A Saudi newspaper has appointed a Jewish rabbi as its permanent article writer, according to the Hebrew newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.
Yedioth Ahronoth said that the English-language Saudi newspaper Arab News had appointed Rabbi Marc Schneier as a regular article writer.
“With this, Schneier became the first rabbi to write for a Saudi newspaper on a regular basis,” the Hebrew newspaper added. Schneier is a well-known but controversial American rabbi who founded and heads the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding.
Over the past 15 years, Schneier has been lavishly received in the palaces of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and Newsweek previously named him one of the 50 most influential rabbis in the United States, according to the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.
In late December, 2021, the Times of Israel newspaper revealed that a Jewish rabbi has been working for months to establish a recognised Jewish presence in Saudi Arabia, which is all the more notable since Saudi Arabia does not have a domestic Jewish community.
The newspaper showed several photos and videos of the ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Jacob Yisrael Herzog wandering the streets of Riyadh and visiting a number of institutions, in what many saw as a publicity stunt on behalf of the Zionist entity.
A month earlier, Yedioth Ahronoth said that a delegation of American Jews met in Saudi Arabia with government officials and members of the royal family, in a step that paves the way for the kingdom to possibly abandon the Palestinian cause officially and establish relations with the Zionist occupation force.
