Ishmael Khaldi

Israeli diplomat

Ismail Khaldi (إسماعيل خالدي, ; born 1971) is the first Bedouin diplomat in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Ismail Khaldi was born in Khawaled, Israel a village near Haifa. He is the third of eleven children. and a master's degree in political science and international relations from Tel Aviv University. Khaldi initiated a project called "Hike and Learn with Bedouins in the Galilee" that has brought thousands of young Jews to Khawaled to learn about Bedouin culture and history. He said these encounters inspired him to become a diplomat. In August 2009, Khaldi was appointed policy advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman.

In June, 2020, Khaldi filed a police complaint in Israel, after he was beaten by security guards at Jerusalem’s central bus station. Khaldi believed that the attack was a case of ethnic profiling, and he wanted to bring attention to "racist behavior in parts of Israeli society".

In 2011, Khaldi was due to give a talk at the invitation of the University of Edinburgh's Jewish Society. Pro Palestinian protesters disrupted the venue, preventing the talk. This was viewed by many as a blow to freedom of speech on campuses. University security officers had to be brought in after 50 protesters claimed to have shut down a lecture. He was also disrupted by activists at Rutgers University and by Julio Pino, a professor of history at Kent State.

Khaldi said there is still a long way to go before the Bedouin minority achieves full equality in Israel but the situation is improving, and more Bedouins are graduating from high school, entering universities and getting better jobs than ever before. "There are differences in tradition and religion between us, but at the end of the day we are all Israeli citizens". He considers himself a proud Bedouin and regards a Jewish state as beneficial to his community. He says it is through the alliance with Israel that the Bedouins have begun to transcend the isolation created by their nomadic traditions.