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“Israeli Arab citizens detest the song and feel it disparages their identity and very existence”
As it obviously does. Why would a non-Jewish Palestinian who happens to be a citizen of Israel feel anything but disconnection with this song as their national anthem?
And by the way, most Palestinian citizens of Israel, not all of whom are Arabs, also despise the term Israeli Arab.
I didn’t realize they despised the term but I did realize there were more precise ones to use as you point out. ‘Palestinian citizens of Israel’ takes a long time to type, which is why, out of laziness I usually use the term Israeli Arab. But I’ll try to be more precise in future.
I probably overstated it a bit. Most dislike it, many despise it would be more accurate, I think. And yes, it is a bit cumbersome to use a more acceptable and accurate term, but the majority of Palestinians who are citizens of Israel identify as Palestinian, and do not want that identity erased by being called simply “Arabs”. And as I pointed out, not all Palestinians, including Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, ARE Arabs. There are also those, who I suspect are a majority, who do not want to be called “Israeli” at all.
They may despise the term Israeli Arab and I think it’s a misnomer, but that’s the name they want to go by.
That’s the name they use for their umbrella organization: va’adat hama’akav shel ‘araviye israel.
“that’s the name they want to go by.”
Who appointed you to speak for them?
“…if it wishes to be a democracy it must embrace, and not erase, the culture and ethnic identity of all citizens.”
If it wishes to be a democracy it must either relinquish its identity as “The Jewish State”, which means it must deny its raison d’etre, or complete the ethnic cleansing of 1947-49. There is no way on earth it can be “The Jewish State” and a democracy unless its population is 100% Jewish.
“Where are the Jewish federations who claim they support Israel, as opposed to Jewish Israel?”
This is a logical impossibility. Israel was created to be and is by definition “The Jewish State”. If Israel were not Jewish it would not exist. Therefore Israel is by definition Jewish, so there is no way to support Israel without supporting Jewish Israel. People who claim they support Israel as opposed to Jewish Israel are trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Not so fast. Israel was created to be a democracy. You’ve pretty much thrown out the baby with the bathwater by dismissing this little part of Israel’s history. Israel does not HAVE to be an exclusivist Jewish state though it is now. That is what I am working toward.
Jewish federations do, by the way, support Israeli Arab (or whatever you prefer to call them) communities in Israel. It may be symbolic support rather than substantive support. But it is real financial support nonetheless.
Richard, if I understand you correctly, then we are not far apart at all on this. My point is that in order to be a true democracy Israel must do one of two things. It must either relinquish its identity as The Jewish State, or it must complete the ethnic cleansing begun in 1947-48 and (actually, the ethnic cleansing began well before that, but it is convenient to pinpoint it at the time of the Nakba). You seem to be saying that you can accept the former, and I assume that, like me, you find the latter utterly unacceptable. Therefore it seems we do not really disagree. Or did I misunderstand you?
As for Israel’s history, as you know, the sole reason for Israel’s conception and creation was for it to be The Jewish State. Except for that there was no reason for it to be created, and it never would have come into being. Israel was created to be an ethnocracy where people elect their leadership, not a true democracy. A country cannot be a democracy if its very definition excludes a portion of its citizenry. Israel was created and is known as The Jewish State or The State of The Jews, not the state of the people who are its citizens. As long as that continues and it has non-Jews among its citizens it cannot be a democracy.
And the fact that Jewish federations support Palestinian communities in Israel is irrelevant to whether or not Israel is a democracy (and it is not what I prefer to call them, it is how they wish to be identified). You know as well as I do that Israel’s non-Jewish citizens are not full citizens. The very symbols of the country, as banal as they are – the flag, the anthem, the minorah, and even the official language – remind them of that every day. And of course, we must add to that the irony of the fact that the creation of Israel necessitated the subjugation of the Palestinians and the obliteration of their rights in favour of a group of colonists from another continent.
Palestinian citizens of Israel are not now and have never been full citizens with equal rights and privileges. They are second-tier citizens at best by the very fact of being non-Jews in The Jewish State, and as long as Israel is The Jewish State they will remain so. That is not democracy, that is, as I said, ethnocracy.
But, as I said in the beginning, it seems we are not really so much at odds about this. Unfortunately, I don’t see Israelis giving up Israel’s “Jewish character” and becoming a state for all its citizens any time soon. Do you?
“But, as I said in the beginning, it seems we are not really so much at odds about this. Unfortunately, I don’t see Israelis giving up Israel’s “Jewish character” and becoming a state for all its citizens any time soon. Do you?”
No chance of that happening I don’t think … It may improve in various arenas to allow the minorities a legitimate shot at being an even more active part of the society, but it will always be a Jewish State with a flag with a ‘Jewish symbol’, a national anthem in Hebrew, etc …
There’s a few ways that can change – but hey ho, another post for another day.
“it will always be a Jewish State with a flag with a ‘Jewish symbol’, a national anthem in Hebrew, etc … ”
Then it will always be an ethnocracy where minorities will be, at best, well tolerated, never a democracy. And by the way, it is not so much that the national anthem is in Hebrew, it is what it says. Imagine yourself as a citizen of a country whose national anthem is something like “Onward Christian Soldiers” (sorry, I don’t know a lot of Christian songs), or “Arab Hearts United”.
I think that Israel should be a state for all its citizens. But I don’t believe Israel needs to completely eliminate or discount the ethnic identity of its Jewish (or Arab) citizens. In other words, Israel would not be THE Jewish state, but a Jewish state just as it would be an Arab state. For each community the state would express a fundamental aspect of their ethnic identity.
All the symbols you mentioned are of course problematic & would need to be reimagined. Arab citizens would have to be guaranteed equal rights. Citizens of ea. ethnic group would have their identities & rights protected in some fundamental way (perhaps by constitution). The key thing is not to allow an ethnic majority group to run roughshod over the rights of the minority whether that be Arab or Jewish.
I think we are fundamentally in agreement. What I am suggesting is that the root problem is the definition and concept of the State as an ethnically/religiously specific state, which automatically sets it up as an ethnocracy, and defines members of the named group as first tier citizens and all others as, at best, second tier with tenuous claims to citizenship, and lesser rights and privileges. The symbols of the State are a natural result of the way the State is defined, so while of course those DO need to change, the first thing that must change is the relgious/ethnic specificity of the definition and the concept of the State. The rest will follow more easily.
s/Arab/Palestinian/g
I think I see where Richard is coming from on this. To take a different angle on it, if you think of West European democracies, they often have a national culture that is tied to a dominant ethnic and linguistic identity. Some of the key ingredients for democracy in this context are that the rule of law be both paramount and universal, and applied universally, with the explicit protection of minority rights and minority freedom of religion, freedom of expression, universal suffrage, to be able to live in security and so on, written into the laws of the land.
Take 3 western European democratic countries like France, Germany and Norway. All three have dominant cultures and ethnic majority populations in the sense that one could talk about a ‘German state’ or a ‘French state’ or a ‘Norwegian state’. Yet they are also democracies (to the extent that one can talk of democracy existing today), pluralistic, multi-layered, with judicial due process, supposed equality under the law, governments responsive and accountable to the people, and the rest. The crucial thing here is that the national cultural identity must be loosely and flexibly defined and understood. The contemporary French or Germans don’t go around demanding pledges of allegiance from all their citizens to “the French state” or “the German state” (the subtext here being ethnicity/culture), to do so would be not only bizarre but totalistic and exclusionary. The dominant culture cannot essentialize itself this way in a democracy (but that’s NOT the same as saying a dominant culture doesn’t exist). This is the important distinction.
Listen, Germans’ “national” icons by definition tend to be ethnically/linguistically German: Bach, Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Brahms and on down the long list, the French: Baudelaire, Balzac, Flaubert, Rousseau, Debussy, etc. etc. I don’t think you have to necessarily dislodge dominant cultures to make room for other peoples, other stories within the framework of a particular nation. They can fit alongside each-other, co-exist, this is one of the necessary substrates for democracy.
Warren, thanks for your thoughtful remarks, but I am just not buying your analogy. You are comparing apples to bananas, and it just doesn’t fit. The European ethnicities, cultures, and languages, and nationalities (ethnicities is really inaccurate) you cited have evolved naturally in more or less the same geographical locations over centuries. That is clearly a very different case than Israel both historically and in the present day.
Good point, Shirin. And you’re right, ‘nationality’ would be a more accurate term in the context of what I was trying to say than ‘ethnicity’. After all, one can partake of and identity oneself with a nation and a culture without having to be a particular ethnicity. That’s a very crucial, important point, particularly when speaking of democracy.
And you’re right, the analogy is rather strained. When considering the history of ethnic cleansing and displacement of the Palestinian (vast)-majority population in the formation of the state of Israel in ’48 and add to that the 40+ years of Occupation and the slicing up of the West Bank into bantustans, via the exclusivist Jewish settlements, so that it is not a whole, contiguous Palestinian territory, there’s no way the analogy works. I guess I got caught up in my own train of thoughts, there. Well, wouldn’t be the first time. Considering the history and present day reality of Israel and the occupied Palestinians, the only viable model for Israel is some kind of American one (in its ultimate IDEALIZED formulation, I should say) of total pluralism where there is no one dominant national-cultural identity, or where the national identity/identities is open to flux and change based on demographics, right-of-return, or whatever.
See, this is why I blog here! I like to have my opinions/positions nuanced and modified through dialogue.
Pluralism – that is exactly the concept/word I have been grasping for in this discussion. Don’t know why that wouldn’t come to me, but you helped me out. Thanks Warren!
Great piece Richard, thank you.
I would like to heartily endorse Shirin’s comments with regard to Palestinian Israelis. To refer to them as Arab diffuses their identity and heritage. It always refers to Palestinian Israelis whilst obscuring the fact that they are Palestinian rather than Moroccan or Iraqi. Worst of all it supports the myth that Palestinians are interlopers in their own land. There are indeed many Arab citizens of Israel from outside Palestine but they are all Jewish.
To write Palestinian Israeli is the same number of words as Arab Israeli, although there are an extra seven letters.
With regard to Warren’s comments on democracy: The key feature of a functional democratic state is that it cherishes all its citizens equally without favour or discrimination regardless of religion, ethnicity or any other consideration. We in the West, particularly the Anglo-Saxon countries are inclined to confuse democracy with majoritarianism. Northern Ireland had a ‘democratic’ government for half a century after Partition but it was grossly dysfunctional, systematically discriminating against the Nationalist minority with predictable results.
In this sense the State of Israel is ‘democratic’ (neglecting the ethnic cleansing necessary to create a Jewish majority) but it is dysfunctional. Whilst Jewish Israelis apparently gain from the discrimination of the state it is also the source of their fearfulness and insecurity. How can they trust the Palestinians they cheat of dignity to treat Jewish Israelis with respect other than by continual subjugation? The silence of Mira Awad says as much as the volubility of Noa.
You make good points, Miles. I agree with you about majoritarianism vs. democracy. I was not arguing for the former in my comment, merely un-packing how one navigates democracy in the context of a majority ethnicity/dominant culture as you have in many European countries (and the issue is relevant for Israel, particularly in the context of a two-state “solution”).
