Hillel Kuttler
Born in Damascus to secular Muslim parents and raised in the village of Chtaura in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, Rawan Osman, 40, was on her fourth trip to Israel this year when we dined outdoors at a Jerusalem restaurant in mid-September. She plans to move here for good. In preparation, she spent two months this summer studying modern Hebrew in Jerusalem. (“I’m at Level 4,” she told me in Hebrew, during an interview otherwise conducted in English. “I attended an intensive ulpan.”)
Osman has been a vocal advocate on social media for Israel and against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran—including launching an Instagram forum, Arabs Ask, shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, to answer questions about Israel in Arabic. She’s a central figure in a new documentary, Tragic Awakening, about the plague of antisemitism. In May, while visiting Israel on an all-female European delegation, Osman addressed a parliament committee and condemned Hamas’ rape of Israeli women during the terrorist group’s invasion. “I never felt prouder,” she told me. “When I spoke at the Knesset, I officially and publicly announced my recovery from antisemitism. That day was an act of atonement for me.”
Osman is also in the process of converting to Judaism; when we met, she was wearing a gold necklace with a Star of David pendant.
It’s been a dramatic evolution for a woman reared on what she considers the brainwashing of youth to despise Israel and Jews, and who admits to having been an antisemite. Only after moving to France and then Germany, where she lives now, did Osman realize that her parents and teachers had lied to her.
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