On the New Congressional Bill Regarding Arab Jews
David Shasha
Friends,
As long-time SHU readers are by now aware, I have continued to discuss the matter of Arab Jews and the refugee issue and the way in which the matter has been used by Israel and pro-Zionist partisans to counter Palestinian Arab claims.
There is currently a Congressional bill that has been offered on this matter:
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/08/01/3102536/house-considers-jewish-refugees-bill
I once again take the liberty of forwarding two articles by our good friend Yehouda Shenhav that discusses the matter in more detail and presents a very important corrective to much of what is being said on the matter in the media.
Please feel free to make use of the articles in discussions of this important matter as you see fit.
David Shasha
Arab Jews, Palestinian Refugees and Israel's Folly Politics
By: Yehouda Shenhav
In an article in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz from 22.10.06, the Reuters Agency reported that Word Jewish groups began a global campaign calling for recognition of Jews from Arab countries (i.e. Arab Jews) as refugees in the Middle East conflict. Stanley Urman, executive director of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC) was quoted saying that
"The world sees the plight of Palestinian refugees, and not withstanding their plight, there must be recognition that Jews from Arab countries are also victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict,".
Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC), a U.S.-based coalition of Jewish organizations, is one of the groups coordinating the campaign which aims to record testimonies of Jews from Arab countries, list asset losses and lobby foreign governments on their behalf. Reuters also reported that JJAC is working in tandem with Israel's Ministry of Justice, which is collecting and registering testimonials, affidavits and property claims. The daily internt paper Y-NET (October 24 2006 under the title: "Jews of Arab Countries prepare yourself to claim compensation") also reported that the new minister of justice Meir Shitrit is behind this "new effort."
However this effort is all but novel. It started 6 years ago in a folly attempt to use the Arab Jews and their histories to counter-balance the Palestinian claim for the so called "right of return". The campaign has tried to create an analogy between Palestinian refugees and Arab Jews, whose origins are in Middle Eastern countries - depicting both groups as victims of the 1948 War of Independence. The campaign's Jewish proponents hope their efforts will prevent conferral of what is called a "right of return" on Palestinians, and reduce the size of the compensation Israel is liable to be asked to pay in exchange for Palestinian property appropriated by the state guardian of "lost" assets. Whereas in the past, the State of Israel and Jewish organizations have denied any linkage between the two groups and argued that the campaign was launched in the interest of the Arab Jews (see Chapter 3 in my book The Arab Jews, Stanford University Press, 2006), today all parties involved acknowledge that the main objective of the campaign is not to secure the interest of the Arab Jews, but rather to counter-balance the Palestinian political demands. I would like to argue that the idea of drawing this analogy constitutes a mistaken reading of history, imprudent politics, and moral injustice; and that any analogy between Palestinian refugees and Jewish immigrants from Arab lands is folly in historical and political terms
Bill Clinton launched the campaign in July
2000 in an interview with Israel's Channel One, in which he disclosed that an
agreement to recognize Jews from Arab lands as refugees materialized at the
Camp David summit. Ehud Barak, the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, stepped
up and enthusiastically expounded on his "achievement" in an
interview with Dan Margalit. It should be noted, that past Israeli governments
had refrained from issuing declarations of this sort. There were at least three
reasons for that. First, there has been concern that any such proclamation will
underscore what Israel has tried to repress and forget: the Palestinians'
demand for return. Second, there has been anxiety that such a declaration would
encourage property claims submitted by Jews against Arab states and, in
response, Palestinian counter-claims to lost property. Third, such declarations
would require Israel to update its school textbooks and history, and devise a
new narrative by which the Arab Jews journeyed to the country under duress,
without being fueled by Zionist aspirations. At Camp David, Ehud Barak decided
that the right of return issue was not really on the agenda, so he thought he
had the liberty to indulge the analogy between the Palestinian refugees and the
Arab Jews, only rhetorically. Characteristically, rather than really dealing
with issues as a leader, in a fashion that might lead to mutual reconciliation,
Barak and later prime ministers Ariel Sharom and Ehud Oulmert acted like
shopkeepers. Furthermore, whereas the article in Ha'aretz mentioned above
reports that the Ministry of Justice has already received thousands of claims
to date, in actuality the campaign's results thus far
are meager. The Jewish organizations involved have not inspired much enthusiasm
in Israel, or among Jews overseas. It has yet to extract a single noteworthy
declaration from any major Israeli politician. This comes as no surprise: The
campaign has a forlorn history whose details are worth revisiting. Sometimes
recounting history has a very practical effect.