However, some degree of majority rule, at least in terms of the electoral process, is ONE of the ingredients of a democracy. The crucial thing is that it cannot be the whole package. Pure majoritarianism will likely lead to some form of fascism as well as anything else. Your point regarding democracy is fundamental, “it cherishes all its citizens without favor or discrimination regardless of religion, ethnicity or any other consideration”. I covered some of the same points in my previous comment, but you encapsulate it perfectly right there. The enshrinement of minority rights, and equality under the law and equality of opportunity for ALL the people/citizens of a nation, is fundamental to democracy.
Hatikva also discriminates against Iraqi, Yemeni and Persian Jews. Their eyes were not “turned toward the East” during the 2,000 years in which they yearned for Zion.
“Hatikva also discriminates against Iraqi, Yemeni and Persian Jews. Their eyes were not “turned toward the East” during the 2,000 years in which they yearned for Zion.”
Funnily enough, that is true. However, while my friends and I joke about this all the time, it was written to ‘belittle’ the Mizrachi/Farsi communities at all …
I want to read more into your last sentence but alas, I’m sure there’s nothing there.
I was just pointing out that Hatikva is, to some extent, a representation of the twofold racism going on in Israeli society: a “soft” discrimination against Mizrachi Jews, and a very harsh discrimination against Israeli Arabs. It is somewhat insulting to have to say that you were looking East when you were looking West (or nowhere at all); but it is much more insulting still to have to say that your soul is Jewish when you’re an Arab.
If you say so mate … The Mizrachim, as you probably know, include Egyptian, Libyan, Tunisian, Algerian, Moroccan & Lebanese/Turkish Jewry. They all looked ‘east’. So I guess the composer was defo being racist, but selected only a certain group of Mizrachim to single out.
I’m sure however, that you’re well aware of where Jews normally face when praying (& the rules behind it) and why the composer settled on ‘East’.
“It is somewhat insulting”
Doesn’t bother any of my friends, many of whom are 1st/2nd generation descendants of Iraqi and Persian refugees. Maybe you know of some people who it does bother I guess?
“but it is much more insulting still to have to say that your soul is Jewish when you’re an Arab.”
You should re-write that statement considering where “Arab Jewry” came from.
Do you believe Arab Jews consider themselves Arab? As far as I know, they’re quite busy shouting mavet le’aravim (“death to the Arabs”). Do you think they’re calling for mass suicide?
If you know what I’m talking about, why do you pretend not to?
Many of them consider themselves of Arab ancestry, but because of the many factors (be it their expulsion, the political climate of Israel, etc) will not ever be called Arabs Jews.
“As far as I know, they’re quite busy shouting mavet le’aravim (”death to the Arabs”)”
This is your 2nd generalization against Sefradim/Mizrachim I’ve seen you post on this site (I guess you also sadly believe all Arabs shout itbach al yahud too?) … Interesting how you pretend to care about them & ‘defend their rights’ in one post, and then slam them a few posts later. But I guess you’re right – all Mizrachim shout that phrase, and don’t forget, they all eat charif food and drink sachlab.
“If you know what I’m talking about, why do you pretend not to?”
Because Arab Jewry still comes from the ‘Arab world’ and when you call them Mizrachim/Sefardim, you yourself acknowledge that. Their food, their music, their customs are very much influenced by the ‘Arab’ world. I’m sure you get what I’m talking about it … but hey, I’ll play along with you and pretend the culture of Mizrachi Jewry is entirely Israeli. You have me convinced.
I think you’re on very thin ice here. This sounds more like hasbara than real history. We can talk about discrimination against Jews in Arab lands. But expulsion??
Thanks Richard. I am very familiar with Iraqi Jewish history, and less so with Syrian Jewish history, and the Jews absolutely were not expelled from either country. What did happen in Iraq is absolutely shameful both on the part of the Iraqi government and on the Zionists who engineered the exodus without real regard for the identity, wishes, and welfare of the Iraqi Jews involved, but there was absolutely no expulsion. On the contrary, the governments of Iraq and Syria did not want to lose their Jewish communities, if only for the intellectual, cultural, and economic wealth they would take with them. It was only after the Zionists made it personally very profitable for Nouri Sa`eed and his family that the Iraqi government agreed to allow unlimited emigration for Jews for the period of one year. And even then Jews were not exactly signing up in droves until a series of other events encouraged them to believe they would be better off elsewhere.
Expulsion. From Casablanca to Karachi.
“Many of them consider themselves of Arab ancestry”
As someone born and raised in an Arab country, I probably would have been beheaded had I claimed there to be an “Arab Jew.”
In those countries, “Arab” is not merely an identity, it is also a social status that Jews, as well as the muslim native populations, certainly didn’t enjoy.
I defy anyone to find anywhere, at anytime in our traditions or records that we have called ourselves “Arab Jews.”
Nor have we ever called ourselves “Mizrahi”.
I don’t know where you find the arrogance to call people by names they never gave to themselves.
Silvia – Are you saying in the Arab world or Israel (it isn’t very clear)?
My goodness, Silvia! You certainly have some stereotyped ideas about Arabs, don’t you? Beheaded? For claiming to be an Arab Jew?
Well, how interesting that our experiences in this regard have been so very, very different. How can we account for that, i wonder.
Over the years I have personally counted quite a number of Iraqi Jews among my companions and people with whom I interacted in business and other contexts, most of them in Iraq. I have also met and known Arab Jews from other countries than Iraq. They have all self-identified as Arab Jews, and the Iraqi Jews I have known were indistinguishable from any other Iraqi, and felt more connected to Iraq than to Israel. None of them ever shouted “death” to anyone.
“Do you believe Arab Jews consider themselves Arab?”
I know for a fact that many of them do. I also know for a fact that they are widely considered Arab by their fellow Arabs. I know that they are culturally far more Arab than they are anything else. There might be some in Israel who shout “death to Arabs”, but so what? Those sad, sick hate-filled people do not characterize Arab Jews any more than the sad, sick hate-filled members of any other group characterize that group.
Arabs in Palestine occupy 85% of the land mass; Jews ARE KEPT IN bANTHUSTANS AND ENCLAVES.
tHEY MAY ONLY SING AND aRABS DANCE.
What are you smokin’???
Go on Richard … Finish the sentence … (and where can I get some?!? :) )
Do you really want to partake of the drug that guy’s imbibing??
ha ha I didn’t say it was for me … !
“the Iraqi Jews I have known were indistinguishable from any other Iraqi, and felt more connected to Iraq than to Israel.”
Shirin – that is most likely because you met them IN Iraq. I’ve met hundreds of Iraqi Jews, both here (Israel) and the US and many are very aware of their Arab heritage. They all (be it Iraqi, Syrian or Egyptian) obviously felt a connection to the home they were expelled from – but were as strongly connected to the new ‘home’ (be it the US, or Israel).
They are culturally more Arab – I agree, be it food, music etc (I’m not sure dress as I don’t know how I would define that in the Arab world) … but as I said earlier, due to their massive presence (number wise) in the 1950s in Israel, Israeli culture is very ‘Arab’/Middle Eastern …
Well, when people emigrate they do tend sooner or later to connect to the new place. And everyone is different, of course. Some adapt and connect right away, some never do, some connect closely, some very little at all, and most are no doubt in between. But Iraq never leaves you no matter where you go or how long you stay there.
No doubt the second and third generation Iraqis, whether Jews or not, are “aware of their Arab heritage”, but those Iraqis, Jews and others, who have lived in Iraq are more than aware of it. They are Arabs and it is embedded in their being and informs everything about them whether they are happy about that or not. :o}
Of course, the Jews I knew in Iraq were deeply connected to Iraq, all the more since they and their families had resisted the pressure to emigrate in 1950-51. So were most of the Jews who left during the exodus of 1950-51, and I believe most of them remain very deeply connected to Iraq, even if they are also connected to their present homes. I have one friend born in Israel to Iraqi parents who himself feels quite connected to Iraq despite never having been there. His mother is from Mosul, and I happen to speak the dialect of that city so I have sent her messages through him in that dialect, and he tells me it makes her cry to hear her home language. Last year he learned I would be in Amman during Passover, and he begged me to join them for a traditional Iraqi Seder and some real Iraqi meals, but I cannot go into Israel, so I sadly declined.
The inner sense of Iraq versus the new country as home might be stronger in the people you have met than it appears to you, though certainly that varies with the individual.
Many of the Iraqi Jews I have met emigrated to Israel at some point, found it impossible to connect to that country at all, and left. Some of them, especially among those who went in the late ’40′s and ’50′s, are committed and even active anti-Zionists as a result of their experience. Others, including quite a few who have stayed in Israel, have mixed feelings. Many feel a closer connection with the Palestinians than they do with Jewish Israelis. I find this natural, others might not.
No doubt second and third generation Arab Jews in Israel are culturally less Arab and more Israeli (whatever that is) than their parents – that’s always how it goes.
Being culturally Arab transcends just food, music, or dress (which is mostly western, and often very impeccable among urban educated/professional Iraqis). It is much more a mentality and a set of habits.
“Israeli culture is very ‘Arab’/Middle Eastern”
I am not well qualified to say, having never been there, but having met, been friends with, and worked with a number of Israelis (Amira Hass among them, I am very pleased to say), and having kept up with Israeli media, my strong impression is that it is more a not-very-refined European culture with a bit of Middle Eastern seasoning thrown in for flavour. Eating falafel and hummus and calling it Israeli cuisine does not make you culturally Arab. :o}
I do have a couple of CD’s of Arabic music from a second generation Mizrachi group (sorry, forgot the name and too lazy to go to the other room to look at the CD) that is very nice, though some of their pronunciations are “interesting”, such as the extremely grating habit of Israelis to pronounce the hard Arabic H as kh, which in one song results in changing the word Hayyati, “my life” to KhayaTi “my taylor”. :o}
For the record, Iraqi and Syrian Jews were never expelled. On the contrary, for years the Iraqi and Syrian governments imposed unfair restrictions on Jews intended to prevent them from emigrating. The bulk of Iraqi Jews left in 1950-51 largely as a result of multi-pronged effort on the part of Zionists, which included bribery of government officials, including Nouri Al Sa`eed on several levels, and some even less honourable activities than that. The exodus of the Iraqi and Syrian Jewish comminities was a terrible loss to those countries. As I am sure you know the Iraqi Jewish community was there continuously since the Babylonian exile, and so predated the Arabs by millennia. The Jewish community was an essential part of the fabric of Iraqi society on many levels, and was quite well integrated into society, and the same for the Syrian Jewish community. Shamefully, Egyptian Jew WERE expelled, though Zionist activities played a significant part in that too.
Wrt the Iraqi expulsion – I’ve talked to some Iraqis Jews who were involved with the ‘unrest’ of the time, and most say many were eager to live (note, NOT ALL). Was even more pressure applied by Israel? Sure. Would that have stopped a mass emigration had it not been around? No chance … Surely you remember what happened in Iraq during WWII … I’ve talked to enough Iraqi JEws, born and bred there, to know it was a very difficult existence at times – but they still loved the country.
“that it is more a not-very-refined European culture with a bit of Middle Eastern seasoning thrown in for flavour.”
Well when you hang out with people like Amira Hass, that is what youll obviously get. This country is far more ‘Arab’/Mizrachi in its attitude and ‘way of being’ than European. That probably shifted more in the 1990s with Russian Jewry’s arrival …
“Many of the Iraqi Jews I have met emigrated to Israel at some point, found it impossible to connect to that country at all, and left. Some of them, especially among those who went in the late ’40’s and ’50’s, are committed and even active anti-Zionists as a result of their experience. Others, including quite a few who have stayed in Israel, have mixed feelings. Many feel a closer connection with the Palestinians than they do with Jewish Israelis. I find this natural, others might not.”
