Kuwait, like many other countries in the region, has not been spared by the Islamic regime despite having no relations with Israel.

A shift in the Kuwaiti public’s perceptions of Israel began as the war with Iran broke out, Kuwaiti dissident Jasem Aljuraid told The Jerusalem Post late on Sunday night.

Kuwait, like many other countries in the region, has not been spared by the Islamic regime, despite having no relations with Israel. On Monday, a worker was killed after the regime struck a desalination plant and a key power station.

“They see that Israel is throwing and shooting missiles that pass Kuwait’s airspace going toward Iran,” Aljuraid said. “This is an unprecedented time for Kuwaitis to change their perspective and their opinion about Israel.”

Aljuraid spoke with the Post just days after delivering an impassioned address at the 61st session of the UN Human Rights Council, where he denounced atrocities committed by the Islamic regime, condemned what he described as entrenched anti-Israel double standards among member states, and criticized the historical revisionist efforts to paint the Jewish state as a colonialist force.

“We need to join ventures and point out our strategic enemy and try to topple the IRGC and their militias,” he said.

“I wasn’t wrong. Israel went after Hamas. Israel went after Hezbollah. They freed Lebanon. They freed the Palestinians from Hamas in Gaza. They went after the Houthis. They weakened the Houthis. Now, Yemenis have a new government, whether we agree with the new government or not.

“Israel’s impact is unbelievable. I don’t think that there are more important countries than Israel and the UAE in the region today. And I wasn’t wrong about this, and that’s why I went to the UN, and I gave that speech.”

Wearing traditional Arab clothing, Aljuraid said he wanted to make it clear that he was calling out the antisemitism as an Arab.

“They’re calling Israel the colonizer, the Zionist entity that is trying to expand and go back to the greater Israel, which is a huge propaganda and an enshrinement of a lie that they want to convince the world about,” he insisted.

“And then I went there and said, ‘No, I’m Kuwaiti. I’m an Arab; we are the colonizers. There are 57 Islamic countries and one Jewish state. Why would we go after that Jewish state? Why, when they’re fighting our fight?’” Aljuraid noted.

He highlighted: “I just want to make sure that we perceive Israel as a friend, not as an enemy,” joking that he heard the sound of mics dropping when he identified Arabs as colonizers.

Aljuraid’s willingness to call out corruption and stand in support of Israel has come at a cost.

He described how his criticism of the Muslim Brotherhood and corruption in Kuwait, coupled with inviting an Israeli journalist to his home, upended his life.

Aljuraid, who wrote extensively for the Kuwaiti daily newspaper Al-Qabas for nearly a decade, has been living in Canada for the past several years after receiving death threats and a prison sentence for referring to Israeli journalist Edy Cohen as his “friend” and “brother” in 2022. In a series of tweets, he expressed hope that Cohen might one day visit his home, remarks that sparked a boycott campaign and ultimately pressured Al-Qabas to dismiss him and remove his work. In the aftermath, Aljuraid said, prominent activists and community figures escalated their rhetoric, openly calling for his killing and urging citizens to “do their job” if they encountered him in public.

Digital normalization of Israel

Amendments in 2021 to Kuwait’s 1964 Israel Boycott Law criminalize what authorities define as digital normalization with Israel, effectively barring citizens from interacting with Israelis online. Violations can carry severe penalties, including prison sentences of up to 15 years with hard labor, as well as asset seizures.

At first, Aljuraid was taken to court and made to pay fines equivalent to $7,000 for his articles on the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and his investigative journalist efforts to expose corruption in his country, but after the death of emir Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, the punishments became more severe. He was accused of being a member of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service and strongly advised to flee the country. Soon after leaving, he was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment in absentia and made a “political refugee,” he recalled.

“I never thought that this was gonna be my destiny, even Edy Cohen did not even imagine that I would be in this severe trouble,” he said, explaining that MB’s rise in power had meant that his ability to speak, write, and report freely had been restricted.

“We used to talk about Israel and the democracy in Israel and the development of the Israeli people in the education system and so forth… We were talking about it, and I was writing about it for a very long time… So it didn’t resonate with me that the next government bodies were influenced by the Brotherhood.”

Sabah was a “liberal,” Aljuraid claimed, stating that the only reason normalization hadn’t come under his rule was because of the country’s geographic vulnerability, surrounded by countries hostile to the Jewish state.

The powers that took over the country, including the interior minister and the prime minister, were sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood and reacted strongly to Aljuraid’s campaign to “confront the radical Islamists in Kuwait where their power was arising in a very, very scary way,” he said.

Making his situation more difficult to bear, Aljuraid said while visibly distressed, he missed his home and would likely not get the opportunity to say goodbye to his dying mother.

“She doesn’t know why I’m a political refugee today. I didn’t harm my country’s sovereignty, nor did I say anything wrong… I miss my mom. I’m lying to her every day, every day I tell her that I’m coming back. I lie. I say I’m coming next week, my paperwork is almost done,” he said.

Asked if, knowing the cost now, he would do anything differently to spare himself the heartache, Aljuraid shared that he would take a “harsher” stance than he had.

“I would travel to Israel, and I’d say, ‘This is Israel. I’m safe.’

“I would double down,” he claimed, recounting how he had the opportunity to go back on his statements when he was hosted by Arab media but refused.

While many in Kuwait have been indoctrinated by the media and prevented from deradicalizing through online or in-person interactions with the country’s strict anti-normalization laws, Aljuraid said he had been protected from the rhetoric by his parents.

His Muslim mother has Jewish ancestry, and his father “didn’t trust Palestinians” after Yasser Arafat and the PLO forces supported Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Forgotten by many in Kuwait, though not his father, was Israel’s restraint in responding to Hussein’s forces during the 1991 attacks, he explained. “So this is, this is also a very noble stance that we will never forget for Israel,” he said.