The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC) who initiated this
linkage was founded in the 1970s. Yigal Allon, then foreign minister, worried
that WOJAC would become a hotbed of what he called "ethnic
mobilization." But WOJAC was not formed to assist the Arab Jews; it was
invented as a deterrent to block claims harbored by the Palestinian national
movement, particularly claims related to compensation and the right of return.
At first glance, the use of the term "refugees" for the Arab Jews was
not unreasonable. After all, the word had occupied a central place in historical
and international legal discourses after World War II. United Nations Security
Council Resolution 242 from 1967 referred to a just solution to "the
problem of refugees in the Middle East." In the 1970s, Arab countries
tried to fine-tune the resolution's language so that it would refer to
"Arab refugees in the Middle East," but the U.S. government, under
the direction of ambassador to the UN Arthur Goldberg, opposed this revision. A
working paper prepared in 1977 by Cyrus Vance, then U.S. secretary of state,
ahead of scheduled international meetings in Geneva, alluded to the search for
a solution to the "problem of refugees," without specifying the
identities of those refugees. Israel lobbied for this formulation. WOJAC, which
tried to introduce use of the concept "Jewish refugees," failed.
The Arabs were not the only ones to object to the phrase. Many Zionist Jews
from around the world opposed WOJAC's initiative. Organizers of the current
campaign would be wise to study the history of WOJAC, an organization which
transmogrified over its years of activity from a Zionist to a post-Zionist
entity. It is a tale of unexpected results arising from political activity. The
WOJAC figure who came up with the idea of "Jewish refugees" was
Yaakov Meron, head of the Justice Ministry's Arab legal affairs department.
Meron propounded the most radical thesis ever devised concerning the history of
Jews in Arab lands. He claimed Jews were expelled from Arab countries under
policies enacted in concert with Palestinian leaders - and he termed these
policies "ethnic cleansing." Vehemently opposing the dramatic Zionist
narrative, Meron claimed that Zionism had relied on romantic, borrowed phrases
("Magic Carpet," "Operation Ezra and Nehemiah") in the description
of Mizrahi immigration waves to conceal the "fact" that Jewish
migration was the result of "Arab expulsion policy." In a bid to
complete the analogy drawn between Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews, WOJAC
publicists claimed that the Arab Jewish immigrants lived in refugee camps in
Israel during the 1950s (i.e., ma'abarot or transit camps), just like the
Palestinian refugees.
The organization's claims infuriated many Arab Jews in Israel who defined
themselves as Zionists. As early as 1975, at the time of WOJAC's formation,
Knesset speaker Yisrael Yeshayahu declared: "We are not refugees. [Some of
us] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic
aspirations." Shlomo Hillel, a government minister and an active Zionist
in Iraq, adamantly opposed the analogy: "I don't regard the departure of
Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted
to, as Zionists." In a Knesset hearing, Ran Cohen stated emphatically:
"I have this to say: I am not a refugee." He added: "I came at the
behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea
of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee." The opposition
was so vociferous that Ora Schweitzer, chair of WOJAC's political department,
asked the organization's secretariat to end its campaign. She reported that
members of Strasburg's Jewish community were so offended that they threatened
to boycott organization meetings should the topic of "Sephardi Jews as
refugees" ever come up again. Such remonstration precisely predicted the
failure of the current organization, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries to
inspire enthusiasm for its efforts.
Also alarmed by WOJAC's stridency, the Foreign Ministry proposed that the
organization bring its campaign to a halt on the grounds that the description
of Arab Jews as refugees was a double-edged sword. Israel, ministry officials
pointed out, had always adopted a stance of ambiguity on the complex issue
raised by WOJAC. In 1949, Israel even rejected a British-Iraqi proposal for
population exchange - Iraqi Jews for Palestinian refugees - due to concerns
that it would subsequently be asked to settle "surplus refugees"
within its own borders. The foreign minister deemed WOJAC a Phalangist, zealous
group, and asked that it cease operating as a "state within a state."
In the end, the ministry closed the tap on the modest flow of funds it had
transferred to WOJAC. Then justice minister Yossi Beilin fired Yaakov Meron
from the Arab legal affairs department. Today, no serious researcher in Israel
or overseas embraces WOJAC's extreme claims.
