Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS

American Jewish Committee opens office in Abu Dhabi, first in Arab country

Called “AJC Abu Dhabi: The Sidney Lerner Center for Arab-Jewish Understanding,” it will be led by former ambassador Marc Sievers.

View of the United Arab Emirates and the Persian Gulf. Credit: Pixabay.
View of the United Arab Emirates and the Persian Gulf. Credit: Pixabay.

The American Jewish Committee announced that it has opened an office in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, making it the first office in an Arab country and the 13th overseas office to date.

Called “AJC Abu Dhabi: The Sidney Lerner Center for Arab-Jewish Understanding,” it will be led by former ambassador Marc Sievers, said the organization on Monday. Sievers recently retired after serving in the U.S. foreign service for 38 years.

David Harris, CEO of the organization established in 1906, said the new office “will enable AJC to expand on our decades of bridge-building in the region and create a wider network of stakeholders in the new relationships made possible by the Abraham Accords.”

The office will seek to strengthen ties related to the normalization agreement, as well as relations between Israel and the Gulf states.

“We’re here to ensure that another 9/11 never happens again, and we’re not afraid to address that the reason 9/11 happened was because of radical Islamic terrorism,” Jayne Zirkle of Lawfare Project told JNS.
The Israeli military pushed back against charges from the U.N. chief regarding strikes targeting Hezbollah strongholds north of the border.
U.K. officials attached to missions in Kiryat Gat and Ramallah were told to halt their operations immediately, an Israeli source told JNS.
The Taybeh municipality said it was filing a civil case in the United States seeking damages in relation to so-called settler violence.