I’ve been a part of many communities where the dominant group were Iraqi Jews who had left/expelled in the 1950s. I can count on two fingers the amount how exhibit opinions such as the above. Do they exist? Sure. Are they a minority? Yup … Despite the treatment of Mirzachi Jewry in the 1950s (which many, including myself, fail to realize similar treatment metted out to most immigrant classes in that time – be it Bulgarians or Romanians), most Mizrachi Jews are still very very attached to Israel (or the country they currently live in). That doesn’t mean they don’t care/ have a connection to Iraq and the world they, and their families, left behind.
“It is much more a mentality and a set of habits. ”
Which I see a lot of – considering I interact with the people with ‘proper’ Arab mentality (Palestinian Israelis or Palestinian Palestinians!) and ‘non proper’ mentality (Israeli Jews)
We can agree that we have been exposed to different things when it comes to Iraqi Jews. Maybe they express different attitudes with each of us due to our different backgrounds, maybe we have met different people with different experiences, most likely a bit of both. Certainly most of the Iraq Jews I have known have not chosen to go to or stay in Israel, so of course they would have a different point of view. So, Iraqi Jews are not a monolithic entity any more than any other human group is – big surprise.
Your somewhat snide remark about Amira Hass is misplaced. In any case, I did not form my opinion of Israeli culture and society on my acquaintance with her. On the contrary, I believe she is quite exceptional, not only as an Israeli but also as a human being. It is my view that if there were more human beings like Amira the world would be better off.
“most of the Iraq Jews I have known have not chosen to go to or stay in Israel”
I would say that’s still the case for most Jews … So no biggie.
“Your somewhat snide remark about Amira Hass is misplaced”
Sorry, but she doesn’t spend most of her time in Israel and I have issues with her ‘false reporting’ (We’ve discussed it here before, so I won’t go into it further).
“allow the propaganda that they were expelled to go unchallenged.”
If you say so – I’ve seen enough from the ‘other side’ (which you call propaganda) that says differently, most from the Iraqi Jews who left the country themselves. So if you’re claim they’re lying, I have no issue with that – to each his own.
I believe Iraq, like most of the Arab world which Jews called home for over 1000 years, has always been ‘ok’ to Jews (compared to Europe, even better than ok) but there’s many black marks (Iraq for example: Jews were forced to wear yellow stars in the 1000s, The Baghdad Synagogue was burned down a few times (not the only one obviously), the pro-Nazi government & riots, public hangings etc … and I’m not even touching everything). The base was set in Iraq (& other countrys) to allow the movement of almost a million Jews in the 1950s – Wheter it wasn’t motivated at all by Israeli agents, I’ve said it was in situations. But to say they ‘were not expelled’ (ie, implying all) is wrong … considering the definition is “the act of driving out”.
The Baghdad synagogue was burned down a few times in several thousands of years? I don’t want to make light of that, but Baghdad has been sacked, destroyed and rebuilt numerous times in less time than that, its most recent sacking and destruction beginning in the year 2003. And shall we talk about the tens of mosques and churches destroyed and desecrated just within this last supposedly enlightened century? Again, not to make light of it, but it is the way of the world.
And are you seriously citing events that took place more than a thousand years ago as evidence for your spurious claim that the Iraqi Jews were expelled in the mid-20th century?!
I studied this issue as well. The pro-Nazi government of Iraq cannot be divorced from the British colonial presence.
As for me, I do think there was a FUNCTIONAL expulsion, if not a de jure one. They would certainly have done the same to the Assyrians.
PS The Iraqi Jews were not expelled, period. If you want to discuss the reality of what happened I am prepared to do that, but I will not allow the propaganda that they were expelled to go unchallenged. The reality is unfortunate enough that there is no need to pretend it is anything other than it was. The Iraqi government acted badly, though in some ways understandably (though that does not mitigate it), and the Zionists acted badly, and Iraqi Jews were caught in the middle. But Iraqi Jews were never expelled.
A few more things Richard/Shirin …
The whole idea of ‘kicking out’ Jews from Iraq was in fact an idea floated about by Nuri Al-Said in 1949 (though this was in exchange for the Palestinian refugees). This can be found in an essay called, “The break between Muslims & Jews in Iraq” by the late Iraqi-Jewish historian Elie Kedourie. Israel was disinterested (To quote Eshkol, “no tents”).
The law that allowed Jews to renounce their Iraqi citizenship and leave for Israel gave most Jews an out (If this was passed say in Israel for Palestinian Israelis or Israeli Arabs, I’m sure we’d have an ‘expulsion tone’ piece on it) – I’m not sure if Nuri Al-Said thought so many Jews would willingly leave, but he certainly helped ‘push’ the flow with the ‘freeze’ of Jewish property. By the time this happened, Israel became involved and at Iraq’s approval, airlifted Jews out (I’m not sure if it’s true, but I’ve read that Israel had to ransom each Jew at 10 dinar a head) …
Now why would they want to leave? Who knows but let’s look at a few events of these people
1918-1920 – A petition to the Civil Commissioner of Baghdad to grant Iraqi Jewry British citizenship fails (Wonder why they do that?)
1935 – Hebrew and Jewish history instruction is banned
1936-1938 – some 500-600 Jewish clerks were dismissed from the govt
1939 – The Iraqi Chief Rabbi blasts Zionism and yet, attacks occur against Jews … Inspired by the Nazi wave sweeping the country.
1941 – The Farhoud massacre (179 Jews called, 900+ homes looted)
1947 – Iraqi foreign minister threatens the expulsion of Iraqi Jewry if the partition of the Mandate goes into effect
1948 – 300+ Jews are court martialed
Sept 1948 – Ades, Iraq’s richest Jew, is hung
1948-1949 – Anywhere from 800-1500 Jews are dismissed from public service and a host of other restrictions on Jews (banks, students etc) – this despite a 100k+ dinar donation to help the Arabs in their war against Israel. Fines that year collected against Jews total 80 million USD.
Can anyone honestly tell me that these events, and I’ve missed many, didn’t set up the necessity for Iraqi Jewry to flee their homes? Surely, this amounts to a ‘push’ by the Iraqi govt (and those who worked with her) to rid themselves of this population …
And while we’re on ‘propaganda’, people should read Haaretz (which I know Richard loves) reporter Tom Segev (A ‘new’ historian)’s take on the famous ‘Jews threw grenades at synagogue to help force Jews away from Iraq’:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=703367
And the fact remains that the Jews were never expelled from Iraq.
This discussion is clearly going nowhere, and has long since grown tiresome, but this list deserves at least some comment.
First, you present this list of incidents as if it is the sum total of the Iraqi Jewish experience during those years, and you present it completely without context, explanation, or nuance.
Each of these incidents is worth a discussion, but there is not sufficient time or space – or probably interest at this point.
The Farhud is a very good case in point, though. You present it simply as a massacre, and it certainly was, but hardly simply so. What you do not say is that it was a singular incident made possible by a very unusual set of circumstances culminating in a power vacuum that spanned several days during which Iraq did not have a government at all. What you also do not say – perhaps because you do not know – is that the Farhud was initiated by one Younis Sab’awi, a rogue member of a rogue government that lasted for only a few weeks, who stayed in Baghdad after the rest of the government fled to Iran. You also say nothing about the fact that the Farhud was not a generalized popular riot against the Jews, as it is often portrayed (and probably have felt to many of the Jews), but an organized attempt by Sab’awi to round up and kill Jews, and that among the dead and injured were Muslim and Christian Iraqis who attempted to protect their Jewish neighbors, friends, and colleagues (often successfully) from those who had been sent to harm them. And finally, you do not mention the fact that the Farhud had two main phases. The first, instigated by the aforementioned Younis Sab’awi, was performed mainly by forces, including youth forces, under his command, and that was the phase during which most of the murders occurred. The second phase consisted mainly of opportunistic looting by people from the poorest sections of the city, who took advantage of the disorder and destruction in the wake of the murderous and destructive first phase to grab what they could.
The above is not intended to excuse or mitigate the Farhud or anything that happened as part of it, so please don’t try to go there. My intention is merely to give it some context to show that it did not just simply happen as part of a normal course of events. And there is a lot more context as well that illuminates the event, what led up to it, and what followed it, which includes the execution of a number of Iraqis who had been involved in the attacks, including police, army, and civilians.
Oh – and the meaning of the word Farhud, for those who are interested, refers to a break down of law and order, which is exactly what happened during those terrible few days between the flight of the short-lived Rashid ‘Ali government and the return of the legitimate government.
And finally, finally – and I really mean it this time – you do not address at all the degree to which the British colonialist’s calculated divide and rule strategy created and contributed to many if not most of the issues Jews had during the period in question.
Shirin –
“Then it will always be an ethnocracy where minorities will be, at best, well tolerated, never a democracy.”
I’m not sure about that – time will tell
“Imagine yourself as a citizen of a country whose national anthem is something like “Onward Christian Soldiers” (sorry, I don’t know a lot of Christian songs), or “Arab Hearts United”.”
I don’t know enough national anthems to compare but of the few i know, I find far worse than ours …
On the first point, time will tell indeed, but as long as Israel is defined as The Jewish State it will remain an ethnocracy, which will obviate its being a democracy in any real sense of the word.
On the second point, I happen to find national anthems in general banal in concept, with unfortunate messages expressed in bad poetry made worse by truly awful music – in other words, I am not entranced by any of them – but I think you have sidestepped the point. Certainly you, clearly a Jew, do not find a national anthem about Jews facing East and longing for Zion all that objectionable. Try pretending you are an Israeli citizen who is a Palestinian Christian, Muslim, secular, or “other” with all that means historically and in the present, and try to sing those words with feeling and see what feelings come out. Unless you are devoid of any ability for empathy, I think you might gain a different perspective.
As I did in the US, or when I was in Turkey, I stood up and respected it – though I had no connection whatsoever to the words …
I didn’t sing the words, but I did show them respect because it’s the country I was in. That’s how I see it. I would stand and respect a Palestinian National Anthem, even when it talks about blood/martyrs etc.
Bar Israel, I am a citizen of a European & African country. Their national anthems mean NOTHING to me and don’t represent me in the slightest. I still stand and respect them because that’s the way I feel about it.
Do I understand what you’re saying? Sure – I’m not an idiot. But I’m not asking them to sing, or ‘feel connection to’ or anything like that. Do what Mahmoud Abdul Rauf did in the 1990s during pre-game sessions in the NBA (sat and got blasted, and then decided to stand and pray respectfully), or what my Druzi mates in the army did.
You are still sidestepping the point, and I find your attitude, as summed up in the last paragraph disappointingly and very deeply cavalier. That is all I will say about it. that should be all I need to say about it.
I didn’t really … but ok.
Yes, you absolutely did. In fact, you did worse than that. You went on for several paragraphs about how YOU, presumably a citizen of at least two countries, are willing to get up off your ass and onto your feet “respectfully” for the national anthems of countries which are not your own and which therefore presumably have no personal meaning to you. Then you talked about how little your own national anthem(s) affect YOU one way or the other – big surprise that you, a Jewish citizen of Israel, do not find anything troubling about Hatikvah.
So, the first three quarters of your comment was not at all about the point, which is how non-Jewish citizens of Israel – Palestinians specifically – might feel about the fact that their own national anthem explicitly excludes them. Instead it was all about YOU.