Moreover, WOJAC, which intended to promote Zionist claims and assist Israel in
its conflict with Palestinian nationalism, accomplished the opposite: It
presented a confused Zionist position regarding the dispute with the Palestinians,
and infuriated many Mizrahi Jews around the world by casting them as victims
bereft of positive motivation to immigrate to Israel. WOJAC subordinated the
interests of Mizrahi Jews (particularly with regard to Jewish property in Arab
lands) to what it erroneously defined as Israeli national interests. The
organization failed to grasp that defining Mizrahi Jews as refugees opens a
Pandora's box and ultimately harms all parties to the dispute, Jews and Arabs
alike.
The State of Israel, the World Jewish Congress and other Jewish rganizations
learned nothing from this woeful legacy. Hungry for a magic solution to the
refugee question, they have adopted the refugee analogy and are lobbying for it
all over the world. It would be interesting to hear the education minister's
reaction to the historical narrative presented nowadays by these Jewish
organizations. Should Yael Tamir establish a committee of ministry experts to
revise school textbooks in accordance with this new post-Zionist genre?
Any reasonable person, Zionist or non-Zionist, must acknowledge that the
analogy drawn between Palestinians and Arab Jews is unfounded. Palestinian
refugees did not want to leave Palestine. Many Palestinian communities were
destroyed in 1948, and some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled, or fled, from
the borders of historic Palestine. Those who left did not do so of their own
volition. In contrast, Arab Jews arrived to Israel under the initiative of the
State of Israel and Jewish organizations. Some arrived of their own free will;
others arrived against their will. Some lived comfortably and securely in Arab
lands; others suffered from fear and oppression.
The history of this immigration is complex, and cannot be subsumed within a
facile explanation. Many of the newcomers lost considerable property, and there
can be no question that they should be allowed to submit individual property
claims against Arab states (up to the present day, the State of Israel and
WOJAC have blocked the submission of claims on this basis). The unfounded,
immoral analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi immigrants needlessly
embroils members of these two groups in a dispute, degrades the dignity of many
Arab Jews, and harms prospects for genuine Jewish-Arab reconciliation.
Jewish anxieties about discussing the question of 1948 are understandable. But
this question will be addressed in the future, and it is clear that any peace
agreement will
have to contain a solution to the refugee problem. It's reasonable to assume
that as final status agreements between Israelis and Palestinians are reached,
an international fund will be formed with the aim of compensating Palestinian
refugees for the hardships caused them by the establishment of the State of
Israel. Israel will surely be asked to contribute generously to such a fund.
In this connection, the idea of reducing compensation obligations by
designating Arab Jews as refugees might become very tempting. But it is wrong
to use scarecrows to chase away politically and morally valid claims advanced
by Palestinians. The "creative accounting" manipulation concocted by
the refugee analogy only adds insult to injury, and widens the psychological
gap between Jews and Palestinians. Palestinians might abandon hopes of
redeeming a right of return (as, for example, Palestinian pollster Dr. Khalil
Shikai claims); but this is not a result to be adduced via creative accounting.
Any peace agreement (which seems now far then ever) must be validated by
Israeli recognition of past wrongs and suffering, and the forging of a just
solution. The creative accounts proposed by the refugee analogy by the Israeli
Ministry of Justice and Jewish organizations turns Israel into a morally and
politically spineless bookkeeper.
Yehouda Shenhav is a professor at Tel Aviv
University and the editor of Theory
Criticism, an Israeli journal in the area of critical theory and
cultural studies. He is the author of The Arab Jews Stanford University Press, 2006.
From SHU 239, December 13, 2006
What is there between the Mizrahi issue and Palestinian Nationalism?
By: Yehouda Shenhav
For years there has been in Israeli society an enterprise of coexistence meetings supported by the establishment and financed by liberal organizations trying to advance what they call a "civil society". Around this enterprise developed an ideology based in social psychology. These meetings have taken on the character of workshops on interpersonal relations, stemming from the premise that interaction between individuals diminishes mutual hatred and stereotypes (known in social psychology as the "contact hypothesis"). This is, to say the least, a strange ideology. National conflicts cannot be solved by workshops addressing stereotypes. A national conflict is a political phenomenon, the solution to which is to be found in the political arena and not in the individual or interpersonal arena. To say that the conflict is between individuals would be like saying that Yigal Amir assassinated Yitzhak Rabin because of a personal conflict between them.
