Gadeer Mreeh

Gadeer Kamal-Mreeh ( ar, غدير كمال مريح, , , born 21 June 1984) is an Israeli Druze politician and journalist. She became the first Druze woman to anchor a Hebrew-language news program on Israeli television in 2017. In April 2019, she was elected to the Knesset as a member of the Blue and White alliance, making history as the first Druze woman to become a Member of the Knesset. She was subsequently elected to the Knesset as part of the Blue and White alliance in the September 2019 and March 2020 elections. She left Blue and White on 29 March 2020 and joined Yesh Atid. In June 2021, she joined the Jewish Agency for Israel and was sent to Washington D.C. as a senior emissary for the organization.

Biography

Gadeer Kamal-Mreeh was born in Daliyat al-Karmel, a village on Mount Carmel, to a Druze family. Her father is a building contractor. Mreeh remembers her father decorating their car with Israeli flags every Independence Day.

Kamal-Mreeh has been interested in broadcast journalism since her youth; at the age of 12, she volunteered for a local radio station, and also presented programs on cable television. She earned her bachelor's degree in social science and medical imaging at Bar-Ilan University, and began her career as a vascular ultrasound technician. Later, she studied for her master's degree in international relations, with a speciality in negotiation, at the University of Haifa.

She is married to Shadi Mreeh, an electrical and electronics engineer. The couple has two sons, and reside in her hometown of Daliyat al-Karmel. While Kamal-Mreeh's mother and grandmother are religious, stay-at-home mothers, she identifies as secular.

Journalism career

In 2012, Kamal-Mreeh was hired by the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation to present a television magazine program in Arabic. In 2015, she was chosen to anchor an Arabic-language news program on Channel 33.

In February 2017, Kamal-Mreeh became the anchor of the Channel 1 Hebrew-language weekend edition, becoming the first non-Jewish woman to anchor a Hebrew-language news program on Israeli television. She was a temporary replacement for regular anchor Michal Rabinovich, who returned to the program seven months later.

Kamal-Mreeh spent three months training with a teleprompter to deliver the news in Hebrew. However, she made a point of pronouncing Arabic names with an Arabic accent. Some community leaders complained to her parents about her new job, saying that a Druze woman should not be working in the evenings and at odd hours, but Kamal-Mreeh received positive support from her parents and husband, as well as from the community's spiritual leader, Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif.

Political and diplomatic career

Prior to the April 2019 Knesset elections, Kamal-Mreeh joined the Israel Resilience Party, a member of the Blue and White alliance, and was placed 25th on the Blue and White list. When she joined the faction, she stated that one of her goals was to amend Israel's Nation-State Bill, which specifies the nature of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

Kamal-Mreeh was elected to Knesset when the Blue and White alliance won 35 seats in the election. She is the first Druze woman to become a Member of Knesset.

In July 2021, she became a ''shaliah'' for the Jewish Agency. She serves as special liaison to the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and also works in coordination with Hillel International to promote Jewish student interest in Israel on American college campuses.The Unconventional Druze Woman Introducing U.S. Jews to ‘Another Israel’, Haaretz
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See also

*Women of Israel

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Mreeh, Gadeer
1984 births
Living people
21st-century Israeli women politicians
21st-century journalists
Bar-Ilan University alumni
Blue and White (political alliance) politicians
Druze members of the Knesset
Israeli Druze
Israel Resilience Party politicians
Israeli television journalists
Israeli television news anchors
Israeli women journalists
Members of the 21st Knesset (2019)
Members of the 22nd Knesset (2019–2020)
Members of the 23rd Knesset (2020–2021)
People from Daliyat al-Karmel
University of Haifa alumni
Women members of the Knesset
Women television journalists
Yesh Atid politicians