programmes for electric vehicles, leading it to overstate emissions reductions. Data collection is just one problem. Some hurdles, such as the need to build transmission lines to import wind and solar power from states farther inland, are to be expected. But many obstacles are of California’s own making.

Consider Diablo Canyon, the state’s lone nuclear plant, which is due to be shut down by 2025 despite being a source of clean, reliable energy. Diablo supplies California with about 9% of its electricity generation and accounts for 15% of its clean-electricity production. California plans to replace the plant with other low-carbon sources, but it cannot afford to forgo baseload power when it is trying to electrify everything from cars to stoves.

The Golden State’s tireless nimbys are also hampering the fight against climate change. Anti-growth activists have used the California Environmental Quality Act to block public-transit projects and new housing, which is often denser and more energy-efficient than are old buildings and single-family homes. Estimates suggest that California could produce 112 gigawatts of offshore wind power, yet nimbys fret that floating turbines will spoil the view.

Making things trickier is the need to tackle short-term troubles—such as high petrol prices—while aiming to hasten decarbonisation. Squabbling in Sacramento over what to do about California’s highest-in-the-country fuel prices epitomises the state’s contradictions on climate. Mr Newsom’s proposal to send $400 to all car-owners has baffled some Democrats, who argue that helping only drivers leaves out poorer Californians who happen not to drive but are also squeezed by inflation. Subsidising petrol also seems a curious way to encourage drivers to buy an electric car or take the bus. The $750m that Mr Newsom would spend to subsidise public transport pales in comparison with the $9bn he would splash out on fuel rebates.

Californians in oil-rich Kern County are, like Mr Biden, clamouring to drill. Most new fracking permits have been denied as California has tried to phase out oil production. As fuel and electricity prices rise, lawmakers must reckon with how to decarbonise without hurting more residents and losing firms to cheaper states.

Republicans fret that the state’s web of regulations, steep energy costs and high taxes levied in the name of greenery are harming California’s competitiveness. A report last year from Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, a conservative think-tank, found that businesses cited all three as reasons they decided to flee the state—usually for Texas. In 2021 the cost of electricity in California was the third-highest among the states, after Hawaii and Alaska. In part that is because consumers foot the bill for utilities to upgrade their equipment, so as to spark fewer wildfires. Rates are projected to keep climbing (see chart 2).

Years of climate denial under Mr Trump and the current dysfunction in Congress mean that states are driving the country’s fight against climate change. California is one of four American states that helped found the Under2 Coalition, a group of subnational governments committed to the Paris Agreement of 2015.

But even if California and other green states can hit their targets, a coalition of the willing can only do so much. The Rhodium Group, a consultancy, reckons that 60% of emissions stem from states without climate goals. To force high emitters such as Texas to act, “Joint action with the federal government is absolutely required,” says Mr Ritter. Last year Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator for West Virginia, demolished his party’s hopes of passing $555bn in climate provisions that were part of the huge Build Back Better bill (he has recently restarted talks with other Democrats about an energy package).

While Congress sits on its hands, carb has proposed banning the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035. Mr Biden’s more modest national goal is for half of all cars sold in 2030 to be electric. Regulators are also investigating what it would take to decarbonise California by 2035, moving the state’s goalposts forward by a decade. “I think sometimes there is an aversion to following the California example because other parts of the country may have a strong reaction to the idea of being like California,” says Aimee Barnes, a climate adviser to Jerry Brown, a former governor of the state. “And I think that’s a mistake.”

Society: Baking Challah in Dubai: A Jewish Community Heads Out Into the Open

The New York Times (US) reports that "two rows of tables covered in glossy runners, mixing bowls, wooden spatulas and containers of yeast, sugar, eggs, oil, flour and salt lined the garden of a villa set to host nearly 60 women.

As the guests arrived, each received a pink apron inscribed with the name of the event in big bold type: Dubai Challah Bake.

“This is not the first time we’re making challah,” said Chevie Kogan, a Jewish community organizer and Hebrew teacher in Dubai, a glitzy city-state in the United Arab Emirates. “But it is definitely the first time we have so many ladies gathered together to do the mitzvah of our precious challah.”

While Jews have long lived and worked comfortably in Dubai, they kept their religious expression mostly quiet. But in the two years since the United Arab Emirates normalized relations with Israel, the Jewish community in this Persian Gulf emirate has grown significantly and felt freer than ever to express its traditions and religious identity.

It is one of the many signs of an emerging new reality in the Middle East, where Israel’s isolation in the Arab world is ebbing. And though the United Arab Emirates was not the first Arab country to normalize relations, the oil-rich state — a leading political force in the Middle East — appears to be charting a path for a warmer peace that could herald a new era in Arab-Israeli relations.

At a recent Middle East summit where top diplomats from the United States, Israel and four Arab countries met for the first time on Israeli soil, the Emirati foreign minister called his Israeli counterpart “not only a partner” but a friend. He lamented decades of lost opportunities and celebrated how 300,000 Israelis had visited the Emirates in the past year and a half.

“Although Israel has been part of this region for a very long time, we’ve not known each other,” the minister, Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, said at the meeting. “So it’s time to catch up, to build on a stronger relationship.”

The two countries have bonded in part over security concerns and their shared view of Iran as a threat. But even before the summit, the challah-baking party in Dubai in late February was one of many fruits of this warming relationship. The guests trickled in shortly after sunset, the majority of them Jewish with many recent arrivals from Israel who came to visit or to live.

Like Adi Levi, 38, who moved with her husband and three sons from the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon just over a year ago. Or Avital Schneller, 37, who came on a short visit from Tel Aviv last year, then stayed to start a tourism business.

