'We usually understand “divide and rule” as a tactic for dividing populations, preventing them from unifying to overthrow the colonial power. But “divide and rule” also divides people from their own pasts.'

Samuel Hayim Brody reviews #TheJewelersOfTheUmmah, #ThreeWorlds: Memoirs of an Arab Jew, and #WhenWeWereArabs: A Jewish Family’s Forgotten History

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/in-search-of-arab-jews/

#ArabJews #JewishHistory #MENA #MiddleEast #MizrahiJews #SephardicJews #Palestine #books #memoirs @bookstodon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMJJiZlXOi0

#NovaraMedia

#ArabJews: The Hidden #History

#AshSarkar meets Professor #AviShlaim

#FreePalestineNow 🇵🇸

#JewishCurrents fellow #JonathanShamir attended a retreat for #ArabJews where participants reflected on the fraught promise of Arab-Jewish identity and Mizrahi perceptions of Zionism. He interviews 3 of the participants: Hana Morgenstern, Yaël Mizrahi-Arnaud and Moshe Behar.

https://jewishcurrents.org/the-fraught-promise-of-arab-jewish-identity
#MizrahiJews #Mizrahim #IsraelPalestine #Palestine #Israel #PalestineQuestion #MiddleEast #MiddleEastStudies @palestine

Liberated content from Musk's fascist man cave:

"“The humiliation Arab Jews experienced in Zionism is something they never experienced in the Arab countries.”

Israeli writer Alon Mizrahi (https://easternoak.co) spoke to AJ+ about the erasure of the Arab Jewish identity in Israel."

[edit: added Alon Mizrahi's website]

#Palestine #Israel #ArabJews #Arabs #Jews #Mizrahim #MizrahiJews #MiddleEast #Maghreb #Zionism #FreePalestine

@rjohnston it’s a badge of honor to wear with pride 🪪 Especially from Sarge who once lectured me about how offnsive it is for him that I use the term #ArabJews, because you know, there’s the word Arab there.

@israel
@palestine

#Israel / "too old to emigrate but envied those who could" (Sami Michael, RIP)

Famed Israeli Author Sami Michael Dies at 97

[...] Born and raised in #Iraq, Mr. Michael was a political activist and member of the Communist party; when a warrant for his arrest was issued in 1948, he fled to neighboring Iran. Unable to return to Iraq, he immigrated to Israel in 1949. After working as an engineer and as a journalist for the Haifa-based Arabic newspaper Al Itihad, he became an acclaimed novelist who has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature. He [was] a human rights activist and the president of ACRI – the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

Excerpts from a speech he gave back in 2012:

[...] The dominant culture in Israel has always directed its eyes towards the West. But this West, as always, weighs the existence of Israel as well as other countries in terms of economic profit and strategic value. The European settlers in Algiers, Zimbabwe and South Africa lasted longer than Zionist settlement in Israel. The hold that white men had over South Africa developed into an impressive power, but when the order of priorities changed in the world, it seems that the wall of Western support was a passing illusion, treacherous and deceptive. The State of Israel is in fact the product of traditional Jewish intercession. When the fathers of Zionism in Europe garnered sympathy for the establishment of a Jewish state they made use of the argument that the entity to be created would spread a wave of advanced European culture into the Middle East. This approach took root in Israeli consciousness, and until today Europe is the spiritual Mecca for a large section of the Israeli intelligentsia, especially for those writers considered as the shapers of public opinion. In my view, this is one of the deep internal conflicts in the Zionist idea. Zionist ideology emerged against the background of European anti-Semitism, yet the fathers of Zionism volunteered to serve as the agents of that very culture which nurtured a hatred of the Jews. It thus transpires that those upholding this approach regard the generations of anti-Semitism, the expulsion from Spain, the atrocities of Nazi Germany as if they had occurred on another planet, in some imaginary era.

#972mag https://www.972mag.com/author-sami-michael-israel-is-the-most-racist-state-in-the-industrialized-world/

See also:

Antisemitism and "Aliya" (immigration) and IDF's chronic manpower shortage https://kolektiva.social/@oatmeal/112194886210173814

@israel
@palestine
@bookstodon #Israel #Apartheid #ArabJews

#France / Antisemitism and "Aliya" (immigration) and IDF's chronic manpower shortage

With war in Gaza, Israel faces new pressure to draft the ultra-Orthodox into service, but there are other sources to exploit.
The "Accompanying Olim" project is a recurring initiative, of the sort Israel rolls out whenever its faces international criticism, which it then exploits to stoke fears of a supposed rise in #antisemitism.

This particular iteration involves veteran immigrants from France guiding new arrivals from the same country (Israeli Minister of Immigration and Integration Ofir Sofer was in attendance.) https://www.ynet.co.il/judaism/article/rjazehpka

The fact is that France's thriving Jewish community serves as a testament to the failure of Zionism, as well as the prudence of the luckiest Arab Jews who had a choice not to immigrate to Israel after 1948, sparing themselves from the institutionalized racism and marginalization, that impoverished those who had no choice but to settle in what was essentially a colony of Eastern Europeans claiming to have founded a home for all Jewish people.

Professor Sergio Della Pergola's research highlights important demographic trends among Jewish immigrant populations in Israel and France. His data shows that in the 1960s and 1970s, Jewish immigrants to both countries from Europe/USA and Asia/Africa had comparable professional distributions, with those arriving to Israel from either geographies being majority blue-collar workers and unskilled laborers, rather than academics or professionals.

However, the trajectories of these immigrant groups diverged substantially within Israel over time due to government policies that marginalized and disadvantaged Arab Jews. While arriving with similar socioeconomic profiles, a significant gap emerged, with Arab Jews facing systemic discrimination and barriers to integration.

See also:

On the Right-Wing Government and Zionism's Dependence on Antisemitism https://kolektiva.social/@oatmeal/112151162422038933

Potential Prosecution of Franco-Israeli Soldiers for Crimes in Gaza War https://kolektiva.social/@oatmeal/112146385154601283

@israel
#Israel #Antisemitism #France
#ArabJews

#Palestine / Abolishing the Jewish-Arab Divide

[...] In this two-part series, Omri Ben Yehuda reflects on the hegemony of Ashkenazi Jews in Israeli society. Ben Yehuda contends that reckoning with this form of hegemony requires an analysis of the links between marginalized communities in Israel/Palestine, including the Palestinians, Mizrahi, and Ethiopian immigrants. While the conflict in Israel is often portrayed as one between Jews and Arabs, Ben Yehuda contends that it is better understood as a conflict between Ashkenazi [*] Jews and the Global South. Coming to terms with this dynamic requires a Left that is more emboldened in its protest of Israeli occupation and Ashkenazi hegemony in Israel/Palestine.

https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/theorizing-modernities/abolishing-the-jewish-arab-divide/

https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/theorizing-modernities/palestinian-protest-global-south/

[*] the generic Ashkenazi includes today both Eastern European and German Jews, which historically were separate communities in every respect

Omri (Hannah) Ben Yehuda (he/she) is a scholar of comparative Jewish literatures in EUME, Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin. She has published two books, 25 scientific articles and essays, and more than 80 essays and op-eds for the general public. Currently, she is working on a co-edited volume with Dotan HaLevi on Gaza as an Israeli heterotopia to be publish in 2022.

@israel
@palestine
#colonialism
#JewishOrientalism
#ArabJews