Then, when you finally got around to addressing my point – sort of – you first made it about YOU again, and not how they might feel, but about what you are and are not asking of them (kind of revelatory, actually). Then you flippantly blew off the feelings of Israel’s Palestinian citizens by cavalierly suggesting that they should simply get drunk and pray, which by the way is specifically forbidden to the majority of them, who are Muslims, in verse 4:43 of their holy book, the Qur’an: “Draw not near unto prayer when ye are drunken. So, now you add to the offense of cavalierly blowing off the feelings of your fellow “non-Jewish) citizens the even more offensive suggestion that the way for Israel’s Muslim citizens to deal with the reality that they are explicitly not included in their country’s national anthem is to act in a manner that is specifically forbidden to them in their holy book.
Way to demonstrate just how much respect you have for your fellow citizens, Avram!
“I think you’re on very thin ice here. This sounds more like hasbara than real history. We can talk about discrimination against Jews in Arab lands. But expulsion??”
Richard – going by how the word is defined in any English dictionary, it was an expulsion. 800,000 – 1,000,000 people were forced from their homes, that is fact. How it happened in every instance is obviously well documented, but they were forced to leave their homes, lives and assests. I’ve talked to enough Arab Jews (ie, many were members of synagogues I’ve attended throughout the world) who hold this opinion – and considering they were the ones leaving their homes, I don’t think I’ll call them ‘hasbaranikim’.
One more time, Iraqi and Syrian Jews were not expelled. Nor, as I recall were the majority of North African Jews. Egyptian Jews, as I recall, WERE expelled as a pretty direct result of Zionist actions.
When it comes to Iraq, of course, I have a slight disadvantage over you in that I am personally acquainted with people who were present and involved in events, as members of the Jewish community, various other communities, and as officials in the government.
To quote someone who is far more knowledgeable than me:
“She can nitpick about whether it was actually expulsion, but the truth is that the Jews of Iraq were driven out by the Iraqi government. They could not work, travel, send their kids to university and at any moment could be arrested on charges of being Zionist spies. The ‘coup de grace’ was that all those who wanted to leave having all their property stolen from them in March 1951.
The 5,000 who did not leave in 1951 ended up being smuggled out of Iraq in 1970 after 9 Jews were executed and 50 had disappeared. Was this the Zionists’ fault too ? There are seven Jews left.”
“When it comes to Iraq, of course, I have a slight disadvantage over you in that I am personally acquainted with people who were present and involved in events, as members of the Jewish community, various other communities, and as officials in the government.”
If you think you’re at an advantage, ok. I’ve still talked to many Iraqi Jews who left in the early 1950s. Not one ‘blames the Zionists’ (Which is your token line it seems, sad really) … And none exactly said, as you have implied continually, that the Iraqi government wanted them to stay or made any effort in making the life of the Jews in Iraq tolerable….
You can repeat it as many times as you want in as many different ways as you want, but the facts do not support your claim that the Jews were expelled from Iraq. What the Iraqi government did do was shameful, but they did not expel the Jews.
Oh – and how interesting that you mention the travel restrictions as evidence of expulsion – huh? You expel someone by barring them from leaving the country? Well, THAT makes a lot of sense. And the fact is, as I have stated at least two or three times here already, that the government imposed unfair travel restrictions on Jews precisely for the purpose of preventing them from emigrating.
It is very unlikely that the majority of Jews would have left were it not for the machinations of the Zionists. In fact, when the Zionists did persuade the Iraqi government to allow the Jews to emigrate – largely by offering handsome personal incentives to government members, principally Nuri Sa’eed and his family – relatively very few Jews stepped forward, and the great majority of those who left waited until the last minute to sign up.
And now I notice that you are increasingly putting words into my mouth -a standard hasbarista tactic, I am afraid.
- I have not “blamed the Zionists”, I have merely assigned them their fair portion of responsibility. I have also, inconveniently for you, condemned the behaviour of the Iraqi government .
- I have NEVER suggested in any way that the Iraqi government made an effort to make the Jews more comfortable, although there were times that it did, such as the period following the Farhud.
One of the differences between you and me is that I view events and circumstances within a large, complex, and nuanced context while you distill an entire history down to a handful of specific, carefully chosen events without context, without complexity, and without nuance.
“Oh – and how interesting that you mention the travel restrictions as evidence of expulsion – huh?”
Let’s look at it simply. You can never leave the country but if you choose to leave, you have to relinquish your citizenship and lose all your assets and property. Why would ‘citizens’ of a country not be allowed to leave it for travel?
“In fact, when the Zionists did persuade the Iraqi government to allow the Jews to emigrate – largely by offering handsome personal incentives to government members, principally Nuri Sa’eed and his family”
Again, you’re twisting history. Al-Said (You say Sa’eed, I say Al-Said, the same person obviously)’s plan to TRADE Iraqi Jews for Arabs after 1949 was REJECTED by Sharret and Levi Eshkol. When it became evident that it was going to happen, a 10 dinar ‘fee’ was put on every Jew airlifted out of Iraq. I think by 1951, 100k had signed up to leave.
Now if you can, please explain what exactly those Zionist Jews did to ‘force’ Iraqi Jewry to leave (if they had the option obviously to stay) – This is due to “It is very unlikely that the majority of Jews would have left were it not for the machinations of the Zionists.”.
“I have not “blamed the Zionists”, ”
Yet you say, “It’s unlikely the majority of Jews would have left were it not for the machinations of Zionists.” That is blaming the Zionists for the majority of Jews leaving (you’re insinuating a minority would have left anyways).
“One of the differences between you and me is that I view events and circumstances within a large, complex, and nuanced context while you distill an entire history down to a handful of specific, carefully chosen events without context, without complexity, and without nuance.”
Thanks for your holier than though posting there ma’am, much appreciated.
“Let’s look at it simply.”
No, let’s not. One of the problems with you in this discussion is that you insist upon trying to translate a complex situation with lots of dimensions, many facets, and tons of context into a very simple uni-dimensional thing. Maybe that is due to a mixture of what you want desperately to believe, and the fact that you apparently have received only a very limited set of information that presents only one facet with very little of the context. I don’t know you, so I can’t say.
“You can never leave the country but if you choose to leave, you have to relinquish your citizenship and lose all your assets and property.”
Except that is not how it was at all, and in fact you are pretty much making that up. It was never “you can never leave the country”. And more to the point, “you cannot leave the country” and “you have to relinquish your citizenship and lose all your assets and property” took place at different times. It is important to know why Jews who left during that one year period had to relinquish their citizenship. In all honesty, this is one of the few decisions of the Iraqi government that seems completely reasonable and consistent to me. How many states would knowingly allow their citizens to emigrate to an enemy state where they would automatically become citizens and at the same time retain their citizenship in the state they were leaving? Few, if any is the correct answer. And rest assured that the Iraqi government was 100% aware that the emigrating Jews were being transported to Israel, since that was the agreement the government had made with the Zionists. In the beginning they required the Zionists to fly the emigrating Jews to Cyprus in order to conceal reality, but toward the end they said “what the hell”, and the flights went directly from Baghdad to their destination in Israel with the full knowledge of the government.
It is also worth knowing that it is not only the Jews in 1950-51 who lost their assets if they left the country. During the ’90′s and the 21st century, at least prior to March, 2003, any Iraqi who left the country would have cash over certain amount and valuables, such as jewelry and even things like Persian carpets seized at the border and handed over to the State. I myself successfully smuggled some valuable carpets and gold jewelry out of the country when I left (and would not have managed to leave at all had we not been able to call on some friends in high places as our plane waited on the tarmac), and during much of the ’90′s and 2000′s Iraqis who were emigrating did not even try to take their cash and valuables with them for fear of losing them to the state altogether.
“Why would ‘citizens’ of a country not be allowed to leave it for travel?”
As I have said at least four times on this page already, they were not allowed to leave the country for travel in order to prevent them from emigrating. What part of that is so difficult to absorb, especially given that I have stated it explicitly here at least four times in less than 48 hours?
Additionally:
1. As I have stated repeatedly here, I have never made any reference at all to your so-called “Nuri Al Sa’eed plan”, which was a suggestion for population exchange, and am not referring to it now. I am talking about the fact that the Zionists bribed Nuri Al Sa’eed and other members of the government with very attractive personal incentives in order to persuade them to lift the travel restrictions and allow emigration to Israel for Jews for a period of one year. So no, I am not twisting history at all, I am merely talking about something different.
2. Once again, you put words into my mouth. I have never stated or implied that the Zionists “forced” the Iraqi Jews to do anything. In fact, my use of the word machinations pretty much obviates any implication of force.
3. How boringly typical to play the “you are blaming Israel/the Zionists/The Jooz” card. No, saying that the majority of Jews would not have left without the machinations of the Zionists does not add up to “blaming the Zionists”, or anyone else for that matter. This is not about about assigning blame. As I have already said, I assign to the Zionists their portion of the responsibility, and to the Iraqi government and other entities their portions. Had the Iraqi government not acted in the shameful ways it did it is unlikely the majority of Jews would have left. It was not any one single thing that caused Iraq to lose its Jews and Iraqi Jews to lose their country, it was a fatal combination of things.
“Thanks for your holier than though posting there ma’am, much appreciated.”
If you are going to resort to a non-specific ad hominem parting shot, at least spell it correctly.
“going by how the word is defined in any English dictionary, it was an expulsion.”
You have to really stretch that definition to make it fit what happened in Iraq, Syria, most of North Africa, Yemen – in fact, all but a very few Arab countries.
“On the contrary, the governments of Iraq and Syria did not want to lose their Jewish communitie”
So explain all the events I’ve listed that I listed before … Surely you cannot claim those were to ‘keep their Jewish communities”
“It was only after the Zionists made it personally very profitable for Nouri Sa`eed and his family that the Iraqi government agreed to allow unlimited emigration for Jews for the period of one year.”
This is incorrect. The ‘Zionists’ refused involvement at first when Al-Said’s first plan came up.
“And even then Jews were not exactly signing up in droves until a series of other events encouraged them to believe they would be better off elsewhere.”
100,000+ isn’t droves, you’re right.
What ‘other events’? The grenades thrown by Iraqi Muslims as per Tom Segev? Or are you going to say he’s lying?
“And the fact remains that the Jews were never expelled from Iraq.”
Kill them, hang them, don’t let them learn their history or study in Hebrew, fine them heavily, fire them from govt positions, loot their property – no no, we want you here guys! We’re not really forcing you out, we’re just uuuuh trying to make you earn your Iraqi stripes! But if you want to leave, we’ll help you get on the first plane to that Zionist Entity. But don’t call it expulsion .. Heaven Forbid!
I’m still rather shocked (but unsurprised?) an intelligent person, who definitely is very well aware of Iraqi Jewish history, can use the same term when comparing what the Iraqi government and ‘Zionists’ (though you’ve really given me no proof, bar the Al-Said plan that was rejected by Sharett and Eshkol originally) treatment of Iraqi Jewry (“What did happen in Iraq is absolutely shameful both on the part of the Iraqi government and on the Zionists”) – there is no comparison whatsoever.
Again, you put words into my mouth. I have never so much as thought about, let alone cited what you call the “Al Sa’eed plan”.
And neither have I compared the actions of the Iraqi government and the Zionists except to call them both shameful, as they both were. That does not mean they were shameful in the same way, or even equally shameful.