From here I would also like to cast doubt on the relevance of personal opinions regarding political conflicts - particularly in the way they are expressed in opinion polls. Such polls cannot reflect the depth of ethnic or national conflict. They are subject to momentary whims of the public or to manipulations by political leaders, and they erase the history of the conflict. Herbert Marcusa once said that the attempt to understand our reality as it is does not necessarily mean learning "the facts".
This theoretical and philosophical position has implications regarding our discussion today i.e. the connection between the Mizrahi and Palestinian questions. I would like to propose that if the positions of the Mizrahim toward the Arabs are more militant, this is at least partially the result of years of European Zionist ideology which regards Arab culture with contempt. Having internalised this ideology, the Mizrahim learned to reject their own Eastern, or Arab roots in order to get closer to the centre of the Israeli collective. Rejection of their Arab roots is expressed in at least two ways. The Mizrahim, whose identity is split between their Jewish religion and their Arab cultural roots, may choose to stress their religious identity at the expense of their cultural identity. The religious path offers the Mizrahim a way to enter Israeli society while rejecting their connection to Arab culture. Another form of rejection is to adopt an Israeli identity and to deny the relevance of their Mizrahi identity.
Here I would like to look, through the Mizrahi issue, at the complex question of Palestinian nationalism. The Israeli left, which for the most part remains Zionist, Ashkenazi, and secular, has developed a standpoint that on one hand recognizes the Palestinian question in all its complexity, and on the other hand denies the social and ethnic issues of the Mizrahi question. I will present a few examples of this standpoint and try to put them in a theoretical, historical, cultural and political context. I ask your forgiveness ahead of time if the examples and commentary are not as organized as they might be.
A few years ago I wrote an article entitled "Kesher Hashtika" ("A Conspiracy of Silence") that was published in the "Ha’aretz" newspaper (Dec. 27, ’96). Here I tried to describe the blind spots of the Ashkenazi left. I tried to understand how it is that the Ashkenazi Left recognizes the Palestinian problem. The Left, appearing as an enlightened and progressive force in the country, was prepared for a Palestinian state long before the present government agreed to it. On the other hand the same Left took the lead in denying the Mizrahi question. This is an anomaly. How can we explain the same group’s different attitudes toward "the East"? Perhaps part of the explanation lies in the fact that the proposed solution to the Palestinian question is separation. We can solve the Palestinian problem by drawing a border between them and us. This is not an option with the Mizrahim. It is this difference that enables the Ashkenazi Left to recognize the Palestinian, but not the Mizrahi question. Here lies something that we must look into further. Zionism is a political theory built on a very clear distinction between the Mizrahi and the Palestinian questions. The converging of these two questions is one of the most threatening prospects for Zionist nationalism. This could be seen in the 1970’s when the Panthers and Matspen movements joined forces. I think that these efforts are sabotaged not only by the government agents planted for that purpose, but by a cultural structure central to the Israeli political system. For example even in the academic world there is a very clear distinction between the historians that deal with the Palestinians and the sociologists that deal with the Mizrahim. There is no attempt to integrate the two issues. This is particularly unusual when they address the phenomenon called "population exchange in the Middle East," or the "refugee question". In 1948 the question of "Mizrahi refugees" was already on the agenda, at least since Ben Gurion’s "one million plan" that he presented in 1941. In research work that I conducted (published in Ha’aretz Apr. 4, ’98 as "The Perfect Robbery") I showed how the property of the Palestinian refugees was regarded as being tied to that of the Iraqi Jews. This was well known by the time that Benny Morris published his book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Yet Morris did not see fit to mention a word about the connection that existed between these two population groups in the political theory of the Israeli government.
On the other hand there are those who write about the Mizrahim from a very critical viewpoint, such as Yosef Meir in his book Shlichut Yavnieli Leteman ("Yavnieli’s Mission in Yemen"). Meir writes that the attempt to capture the job market with Hebrew labour was the primary incentive behind bringing the Jews from Yemen to Palestine. The mission was to bring Jews who were considered "natural workers", or who worked like Arabs. Though it is obvious that this was all a part of the Zionist nationalist conquest of Palestine, there is not a word in this book about the Palestinian national movement. That is to say that even in the supposedly open world of academic knowledge there are barriers preventing the connection between the Mizrahi and Palestinian questions.
