Loay Al-Shareef

Overview:
Raised in an allegedly religious Muslim household, Loay Al-Shareef is an Arab online activist who has been involved in Israel’s attempted cultural diplomacy approach in Arab Gulf states, spewing pro-Zionist narratives across his accounts and in his online “Arab language lessons”. This Saudi has been immersed in Zionism since the 2020 Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain and has contacts with various known Israeli soft diplomacy operatives in the region.

Biography

Loay Ahmed Amin Al-Jaafari Al-Shareef was born on November 11, 1982 in Saudi Arabia from Egyptian ancestry and a family from Bahrain. Al-Shareef who once “didn’t have positive views about Israel,” claims to have changed views after spending time with a Jewish family in Paris.¹ Loay moved to the United States and graduated with an M.A. in software engineering from Pennsylvania State University in 2013. He is fluent in 4 languages (Arabic, English, French, and Hebrew) and wishes to get an academic degree in Israel and study the history of the “Dead Sea Scrolls”. In 2018, he had an engagement to a non-Muslim American woman. Recently Bahraini citizenship was granted to him, facilitating his pro-Israel activities in post-Abraham Accords Bahrain.

Zionist Public Diplomacy Agent

Al-Shareef’s deviant way of thinking of “Tikkun olam” – the Jewish concept that the Jews are obliged to influence the world² – is echoed in his projects. He strives to portray “Israel as an organic part of the Middle East region” it has sought to occupy. Loay regrets Israel’s 2023 war against Gaza, only due to its role delaying its attempted “reconciliation” with Arab states, not for the huge number of Palestinian innocent casualties. Loay, a supporter of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, is a symbol of “Muslim” hypocrisy as he prays from Mecca for his beloved Zionist Jews on one hand, and offers condolences to Isaac Herzog, Israel’s President, on the death of his mother on the other, all in an attempt to create an image of Arab-Israeli rapprochement.³
Today, Al-Shareef is among the region’s top agitators promoting the Abraham Accords, to the extent that he has caught the attention of Israeli, American, and Gulf leaders. Also after the deal, he attended the Emirates’ first-ever “Holocaust memorial ceremony”, which included “survivors’” recorded testimonies. Loay now resides in Bahrain after living in the UAE. Al-Shareef originally left Saudi Arabia for the UAE in 2016 to pursue his “peace-building” activities with Israelis, as the UAE was experiencing a surge of Jewish/Zionists residents at the time. Al-Shareef also spares no cooperation with official Arab and non-Arab media outlets in Arabic, English, and Hebrew in defense of the Jewish supremacist regime.⁴

Loay Al-Shareef shakes hands with Dubai ruler **Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum** at the Arab Media Forum in 2018

In February 2019, Loay Al-Shareef conditioned any interview with the Israeli outlets to the revival of peace talks between Palestine and Israel, four months later he was interviewed by Israeli media and expressed his love for the Hebrew language as “the language of the prophets”.
Since US campus protests over Gaza escalated since April 17, 2024, Loay alongside other Arab Israeli soft diplomacy agents such as Amjad Taha, hosted “discussions” across US campuses, in an attempted whitewashing of the Zionist regime.

Al-Shareef sitting next to **Amjad Taha** in a campus program amid US-based 2024 Gaza protests, both donning Arab attire as they usually do to portray themselves as representatives of Arab opinion

Relations with Well-Known Israeli Operatives

Al-Shareef has a history of portraying Israel as an “integral” part of the Middle East alongside other known Israeli foreign public relations operatives. Speaking at Chabad Belgravia at a discussion organized by StandWithUs and the Jewish Chronicle (JC), he said: “Zionism can be defined in one line: the right of Jews to have self-determination in their ancestral homeland”. Somewhere else Loay Al-Shareef said that “Israel is here to stay and the Arab world would be wise to make good use of its neighbors”.⁵
In 2019, he was documented cooperating with “Together – Vouch for Each Other,” headed by Yoseph Haddad, an Arab Israeli public diplomacy activist. The group, founded in 2018 and led by a group of young Israelis, seeks to manipulate the Arab sector of Israeli society.
Loay can be found visiting the Israeli consulate in Dubai regularly, being seen alongside Hassan Kaabiyeh, a Zionist Foreign Ministry spokesman for Arab media. Al-Shareef’s presence in Shabbat meals with Jewish community members such as Magdy Khalil is worth mentioning.

An example of the many pictures posted by Loay showing him meeting Hassan Kaabiyeh

Al-Shareef also has a close relationship with the Netanyahu-connected Rabbi Levi Duchman, head of Chabad in the UAE, and Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, chief rabbi of the Jewish Community of the Emirates since 2018. Shareef’s activities have also been encouraged by Saoud bin Hamoodah and Majed Alseyabi – two Emiratis with a similar focus on pro-Israel “youth empowerment” – and Reva Gorelick, program director for American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Abu Dhabi.

Loay Al-Shareef speaks with **Allison Josephs** in the “Jew in the City” online program

It’s noteworthy that Sapir Levi, an Israel Foreign Ministry digital diplomacy officer, has referred to a four-year-long acquaintance with Loay. Levi, is among the admins of the Israel’s once infamous “Israel in Arabic” hasbara page.