You’ve talked continuously about Nuri Sa’eed and his ‘work’ with the Zionists.
You look at it in the last stage (ie When Israel offered to pay for each Iraqi Jew), I look at it when it when the plan was first hatched:
“The whole idea of ‘kicking out’ Jews from Iraq was in fact an idea floated about by Nuri Al-Said in 1949 (though this was in exchange for the Palestinian refugees). This can be found in an essay called, “The break between Muslims & Jews in Iraq” by the late Iraqi-Jewish historian Elie Kedourie. Israel was disinterested (To quote Eshkol, “no tents”).”
(Unless you want to call Elie Kedourie a liar, or ‘hasbara’ propagator)
You look at it from a very conveniently very limited view, and ignore the majority of the events, the circumstances, and the context. I can’t help you with that.
And I am almost as close to being done with this conversation as I imagine every one else except you and I are.
Shlomo Hillel vehemently denied that Iraqi Jews had been expelled.
Surely he knew better than any of us?
Incidentally, Avram, you do it quite reasonably until you go into Hasbara mode. Please don’t cut and paste those lists of events that “prove” that Iraq was catastrophically evil vis-à-vis the Jews. Take into account that a similar list could be compiled “proving” that Israel “expelled” Israeli Arabs:
–Israeli Arab villagers were thrown out of Iqrit and Bir’im, their houses were demolished, they were never allowed to return.
–Israeli Arab CITIZENS were stripped of their property by the Absentee Property Law of 1950. Even though they lived in Israel, they were given the Kafkaesque title of Present Absentees!
–In 1956 51 Israeli Arab CITIZENS were machine-gunned by the IDF at Kafr Qassem after failing to abide by a curfew they were unaware of.
–Israeli Arabs were not fired from government positions: they were never appointed to them in the first 50 years of Israel’s existence.
–The Israeli Arab town of Ein Hod was transformed into a Jewish artists’ colony. The mosque was desecrated into a posh café. The original inhabitants live in a nearby impoverished village.
–In the year 2000, the Israeli police mercilessly shot 13 unarmed Arabs.
–In 2008, two Arab teens were savagely beaten by 60 Jews at a Jerusalem boulevard. The incident is recorded on video.
–In 2005, a Jewish soldier got onto a bus and killed 4 Israeli Arabs with his rifle.
–In 2009, the Israeli housing minister accused the Arabs of wanting to take over the Galilee and stated that Jews and Arabs should not live together in Israel.
You see: Israel “expelled” Israeli Arabs!
Yet Israeli Arabs didn’t flee.
There’s a difference between making life hard for someone and expelling them. And what is good for the goose is good for the gander.
I replied below in my response to Shirin but a few little points:
There is quite a big difference in comparing Israel 1948-1956 (and we did a LOT of wrong, and you’ve only noted a bit obviously) to Iraq 1920-1951 …
““proving” that Israel “expelled” Israeli Arabs”
But 100,000 Israeli Arabs didn’t leave … and until these events, whichever era you pick, there weren’t 30-50 Arabs fleeing secretly (without anything) into a neighboring state (as Jews were leaving to Iran to get out of Iraq DAILY).
(I’ll assume that would have given more information on some of your examples above if you had time …)
One very, very key difference between the so-called “Israeli Arabs” and the Iraqi Jews was that the “Israeli Arabs” did not have a group of activists urging them to leave, engineering their departure, providing their transportation, and promising them a life of milk and honey in a new country established just for them.
Still, it is a little-acknowledged fact that Israel DID continue the ethnic cleansing of 1948 well into the ’50′s and even beyond.
“Then you flippantly blew off the feelings of Israel’s Palestinian citizens by cavalierly suggesting that they should simply get drunk and pray”
Sorry, that’s pure BS and I really don’t think I need to reply to such a deliberate twisting of my words.
Hasbara Buster – “Cut and Paste” historical facts about Iraqi Jewry really bothered you that much that you resort to your typical “Hasbara mode” line? Even Shirin acknowledged everything I said … Nice to try and divert the discussion away from the conversation at hand! Didn’t expect you to do that.
Oh, come on! Your words speak eloquently for themselves. No twisting is necessary. You haven’t even tried to address the concerns your fellow citizens might have when they hear a national anthem that explicitly excludes them. Instead you talked about yourself, and then flipped them off. Give me a break!
For someone who claims ‘Hasbara’ folk put words in people’s mouths, what does that make you?
When did I mention anything about ‘drunks’ and ‘prayer’? I understand 100% why the Israeli Arab cannot related to the national anthem and why he feels it excludes them. I understand if it’s a Druze or a Bedouin or a Christian Arab or a Christian Russian too. But if you want to carry one with your word twisting, go ahead ma’am.
Sorry, rereading what you wrote more carefully I realize that I mistakenly conflated your remarks about “getting blasted” (which I understand as meaning getting drunk), and standing and praying. For that my apologies. Nevertheless, your comment, taken in toto was a cavalier dismissal of the concerns of your fellow supposedly equal non-Jewish citizens when they hear “their” national anthem which explicitly excludes them.
If, as you say, you “understand”, you have have absolutely not expressed any sense that you give a flying rats rear end, or feel any empathy or even compassion for how it must feel to them to be explicitly excluded from any single symbol of the state of which they are citizens, or that you even remotely sense the significance of that to them or to the ethnocarcy of which you are a tier one citizen. On the contrary, you have blown off their concerns in a very flippant and somewhat ugly manner.
I haven’t blown off their concerns – If I was a non-Jew, I would almost certainly not sing the Israeli national anthem or relate to it. But I wouldn’t sit down during it either.
“Shlomo Hillel vehemently denied that Iraqi Jews had been expelled”
Shlomo Hillel has said that he came to Israel as a Zionist, not as a refugee. At the same time if you read his book he clearly says that one of the factors that made him realise that there was no future for the Jews in Iraq was the massacre of 600 Assyrian Christians in 1933.
Whether you call it expulsion or not, Shirin, the Iraqi Jews arrived in Israel as refugees. They had got to the point where life had been made intolerable for them, as Avram so eloquently explains. They were desperate to leave. My parents fled Iraq in 1950 leaving all their property behind. Other members of my family stayed on until the 1960s but by then they were banned from leaving. That didn’t mean they were content to stay – they were hostages. Things got so desperate for them, after 1967 they were not allowed to work, their phones were cut off, their bank accounts frozen, they were under police surveillance and they lived in a state of utter terror because Jews were being arrested and executed at random. I have close family who risked their lives and escaped on donkeys over the mountains of Kurdistan rather than endure that hell.
Shirin, you cannot deny the facts – the Jews (and they are now 41 percent of Israeli Jews) left the Arab countries because of antisemitism. The Arabs need to acknowledge this fact if we are to move on.
Your account is far more realistic than Avram’s, and you are right that 1967 was an important turning point. I remember it well in part because it was only in May and June, 1967 that I realized that some of my friends were Jews (believe it or not, most Iraqis typically were less interested in someone’s etho-religious background than whether they were decent, honourable, interesting people with whom one had common interests). However, the problem was not anti-Semitism per se. It is not a coincidence that 1967 was a turning point.
When you distill the calamities that happened to the Iraqi Jews in the 50′s as anti-Semitism, you ignore the historical contexts in which the events ocurred. And that does a tremendous disservice to the people who were there at the time.
We agree on this point.
“And finally, finally – and I really mean it this time – you do not address at all the degree to which the British colonialist’s calculated divide and rule strategy created and contributed to many if not most of the issues Jews had during the period in question.”
It contributed to it – but ‘many if not most’ is an exaggeration in my opinion.
If these ‘examples’ were only seen in English colonies where Arabs & Jews lived together, I’d tend to agree with you. But as that’s not the case, I’ll stick to the ‘contribution’ part but not to the ‘many if not most’ part.
You are entitled to your opinion, of course. And there is no denying the effect on Jewish-Arab relations of the elephant in the room. The shame of it is that the Arab governments and some of the citizens of Arab countries held their Jewish citizens, the overwhelming majority of whom were not at all
interested int Herzl’s Zionist vision, as scapegoats for what was happening in Palestine. That, tragically, and shamefully, is politics.
I don’t think there was ever a ‘Zionist’ movement (as per Herzl) in the Arab Jewish world (Though a Tunisian Rabbi was presnet at Herzl’s conference in Basle).
However, no one can deny that due their faith (a large part of Arab Jewry was ‘shomer masoret’, observant to an extent), they felt a deep connection to the land … Due to the many differences in Europe and the Arab world, I doubt a ‘Zionist movement’ would ever have grown in the Arab world …
On this we agree – al hamdulillah, at last! Arab Jewish culture and social/cultural/religious customs and sensibilities were and are very different from those of Europe, and few could identify with Herzlian Zionism or any other sort of “practical” Zionism. That they got sucked/pushed into it by different forces is in my mind tragic.
Whether or not Mizrachi Jewry could have developed their own ‘Herzl’ is as answerable as whether the Palestinians could have built a state side by side with Israel in 1949 had everyone found a peace treaty. It’s just assumptions and ‘wise men & women thinking out loud’ …
“That they got sucked/pushed into it by different forces is in my mind tragic.”
I don’t agree with the tragic part, but to each his own. There’s a lot of what ifs when debating history so as long as the debate can be done respectfully, it’s always interesting to hear someone with a different point of view to your own.
Shirin
“Except that is not how it was at all, and in fact you are pretty much making that up.”
Really? Read what Bataween said and then tell me if her family made it up …
“It is also worth knowing that it is not only the Jews in 1950-51 who lost their assets if they left the country”
I agree. But was there such a large % of other people who left in the process?
“Zionists “forced” the Iraqi Jews to do anything.”
Ok Shirin – help me out here.
The Zionists paid Al-Said to allow Jews to leave. As far as I know, you say that most of Iraqi Jewry is not ‘Zionist’ nor wanted to leave Iraq. And yet 100,000 Jews left under this ‘profit making’ scheme for Al-Said. It’s not adding up …
Also, do you think Al-Said & his government made more money off the Zionists than the 80 million USD they got off fining Jews in the late 1940s? Somehow, I don’t think money was the real issue.
“Had the Iraqi government not acted in the shameful ways it did it is unlikely the majority of Jews would have left.”
ok, fair.
“If you are going to resort to a non-specific ad hominem parting shot, at least spell it correctly.”
It really wasn’t a ‘parting shot’ – you were just talking from a pedastal at me, so I decide to call a spade a spade. Sorry for the spelling mistake.
Look, Avram, I have grown weary, frustrated, and bored with this conversation, and I am sure most people have stopped reading it. It just might be that we are both reasonable people with different sets of information who could come to some kind of resting point on it if we kept on long enough that we really started listening to each other, but I am not up for it right now, and frankly I have neglected preparations for a talk I must give very soon in favour of sparring with you. So, I am going to try to let it rest for now, and hope I can manage to ad lib enough of my talk that it will be valuable to the audience. I think I can it is a subject I can manage in my sleep (and sometimes do!).
I do understand where you are coming from, and I think at the end of the day you care about human beings, and so do I, so I will leave it there for now. We can take each other on in the future, and hopefully can do so vigorously, and with at least a measure of mutual respect.
sababa, or mabruk as you say.