Another guest, Iska Hajeje, 24, said she had left her Orthodox Jewish family back in the Israeli city of Netanya and landed a job selling makeup in the lavish Dubai Mall, where shoppers stroll next to sharks swimming behind the glass walls of its extravagant aquarium.

Apart from seeking jobs or other business opportunities, all of these newcomers said they came in search of an unusual experience, only made possible after the 2020 diplomatic agreements known as the Abraham Accords, normalizing Israel’s relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.

“There’s a deep sense here in the U.A.E. of it being like a social experiment, something that is very forward-looking and progressive,” said Ross Kriel, a South African constitutional lawyer who moved to Dubai from Johannesburg with his wife and children in 2013. He recalled the discreet life he had led there as an observant Jew before the Abraham Accords.

Community leaders estimate the number of active members in Dubai’s Jewish community had grown over the last year from about 250 to 500 and it is expected to keep expanding quickly.

There are about seven locations holding weekly religious services in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the Emirati capital. At least five kosher restaurants have opened in the past year, and they are bustling almost every night. There is also a mikvah, or Jewish ritual bath for women.

“We can walk the street with a kipa on, eat kosher, host lectures about Judaism and enter any place we want without any looks or comments,” said Elie Abadie, senior rabbi of the Jewish Council of the Emirates, an organization that acts as a bridge between Emirati officials and the Jewish community.

Community leaders said more than 2,000 Jews celebrated Passover in Dubai this year at six hotels. More than 1,000 people attended one Seder alone.

Over the past year, the Emirates welcomed Israeli officials and business delegations, announced a $10 billion fund aimed at investing in Israel, increased bilateral trade, received Jewish artists and musicians and opened its doors to more than 200,000 Israeli visitors.

In a region where many remain hostile to Israel because of its treatment of Palestinians, the bold overture is at once controversial and consequential, and some say hopeful.

Before the Abraham Accords, Mr. Kriel said, he would quietly plan his family vacations to Israel and host intimate Friday-night dinners with other observant Jews in his home. Years ago, he leased “Villa #11,” where he and about 20 others gathered quietly every weekend. It became a kind of community center.

“It was the best kept secret in the Jewish world,” Mr. Kriel laughed, recalling how the first few Torah scrolls arrived in the country hidden in golf bags. “It’s hard to build a Jewish community and to feel comfortable as a Jew in a place if Israel isn’t recognized.”

That was at a time when Israelis could not travel to the Emirates unless they had dual citizenship and a second passport. But Jews from other countries, like the many other foreigners in Dubai, could live there safely and work without problems.

Some of those early residents, who cautiously seeded the possibility of a religious and cultural life for Jews in the Emirates, are today steering the steady growth of the community.

Mr. Kriel now leads a regular service at the posh St. Regis Hotel on the Palm Jumeirah island in Dubai — a palm-shaped man-made island filled with mansions.

In late February, about 80 men, women and children boisterously trickled into a ballroom that had tables set up with religious books, spare skullcaps and a laminated, one-page prayer for the State of Israel. A company Mr. Kriel recently founded, called Kosher Arabia and which supplies kosher meals for Emirates Airline, catered the dinner. “We get to smash paradigms,” he said. But critics say any dissent over the Jewish presence in Dubai is also smashed by the Emirati authorities.

Long a hub for international commerce, the Emirates has a large and diverse Arab population including many Palestinians, who reject the 2020 normalization deals. But they risk arrest or expulsion if they try to express their opposition.

No one would dare criticize or speak up, said one Palestinian artist who was born and raised in the Emirates. She asked not to be named for fear of retribution.

When the normalization agreement was announced, she said she drove to a mosque in Abu Dhabi, the Emirati capital, that was designed to resemble Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock.

“My anger zeroed in on the building,” she said. “I felt like there was a deceptiveness there, a desire to claim ownership of this Islamic icon while ignoring the Palestinians.” Her sentiments were echoed by others, including Egyptians and Jordanians, whose countries signed peace treaties with Israel long ago but remained reluctant to foster personal, civil or business ties with Israelis.

But some Arabs, including Emiratis in Dubai, expressed enthusiasm for change and a resounding sense of confidence in the country’s leadership, which they say has a proven record and a discerning vision of building a modern, strong and tolerant state.

“We trust the government,” said Alanoud Alhashmi, 33, the chief executive and founder of The Futurist, a Dubai-based company that focuses on food security and agricultural technology — areas of concern and shared interest with Israel.

“I get attacked for my opinion, but we need to start thinking about the future and forget the past,” added Ms. Alhashmi, who said she had met recently with Israeli businessmen. “There will be no such thing as a Palestinian cause if we run out of food and water.”

Most Jews in the Emirates, like many Western expatriates, gravitate to Dubai, where unlike much of Arab world, modest dress is not necessary, alcohol is readily available and foreigners blend in easily.

There, they are laying the groundwork to support the community’s diverse and growing needs. “I would have never opened a Jewish nursery anywhere else in the world,” said Sonya Sellem, a French mother who owns Mini Miracles and an adjacent community center which is a hub for Jewish events.

The nursery enrolled its first group of about 20 children this year and plans to open two more classes next year. It also offers a Hebrew school for about 60 other children on Sundays. “Sure, there are people who are not happy,” Ms. Sellem said. Nevertheless, she said she felt safer in Dubai than in London or Paris, where she saw antisemitism as more potent and palpable.

Rabbi Abadie, a Sephardic Jew who was born and raised in Lebanon before his family fled to Mexico in 1971, sat in one of several residential villas that the government had approved as places of worship for Jews. Hanging on one wall were framed portraits of the country’s ruling royals.

“There hasn’t been a real Jewish presence in an Arab country, let alone building a new community,” he said, adding that this could change the entire face of the region."

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*Please note that certain headlines and articles may have been summarized or modified to fit the format of the newsletter

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