An Israeli man who said he was the last surviving member of the Jewish community of Najran in southwestern Saudi Arabia has died at the age of about 82.

David Shuker, who spent his final years in Israel, became a public symbol of a largely forgotten chapter of Jewish history in the Arabian Peninsula after he launched a series of appeals in 2022 seeking permission to return to his birthplace before his death.

In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal and in interviews with Israeli media, Shuker called on Saudi leaders — including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud — to allow him a final visit to Najran.

“I’m asking … to go to the city of my birth, Najran, while I am still standing on my feet, to see where my grandparents are buried,” Shuker said in a 2022 interview with Channel 13.

His request was never approved.

“Jews lived in Najran long before the Saudi rule. In fact, there is evidence that Jews lived there as early as 2,000 years ago,” Shuker told Channel 13 a number of years ago.

Shuker was born in 1944 in Najran, near the border with Yemen. The region, once linked culturally and politically to Yemen, was incorporated into Saudi Arabia in 1934, when the modern Saudi state was established.

At the time of his childhood, Najran was home to a small but longstanding Jewish community. Shuker later recalled that roughly 60 Jewish families lived in the city and nearby villages.

Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Shuker said Saudi authorities ordered the remaining Jewish residents to leave and move toward the Yemeni border. His family ultimately emigrated to Israel in 1951, as part of the broader exodus of Jews from Arab countries in the mid-20th century.

Shuker later settled in the town of Bnei Ayish, near Ashdod, where he served as mayor and became active in local public life.

In his final years, Shuker sought to draw attention to the disappearance of Najran’s Jewish community and to preserve its history. His 2022 campaign to visit Saudi Arabia was widely covered in Israeli and international media and came amid broader regional shifts following the Abraham Accords and limited warming between Israel and some Arab states.

Despite those changes, Saudi Arabia has not formally normalized relations with Israel, and Israeli citizens generally remain barred from entering the kingdom.

Shuker’s effort was seen by supporters as a humanitarian request rather than a political statement, focused on personal closure and historical recognition. Still, it failed to gain official approval.

In announcing his death, the Yemenite Jewish and Israeli Communities Heritage Center described Shuker as “a multifaceted public character whose image is woven into the story of the Jews of Yemen in general and the Najran community in particular.”

“His life story is that of the Yemenite Jews — tradition, faith, labor and preservation of identity from generation to generation,” the organization said.

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