Mabruk? For what, exactly, are you congratulating me?
that we can discuss things respectfully even though we don’t hold the same view … while i don’t think we hold the same ‘views’ of my country, i still funnily enough think we want the same ‘final outcome’ for both people (well I want two countries where both people can co-exist peacefully, and essentailly remain however they want to remain)
There is quite a big difference in comparing Israel 1948-1956 (and we did a LOT of wrong, and you’ve only noted a bit obviously) to Iraq 1920-1951 …
I can understand that, to you, bad things that happen to Jews are always more grievous than bad things that happen to Arabs.
Many of the items on your list actually prove that the Jews of Iraq were, in fact, far better treated than the Arabs of Israel. For instance, you cite the dismissal of Jewish civil servants from the Iraqi government. Well, this proves that Jews had secured government jobs in the first place! That was not the case with Arabs in Israel. Even now, Arabs face many of the restrictions that, in your view, prove that the Jews were expelled from Iraq. How many Arab engineers do you think are employed by the Israeli Electrical Company? Can an Arab freely move to a Jewish town, or must he petition to the High Court?
“Cut and Paste” historical facts about Iraqi Jewry really bothered you that much that you resort to your typical “Hasbara mode” line?
Hasbara mode is when you only cite, in knee-jerk fashion, facts that paint the Arabs as catastrophically evil without any counterbalancing facts or consideration to context. Can events in a highly underdeveloped society be compared to those in a European-style country? When you cite massacres of Jews or Assyrians in Iraq, you fail to notice that such kinds of massacres happen all the time in third-world countries, even democratic ones like India, where Christians or Sikhs have been killed in vastly higher numbers than the Jews ever were in Iraq. Incidents of discrimination or violence, however numerous, are not tantamount to expulsion.
“I can understand that, to you, bad things that happen to Jews are always more grievous than bad things that happen to Arabs.”
Great point there. Totally false, but hey, don’t let that get in the way of your busting.
“Well, this proves that Jews had secured government jobs in the first place!”
After being a part of the ‘country’ for how long? Was Arabic ever banned in Arab classes in Israel?
” Arabs face many of the restrictions that, in your view, prove that the Jews were expelled from Iraq. ”
Uuuh the Jews did leave Iraq, and as I said, their treatment (be it the public hangings, the refusal to allow them to travel, the heavy fines, etc) set up the plank from them to work off
“Hasbara mode is when you only cite, in knee-jerk fashion”
Considering the discussion I was having with Shirin, this – like the first statement in your piece – is BS … Well Done.
“paint the Arabs as catastrophically evil ”
Who called them evil? There was some disgraceful treatment of the Jews from Day 1 … That anyone with half a brain can acknowledge. Was it like that all the time? Nope. Did everyone do it? Nope. I’d still probably rather be a Jew in their world than in the European Christian world. But nice try again in trying to put words in my mouth. You’re good at that.
“you fail to notice that such kinds of massacres happen all the time in third-world countries”
You’re right, so it’s excuseable. My bad!
“Incidents of discrimination or violence, however numerous, are not tantamount to expulsion”
Did they lead to expulsion?
Dear Rupa
I don’t think anyone was asked whether they agree with their country’s anthem or not. It all comes together: Anthem, passport to enable the holder to travel abroad (which I was denied to have in Iraq just because I was a Jew), Health care, social security, right to study at university (which many of us-Iraqi Jews were denied in Iraq just because we were Jews). You cannot enjoy the services and luxuries of a country and refusing to be part of it. No one is forcing anybody.
In you article (“She added that Arab pupils were already deprived of the chance to learn about their own history, culture and identity” Just for clarifications although Jews in Iraq history go back to 2600 years and they were the largest minority in Baghdad in the early years of 20th century but we did not “learn about our own history, culture and identity” as the curriculum was mainly about all the FTUHAT (the occupations of the Muslim armies). The same was done to all other non Muslim groups and the same was done in most Arab/Muslim countries.
You also mentioned “Yousef Jabareen, head of Dirasat, a Nazareth-based organisation monitoring education issues, blamed the poor results on growing cultural bias in the Israeli education system as well as severe budgetary discrimination.” In Iraq this actually pushed us to excel and work much harder so please don’t use this excuse
And “Last week the ministry also announced that textbooks recently issued to Arab schoolchildren would have expunged the word “nakba”, or catastrophe, to describe the Palestinians’ dispossession at Israel’s founding in 1948.” I will personally write, demonstrate and do whatever it takes to call for putting the word Nakba back in the textbooks, if it is describing the whole issue in its proper meaning and not partly as the Jews of the Arab countries had their own Nakba and they lost everything and become refugees. If you want sympathy, you have to be sympathetic to others and maybe then there will understanding and peace.
“If you want sympathy, you have to be sympathetic to others and maybe then there will understanding and peace”
I think that’s the bottom line …
Surely you can’t deny that Iraq’s Jewish population was FAR better off than Palestine’s Arab population, even with the latter’s nascent middle class.
Of course, if you’re falling from such a high perch, the impact of the fall would be greater.
Iraqi Jews held positions among the professional, intellectual, artistic, and commercial elites of Iraq, were part of the growing middle class, and there were also Jews among the poor. They occupied every stratum of Iraq’s very diverse society. It was impossible to know whether someone was a Jews or not unless they had an obviously Jewish first name, came from a prominent Jewish family, or told you they were Jewish. I did not know that many of my associations were with Jews until just before Israel began the 1967 war. What religious group someone was from was simply not something you thought about much if at all.
“held positions among the professional, intellectual, artistic, and commercial elites of Iraq”
In what Arab country didn’t they? Perhaps Yemen if memory serves me well, but there were always Jews who did well in the Arab world … NO ONE can honestly deny that.
I wonder if we can take a cue from Uri Avnery and instate “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav” as the national anthem instead? Despite its connotations in the RZ world, it IS very neutral in comparison.
BarNavi –
“When you distill the calamities that happened to the Iraqi Jews in the 50′s as anti-Semitism”
I don’t think I claimed they were Anti-Semitism. But if, as you say, this was more the work of a “pro-Nazi government of Iraq”, then surely that had some motivating factor. To be honest, what caused the difficulties for Jews in Iraq pre 1920, or 1920-1940, or 1940-1951 wasn’t really what I was debating. I was debating what I think was a deliberate ‘move’ to push Jews away, I guess what you call a “FUNCTIONAL expulsion”.
“Surely you can’t deny that Iraq’s Jewish population was FAR better off than Palestine’s Arab population”
Depends what time period, I’d say you’re right. However, there’s a difference (as I told HB) between Israel in her pre-early days and the many wrongs she committed to a rather stable “Hi we’ve known you Jews forever” state.
“I wonder if we can take a cue from Uri Avnery and instate “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav””
I doubt the national anthem will ever be changed, however, there was a movement in the 1980s to change it to ‘Anashim Tovim’ (the hit song). Thankfully, that failed miserably.
But 100,000 Israeli Arabs didn’t leave … and until these events, whichever era you pick, there weren’t 30-50 Arabs fleeing secretly (without anything) into a neighboring state (as Jews were leaving to Iran to get out of Iraq DAILY).
Cubans have risked their lives to flee Castro’s Cuba because they wanted freedom, a better standard of living, etc.
But Castro hasn’t expelled a single Cuban.
Hard conditions do not equal expulsion. Get over it.
Another really poor comparison … but hey, whatever floats your boat.
Try see what BarNavi means by ‘functional expulsion’ -
Shirin: ” I also know for a fact that (Iraqi Jews) are widely considered Arab by their fellow Arabs. I know that they are culturally far more Arab than they are anything else. There might be some in Israel who shout “death to Arabs”, but so what?
Have you asked any Iraqi Jews how they feel? As one of them, I certainly don’t feel Arab. We may seem Arab on the surface – we speak Arabic – but we have a different culture, religion and history. Even our Arabic is a Jewish dialect using a different accent, interspersed with Hebrew expressions and Turkish words. To call us Arabs or Arab Jews is your way of denying that we are a separate people deserving of our own country.
If Jews from Arab countries in Israel shout ‘death to the Arabs’ it is because of the way they were treated by Arab Muslims, because they felt humiliated and betrayed. We won’t get anywhere as long as people like you Shirin deny that the ‘bad stuff’ ever happened.
I have not had to ask Arab Jews, including Iraqi Jews, how they feel, they have revealed it in the many conversations I have had with them, and I have heard them refer to themselves in that way, both directly and indirectly by referring to “we” in the context of discussions about Arab issues.
As for dialect, the Iraqi Jews I associated with were indistinguishable from other Iraqis in every way, so much so that in some cases we did not know they were Jews unless they told us or we found out in some other way. In other cases we knew because they bore the names of well-known Jewish families, or had Jewish first names.
Iraqi Arabic, particularly the Muslawi dialect, is interspersed with Turkish words and sounds that occur in Turkish but not Arabic, so that is hardly unique to Jews.
The fact that you feel differently from some other Iraqi Jews only proves the obvious – that Iraqi Jews are no more monolithic in their experience, beliefs, feelings, and sense of identity than any other group of human beings.
Oh – and your views and feelings do not explain an experience that is shared by many Iraqis living or travelling outside of Iraq. Many of us have at least once in our lives been approached joyfully, sometimes tearfully, by Iraqi Jews who, overhearing someone speaking Iraqi dialect, wanted to reunite at least briefly, with fellow Iraqis. They don’t care whether it is Muslims, Christians, or Jews they are approaching, just that it is Iraqis. The incident nearly always results in at the very least a pleasant hour or so over tea, and often an invitation to a meal.
I am sorry you feel the way you do, but you do not represent all Iraqi Jews.
PS Even all Iraqi Jews who ended up in Israel, or were born there do not feel as you do, as I know from personal contacts, as well as from the existence of Israeli peace activists and advocates of Palestinian rights who happen to be Iraqi.
If Jews from Arab countries in Israel shout ‘death to the Arabs’ it is because of the way they were treated by Arab Muslims
So let me ask you: those Israeli Arabs who were expelled from their own villages, who were dispossessed by the Absentee Property Law, who were systematically discriminated against during all these 60 years, who know that certain jobs and places are for Jews only, who see cabinet ministers continually spewing hate of Arabs — would they be justified to shout “death to the Jews”?
What would be really interesting HB, but I think impossible to truly find out, would be to see where each statement (mavet la’aravim and itbach al yahud) started becoming ‘heard’ and the reasons behind it …
“I am sorry you feel the way you do, but you do not represent all Iraqi Jews”
“PS Even all Iraqi Jews who ended up in Israel, or were born there do not feel as you do, as I know from personal contacts, as well as from the existence of Israeli peace activists and advocates of Palestinian rights who happen to be Iraqi.”
Shirin – While I honestly find you very knowledgeable and respectful, these kind of comments amaze me. So you know a few Israeli peace activists and a few Iraqi Jews who DO feel the way you feel, and suddenly they represent the majority? I can tell you, it’s the extreme minority of the Iraqi Jews I’ve interacted with.
I’ve been a part of many Mizrachi/Sefardi congregations where many of those involved were Iraqis, I feel that your statement is not very accurate. None of us ‘really’ know the %s here, but I somehow doubt many hold similar opinions to yours (as we’ve seen already 3 in this conversation – Sylvia, iraqijew & bataween – differing with you on this)
Avram, I am sure you are not doing this intentionally, but you consistently construct positions for me that are in no way expressed by what I have said. Where have I EVER said that any Iraqi Jewish point of view about anything represents the majority? On the contrary, what I have explicitly stated several times is that like every human group, Iraqi Jews are a diverse lot whose experiences, views, and feelings, and even sense of identity, vary. Never have I suggested that the Iraqi Jews I have encountered in my life, or that you have encountered, or any others represent the majority. To the best of my knowledge there has never been any kind of study or survey, so the fact is we really have no way of knowing.
