About 10 years ago, for the first time in its history, Iceland began to draw serious numbers of migrants, particularly from Eastern Europe and the Arab world. As Har-Meshi only half-jokingly remarks, the new arrivals from her part of the world have been quite a welcome sight, making her feel less of an outsider in her adopted homeland, even though support for the Palestinian cause - and by definition, hostility to Israel - is widespread here. "For me, just to see other people with brown eyes has been really nice."

Does she miss Israel? "I miss my mother," she responds, and after a long pause: "Of course I miss Israel. What do you think?"

Glenn Barkan, who hails from Long Island, owns Cafe Babalu, a trendy meeting spot for students and artists in downtown Reykjavik, where the most popular item on the menu is New York cheesecake - based on his grandmother's recipe. Barkan says he's never encountered outright anti-Semitism in the seven years he's lived in Iceland, though he has found most Icelanders to be quite ignorant about Judaism. "I get a lot of people who say to me, 'What, you mean the Jews don't celebrate Christmas?' 'What, you mean the Jews don't believe in Jesus?'"


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Iceland Jews are left out in the cold - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News