By Nate Feldman
America Abroad Media, an organization which according to its website supports voices that promote "universal values through creative content and media programming," hosted an event last week celebrating Um Haroun, a Saudi television series that aired last Ramadan, showing the life of a Jewish community living in the Arabian Gulf in the 1940s.
The series portrayed Jewish people in a positive light, something extremely uncommon, if not non-existent during the past several decades of ongoing Arab-Israeli hostilities in the region. Hayat Al-Fahad, a Kuwaiti actress who starred as Um Haroun, the protagonist of the shows, acknowledged in an interview with Margaret Brennan at the America Abroad Media awards that she hesitated a bit before accepting the role because "this idea is unacceptable in Gulf countries or in some Arab countries about a particular group of people."
Mazen Hayek, a spokesman for the MBC channel which aired the shows, said that the program "focuses on tolerance, showcasing a region where acceptance of one another was the norm."
Ali and Mohammed Shams, the two screenwriters of the series from Bahrain, said that they wrote the series because the reality of Jews living in the Arabian gulf was a reality and they could not "deny reality."
The series preceded the normalization of ties between Israel and several Arab countries (the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco) later in the year, and some believe programs like this reflect the thawing of relations and shifting attitudes between former adversaries.
For more information about Um Haroun and the interview between Margaret Brennan and the show's participants at the America Abroad Media Awards, here is the link on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvPMQEGozF0.