Taking the Farhud as just one example, the Jews who were protected from the murderers by their Muslim and Christian neighbors, friends, and colleagues, a few of whom were killed protecting them, had a very different experience of that event than did those, undoubtedly the majority, who received no protection from anyone. In just one of the incidents I am aware of, a group of the murderers were barred by non-Jewish doctors, nurses, and other employees from entering a hospital. Their demand to bring to them the Jewish doctors and other Jews who were in the hospital there was refused, and they eventually went away empty handed. I doubt very, very much that any of the Jews who were in that hospital at that time believed, as is consistently represented, that the Farhud was a generalized popular riot against Jews, or that they ever wanted to shout “death to the Arabs”.
We really don’t know how the majority of Iraqi Jews feel about Arabs, or think about their own identity. Based on what I know about Middle Eastern people, about Iraqis and Iraqi Jews, and about human beings in general, I expect that for most individuals it is complicated, nuanced, and very dependent on the context in which the questions are asked.
Sorry if I misrepresented your views – that’s what I got from what you were saying. I’ve re-read the posts I quoted and it comes off that way though going by the post I’m now replying too, you seem very honest and up front about it all – so apologies.
Thanks, Avram. I appreciate this.
I have actually been fairly careful in the way I have stated things so as not to appear to be speaking about the majority. Here is one example: “The fact that you feel differently from some other Iraqi Jews only proves the obvious – that Iraqi Jews are no more monolithic in their experience, beliefs, feelings, and sense of identity than any other group of human beings.” My insertion of the word “some” there was not an accident, it was intended to clarify.
A few further thoughts:
To be accurate, only two commenters here, only one of whom claims to be an Iraqi Jew, but who clearly never lived in Iraq, have differed with me on this question. Silvia claims to have been born and raised in an unnamed Arab country, and I have no solid reason to either believe or disbelieve her story, but her repetition of the standard post-9/11 beheading stereotype along with a couple of other really odd remarks do make me wonder. It is also interesting that Silvia found it quite reasonable for her, presumably NOT a Palestinian, to state that “Israeli Arab” is what Palestinians who are citizens of Israel wish to be called while unleashing a stream of vitriol when you suggested that many Jews from Arab countries do consider themselves as having Arab ancestry.
In answer to Silvia, off the top of my head I can think of several prominent Iraqi Jewish citizens of Israel who have publicly self-identified as Arab Jews and who have also publicly referred to other Jews from Arab countries the same way. Three who come immediately to mind are Nissim Rejwan, Sasson Somekh, and Ella Habiba Shohat. Ella Shohat, by the way, is one of many, many Jews who were, without consulting their wishes, stripped of their Arabic names and given Hebrew names upon entry into Israel. Ella chose to reinstate her Arabic name by using as her middle name.
You do like to take shots at Israel non-stop eh? I guess the country makes it rather easy for you … If you want to go over how (& why) Israel stripped names (though I think this is the minority again, many were happy to revert to their Hebrew names) or why Holocaust survivors had their identities hidden or issues with the Religious early on, we can … It has little to do with ‘what’ these people were, or what they had just overcome, but more to do with what Israel was trying to do in the 1950s to build the ‘Israeli’ (I’ve written before on this – not here – using Arik Sharon’s quote in Warrior … Where he essentially says that these actions, plus the attitude of the pioneers who’ve arrived in the early 1900s, laid the foundation for the ‘Israeli’ which doesn’t put much emphasis on his Jewishness as as an ‘identity driver’)
Shirin, I am an IRAQI JEW as the name means. I was BORN in Iraq and had to leave at the age of nearly 16 because life was unbearable. My father could not work and therefore our finances were deteriorating very quickly; we were not allowed to join certain clubs or societies simply because we were Jews; we were not allowed to have telephone at home, our houses were constantly watched and we were followed wherever we went, we became isolated as other Iraqis were be frightened to be in contact with Jews in case they would be accused as Zionist spies, same excuse used to hang in the centre of Baghdad, kidnap men and women from their house or work, as happened to my classmate and her family whose bodies were mutilated and put in suitcases to be found by the remaining g member of the family. It is very annoying and incorrect to say that the Jews of Iraq were not forced to leave. Just for small comparison, the Palestinian refugees of 48 did not go through all this and in a systematic way, as was done to the Jews of Arab land and in Particular to the Jews of Iraq. The truth as it is now known even to the refugees themselves that they were falsely lead by the Arab leaders to use them as pawn to wave to their people and the prove is that they denied them to have the minimum human rights in the other Arab countries, the same human right and equalities they ask from Israel to do their Arab (refusing to be called Israeli) citizens.
My last point: Nissim Rejwan, Sasson Somekh, and Ella Habiba Shohat represent the minimal percentage of the Jews of Iraq, actually they do not represent any of the people that I speak to, and believe me I am very active in the Iraqi Jews community.
You mentioned “Many of us have at least once in our lives been approached joyfully, sometimes tearfully, by Iraqi Jews who, overhearing someone speaking Iraqi dialect, wanted to reunite at least briefly, with fellow Iraqis.” Yes, you are right, this is the HANEEN- Nostalgia. I myself have a lot of Iraqi Muslim and Christian friends but still have many Jews Iraqi friends who cannot understand how can I make peace with them because as they say “how can you forget how they treated us”.
“In answer to Silvia, off the top of my head I can think of several prominent Iraqi Jewish citizens of Israel who have publicly self-identified as Arab Jews and who have also publicly referred to other Jews from Arab countries the same way. Three who come immediately to mind are Nissim Rejwan, Sasson Somekh, and Ella Habiba Shohat.”
Nissim Rejwan and Sasson Somekh belong to a tiny group of Jews who grew up and were educated in Arabic at the height of Iraq’s accelerated arabization program. We’re talking 1940s and apparently they were of school age at the time. They were exposed not only to Arabic, but also to Arabism as an ideology. Save loyalty to the Arab League (one of the required conditions for non-ethnic Arabness), they are the closest thing to an Arab Jew and if they so want they can call themselves Arabs. But that was by no means the experience of Iraqi Jews.
As to Ella Shohat, she has never lived a single day in Iraq and she is apparently third generation Israeli. In her case, “I am an Arab Jew” is a political statement -as it is with all those you say you know: all extreme left with a marxist tilt, and all one-state-for-two-people types who are carrying their ideology on their sleeve. They are also a very tiny minority mostly of Hebrew-speaking ex-Israelis.
Finally, the two best known “I am an Arab Jew” activists were Albert Memmi of Tunisia who fought French colonialism and Abraham Serfaty of Morocco who wanted to implement an agrarian reform in that country.
Memmi in later years explained that he didn’t mean it literally, but it was the right thing to say at the time.
As to Sarfaty, it was the late Moroccan King Hassan II who set him straight, declaring over the public waves: “There are no Arab Jews in Morocco. Moroccan Jews are either Berber or Castillan.”
With all this – and because calling people “Arab Jews” is a political statement rather than fact, I don’t expect anyone here to refrain from using it. Nor do I expect anyone to question “they” shout “mavet la’aravim” unless they were holding a sign stating their national origin while shouting it. Or perhaps it was the color of their skin that tipped you off.
Whenever I read such a lazy, self-serving paraphrase of another person’s argument my antennae go up. Why don’t you provide an actual quotation of what Memmi said & not expect us to take your word for it. I don’t trust you as an honest scribe as far as paraphrasing Memmi’s actual views.
See below from Bataween … It seems she was being honest.
It seems Shirin’s descriptions of the world Iraqi Jewry lived in is far different from the world 4 Iraqi Jews, who have posted on this thread, lived in …
Very interesting thread overall.
I have not attempted to negate anyone’s experience, or invalidate anyone’s memories, views, or feelings. What I have pointed out is that the experiences, memories, views, and feelings expressed here are not universal among Jews from Arab countries. I have cited Jews from Iraq and other Arab countries, some well known, some not, whose experiences, memories, views, and feelings are quite different from, generally far more nuanced, and every bit as real and valid as those expressed here.
What is quite interesting is the sometimes almost frantic contortions some people here have gone through in an effort to negate and invalidate the experiences, memories, views, and feelings of their fellow Jews. It is as if in their minds Jews from Arab countries, unlike every other human group on earth, MUST be monolithic, at least in all things pertaining to their lives in Arab countries.
“Whenever I read such a lazy, self-serving paraphrase of another person’s argument my antennae go up”
Shame your antennae stay down when it comes to your countless inaccuracies.
And how does my paraphrase not reflect “the term Arab Jew was not a good one. I adopted it for convenience”? Particularly coming from the person who has coined the term “Arab Jew” and went as far some twenty years earlier as write a novel to prove Arab Jewish “blood” ancestry?
Touchy, touchy. All I did was ask you to provide a source, which you did. But you needn’t have added the unnecessary snark.
BTW, I’m not sure your paraphrase “but it was the right thing to say at the time” is the same thing as Memmi’s actual quote “I adopted it for convenience.” Convenience can mean a lot of diff. things. Your insinuation that he was attempting to be politically correct isn’t borne out by Memmi’s actual words.
“As to Ella Shohat, she has never lived a single day in Iraq”
That is factually incorrect. Ella Shohat did indeed live in Iraq, and immigrated to Israel from there.
As for your comments about Nissim Rejwan, Sasson Somekh, and others, it seems rather – ahem – “convenient” to attribute their identifying as Arabs to having been indoctrinated by – why, Arabs, who else?
But really, the main thing your comment above has accomplished is to confirm what I have been saying all along, which is that Middle Eastern Jews are no more monolithic than any other group of people, and that they represent a variety of sets of experiences, views of Jewish history, points of view about Arabs, and senses and feelings about their own identity and their relationship to Arabs.
Shrin wrote:
“That is factually incorrect. Ella Shohat did indeed live in Iraq, and immigrated to Israel from there.”
That was the coup de grace to whatever little credibility you may have had.
Why don’t you look it up? And once you do, be sure to come back and apologize.
Why don’t you prove that you’re right by producing a bio that says what you claim?
מודבק מ
Ella Habiba Shohat is an Israeli[1] author, activist, orator and Professor of Cultural Studies and Women’s Studies at New York University. She is of Iraqi Jewish descent.[1] Ella Shohat was born in Israel to a Baghdadi family.
מודבק מ
http://www.holyfly.com
Ella Shohat is a scholar, critic, and professor of cultural studies at New York University. … Ella Shohat was born in Israel to a Baghdadi family. … [ http://www.holyfly.com ]
מודבק מ <http://pipl.com/directory/name/Shohat/Ella
And, as I said, third generation Israeli; in her own words:
"Reflections of an Arab Jew
by Ella Shohat
http://www.ivri-nasawi.org/
"I am an Arab Jew. Or, more specifically, an Iraqi Israeli woman living, writing and teaching in the U.S. Most members of my family were born and raised in Baghdad …
When my grandmother first encountered Israeli society in the '50s, …."
etc.
So here is a third generation Israeli who is preternding to teach ME – someone born and raised in an Arab country where I lived until AGE TWENTY- who I really am.
Where do they find that arrogance? Where?
Silvia: You’ve quoted Wikipedia and a website which appears to have paraphrased the wording & information fr. the Wikipedia article. You’ve linked to what appears to be a Dutch website, not a language many of us know. You’ve claimed she’s a 3rd generation Israeli when Shirin has presented evidence from several books and magazine articles that she was actually born in Iraq. The quality of his (if Shirin is a “he”) sources far outweigh yours. Maybe you owe him an apology (not that you’ll be getting one anytime soon, Shirin)?
That business about Ella Shohat being a third generation Israeli is almost as big a laugh as her earlier comment about being subject to beheading for calling oneself an Arab Jew. I am certainly willing to try to confirm Ella Shohat’s place of birth once and for all since there do seem to be two different stories about it, but I also do not think it is a critical question at all in terms of her qualification to speak on the subject of Arab Jews. In fact, I might just cut through all the nonsense and go to the most authoritative source of all. But there is no doubt that both her parents did come from Iraq. In fact, it is temporally impossible for her to be third generation Israeli since she was born in the ’50′s. Applying a little logic can sometimes help one avoid making a fool of oneself.
And I did not have a chance to comment on Albert Memmi, and do not have time now except to say that I do not remember having the feeling that he was so terribly bitter and negative. I would want to reread him, since it’s been a while, but it seems to me that his views were not all one way or the other, but were, as with most of the Arab Jews I have known and studied, much more nuanced, and dependent on context.
Oh – Shirin is most definitely a female name, Persian/Kurdish in origin. Think Shirin Ebadi (no, of course I am not she!).
My apologies for getting that wrong! Of course I know of Shirin Ebadi.
I’m sorry you are so bitter and angry, Silvia, and I hope this bitterness does not extend into all aspects of your life.
This is what Albert Memmi actually says:
The term “Arab Jews” is obviously not a good one. I have adopted it for convenience. I simply wish to underline that as natives of those countries called Arab and indigenous to those lands well before the arrival of the Arabs, we shared with them, to a great extent, languages, traditions and cultures. If one were to base oneself on this legitimacy, and not on force and numbers, then we have the same rights to our share in these lands – neither more nor less – than the Arab Moslems. But one should remember, at the same time, that the term “Arab” is not a happy one when applied to such diverse populations, including even those who call and believe themselves to be Arabs.(…)
Yes, indeed, we were Arab Jews- in our habits, our culture, our music, our menu. I have written enough about it. But must one remain an Arab Jew if, in return, one has to tremble for one’s life and the future of one’s children and always be denied a normal existence? There are, it is true, the Arab Christians. What is not sufficiently known is the shamefully exorbitant price that they must pay for the right merely to survive. We would have liked to be Arab Jews. If we abandoned the idea, it is because over the centuries the Moslem Arabs systematically prevented its realization by their contempt and cruelty. “
Richard & Shirin:
“Ella Habiba Shohat is an Israeli[1] author, activist, orator and Professor of Cultural Studies and Women’s Studies at New York University. She is of Iraqi Jewish descent.[1] Ella Shohat was born in Israel to a Baghdadi family. In the past she was an activist in a number of Mizrahi leftist movements. ”
Shirin – This is from wiki. Please find something that disproves the below as it seems you were wrong. If that’s the case, I think you should apologize for distorting the truth.
I think again it is rather interesting how the Iraqi JEWS who are posting here all disagree with the rather positive light you spin their existence in Iraq …
Avram, I am sure you realize that Wikipedia is not exactly the most definitive source going, can in fact be quite unreliable, and should always be verified. I also noticed in that Wiki entry that there is no footnote reference to substantiate her place of birth.
This is a blurb from her book, Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices:
“Born in Iraq and raised in Israel, Ella Shohat is an internationally renowned theorist of trans-national feminism and anti-colonialism, known not only for her scholarship but also for her activism.”
This is from a college textbook, Beyond Borders by Paula Rothenberg, a professor of Ethnic Studies:
“Ella Shohat was born in Iraq and…now lives and works in the United States.”
This is from a magazine article on Arab Jews:
“…Ella Habiba Shohat, an Iraqi-born Israeli university professor.”
From another magazine article:
“Jewish writer and activist Professor Ella Shohat, who was born in Baghdad, bemoans the disappearing culture of the Arab Jew.”
Now, I am not presenting the above as the definitive word, either. They and all the other examples I have seen could be wrong, and Wiki could be correct, but it should be clear by now that at the very least not all sources agree. As for me, my memory could be faulty, but I was sure I remembered hearing and/or reading that she was born and lived in Iraq. I have pretty clear recollections of her descriptions of her experiences with the immigration process, but it has been a long time, and suppose I could have confused her in my mind with someone else. I will check it out, but don’t have time right now to read through what I have here, so it will remain an open question for now.
And no, I will most emphatically NOT apologize for “distorting the truth”, though it WOULD be nice if you would apologize for all your nasty insinuations – several in one very brief comment, I notice.
As for how “interesting” you find my understanding of Iraqi Jews’ very varied and nuanced experiences, memories, views, and feelings about their own identity and their relationship with Muslim and Christian Arabs, I think I have made myself sufficiently clear enough times that I do not need to keep repeating myself over and over again, even if you feel a need to repeat incessantly how “interesting” you find it all.
Oh – and speaking of distorting truth, it would be awfully nice if you would do me a courtesy and comply with my repeated requests to stop misrepresenting my positions in an effort to make your argument stronger. It doesn’t, and in any case, YOU might be here to try to win debating points by hook or by crook, but I am not, and it gets really boring after awhile.
Now, that’s research the way it’s supposed to be done! As for Wikipedia, it can be authoritative or not. It really depends on the quality of the research of whoever wrote the article & whoever fact-checked or updated it. In articles about more obscure individuals, issues or movements, in which fewer Wikipedia editors may have knowledge, the articles can sometimes be pretty bad. But then again, they can sometimes be excellent.
I haven’t misrepresented you as you’ve cleared yourself up on numerous points which you were rather ‘blurry’ on. There are other points where I think you’re towing a really poor line, but as you said, it gets boring after a while.
Wrt Ella Shohat … It seems there’s a big confusion (I’m surprised Richard has directly accepted your stance) between where she was born:
“To counter the male interviewees he travels to New York City to chat with Ella Shohat, an intellectual college professor and writer of a recent book on Israeli films depicting Arab Jews. Born in Israel of Iraqi parents, she generously reflects on her alienation growing up in Israel and suffering from racism”
http://www.sover.net/~ozus/forgetbaghdad.htm
NYU Professor Ella Shohat ( Iraqi Jewish descent) Mizrahi activist born in Israel
http://www.kabobfest.com/2009/05/a-half-way-comprehensive-list-of-famous-arab-and-muslim-jews-as-paradoxical-as-that-might-sound.html
Basically, I guess no one will know until we ask Ella herself!
Are you really as poor a listener as you have appeared to be in our discussions?
Are you really as cocky and unreasonable as you have appeared in our discussions?
See we both can play this game …
You are absolutely right, Avram! It is really unreasonable of me to state over and over again that Jews from Arab countries are not monolithic borg-like creatures, but human beings who have differing life experiences and have derived differing beliefs, views, and emotions from their life experiences. And it is even more unreasonable of me to suggest that beliefs, views, and emotions can differ and still be valid.
And it is terribly cocky of me to point out when someone makes an obviously outlandish claim, or is just plain making stuff up. Shame on me.
And finally, perhaps an important difference between you and me is that you are playing games here.
Google up
“Ella Shohat was born in Israel” and you get 259 returns of that exact sentence
Google up
“Ella Shohat was born in Iraq” and you get a handful of returns – most irrelevant -by some booksellers or websites mentioned here by Shirin. They understandably thought that to speak with such authority on her Arab identity, one had to be at the least an ID card carrying member of Iraqi citizenry – or at least have been raised there. Again – and that’s perhaps the most outrageous to me – she draws all her knowledge of Iraqi Jewry from her immigrant grandmother.
As to Memmi, I started writing an answer to Richard regarding my alleged “insinuations” because the question was extremely intriguing and very relevant for our days. But then I realized I’d have to write an entire dissertation and I have pressing work to do at the moment. Another time.
Nonetheless, I must clarify a few concepts:
The “Arab Jew” construct proposed by Memmi was inspired by the “Arab identity” which was developed in the early 20th century by Lebanese Christians. Both are ARTIFICIAL identities. They are based on a commonality of language and culture, nothing else. But they are useful in the sense that they allow for the equality of rights otherwise not afforded by a Muslim religiously defined society to peoples of other creeds.
While it seems to have worked for Christians in the Middle East (up till recently), the proposed “Arab Jewish” identity was never put to a test and never really got off the ground. Immediately after the independences (in North Africa and the Middle east), the Jews were forced out of their countries. Needless to say, memmi was disullusioned -to say the least. People such as Memmi, Fanon, Sarfaty, were not content pointing out the immorality of colonialism, they were also greatly concerned by the nature of the new independent society of which they intended to be part and parcel They were not just perorating from the safety of their New York backyard.
By the way – It would be legitimate to speculate that had Fanon lived to read the new 1962 Constitution of the newly independant state of Algeria, he would have been greatly disappointed as well (a Muslim grandfather clause was introduced that stripped non-Muslims of the Algerian nationality). As to Sarfaty, he went back to Morocco after years of jail and exile to find a country empty of its Jewish population and he is still grappling with “what happened?”.
In this particular article (“Qu’est-ce qu’un Juif Arabe – Questions a Qaddafi”) written roughly a uarter of a century after he coined the term “Arab Jew”, Memmi was responding to Qaddafi’s invitation to “Arab Jews” to return to Libya.
I know it was her grandmother
Silvia, you remind me of little school kids who think you can decide a question of fact by voting on it.
Her place of birth is not of any great consequence to me personally, but I dislike carrying around and conveying incorrect information, so I intend to confirm it for myself one way or another. I am not, however, going to decide the truth based on the number of Google hits. My criteria are just a bit more rigorous than that.
And if I want to discuss Albert Memmi and similar subjects I will find someone more qualified, not less qualified than I am with whom to discuss it. You pretty much disqualified yourself with your first comment on this page – the beheading thing was classic! – but it was with your adamant assertion that Ella Shohat is 3rd generation Israeli that really did yourself in.
Google finds information. It doesn’t necessarily find accurate information. To use the number of links that Google finds to ascertain whether yr claim is accurate is foolish. I was trained in academia, & there the worth of a claim is based on the value of the research. A published reference work is always more credible than a website or Wikipedia. Even Wikipedia acknowledges this in its own research guidelines. Shirin has provided two published books as sources and a magazine article. Silvia has produced websites & Google. No contest.
Again, as Shirin notes, she could still be wrong. But I doubt she is & the onus is on you to prove it. Can you find a published book that says she was Israeli-born?
This is patently false. Can you produce any evidence whatsoever for this? Even if her grandmother is A source that doesn’t mean she is the SOLE source. You’re treading on treacherous ground.
This is a historically false claim. It may be convenient to yr political-ideological narrative, but it is simply untrue. There were some countries in which Jews either were forced out or felt they had to leave. But there were many other countries in which the nations’ leaders preferred that the Jews stay & they elected to leave. Shame on you for letting yr ideology blind you to fact. The facts & truth are more complicated than you allow them to be.
Morocco is not “empty” of its Jewish population, though most Jews did leave. But the reason they left is quite more complicated once again than you allow. The king did not want them to leave. Israeli shlichim spent much time & effort persuading them to leave & many did leave for Israel.