When I look at my own biography I find nothing in the formation of my identity more influential than the ethnic issue. My parents are Iraqi. My father was not a Zionist. He came to Palestine in 1941 as a merchant, and he remained. My mother came from Baghdad to Palestine in the 1950’s in what was called "Aliyat Ezra and Nehemia". I can speak for hours about ambivalence surrounding my identity, creating dilemmas in my childhood between my Israeli identity and my Mizrahi – Arab identity. When I brought friends home my mother made it clear to me who were my good friends and who were my bad friends. It was not in anything she said directly. But when I brought home an Ashkenazi friend I received compliments, and when I brought home a Mizrahi friend my mother made a face. After a while you get the message and begin to adopt Ashkenazi ways of thinking.
My mother is a woman who knows how to enjoy herself. Arab culture is in her blood. My parents had their circle of friends who would get together every Friday and have a party. They had music playing from the Arabic radio station and the whole neighbourhood could hear it. I would die from embarrassment. I would plea with her, "What are you doing?!".
"What’s the matter," she would ask, "this isn’t ‘culture?’ We don’t have doctors and lawyers? We don’t have music?"
She forgets that during the week she has been sorting out my friends and establishing my own place in the social structure. Almost every Mizrahi of my generation tells a similar story of how, on the first Thursday of every month, Um Kul Thum would begin to sing and I would begin to tense up. As the Oriental tones filled the house my mother would gradually make the radio louder and louder and I wouldn’t know where to bury myself. I would try to turn the radio off and she would turn it back on and make it even louder. I had become a foreign agent in my own house. This is a result of external socialization that works very effectively. We internalise a very particular kind of logic that I am now trying to understand.
For many years I tried to escape my Mizrahi identity and to deny the existence of a Mizrahi issue. I adopted the position of the Ashkenazi Left that identifies with the Palestinian issue and rejects the Mizrahim. I went to the United States where I lived comfortably for several years. Upon my return to Israel in 1995, the issue exploded. I was part of a group of second generation Mizrahim who founded "Hakeshet Hademokratit Hamizrahit" ("The Mizrahi Democratic Spectrum") and I began to research the Mizrahi issue. The issue did not interest me in the context of a Zionist paradigm. I was not interested in discussing whether or not there is discrimination or a melting pot etc. I wanted to reach the root of the discussion, and I began with Iraqi Jewry. Many books have been written about Iraqi Jewry, but those that address the connection between the Palestinian and Mizrahi issues have not been translated to Hebrew. Abbas Shiblak, a Palestinian who wrote about Iraq, made this connection in his book The Lure of Zion. This is one example of a book that was never translated to Hebrew. Tough gatekeepers stand at the entrance deciding which literature on the Mizrahim can be introduced to the Hebrew reader and which literature will remain outside. Other examples of untranslated work that makes the Mizrahi - Palestinian connection are Na’im Giladi’s book Ben Gurion’s Scandals, and Shlomo Svirsky’s book The Seeds of Inequality.
I began to dig in the archives in order to get a better understanding of the story of the bombs in the Baghdad synagogue. This is a story that many people speak about but no one really knows. In the course of research I came across a fascinating story that ties in to the property of Iraqi Jews. The Zionist movement began to pay attention to Mizrahi Jewry in the years 1941 – ’42. It was then that Ben Gurion introduced his "one million plan". Anticipating that many Jews will be annihilated by Nazi persecution causing demographic problems for the Zionist movement, Ben Gurion decided that a plan must be introduced based on Jews from Arab lands. In 1950 an agreement was reached with Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri Sa’id, as a result of which a law was passed allowing Jews to forfeit their Iraqi citizenship and leave the country without their property. Of the 120,000 Jews in Iraq, approximately 1,500 registered to leave the country. Around this time, working undercover as representatives of Solel Boneh, Israeli Mossad agents began underground activities in Iraq. All of the sudden there was an explosion in the Mas’uda Shem Tov Synagogue and immediately afterwards 24,000 Jews registered to leave the country. Abbas Shiblak describes in his book how each time there was a fall in registration, another bomb went off followed by another mass exodus. Five of these bombs did the job. In March 1951 the Iraqi parliament decided to expropriate the property of the Iraqi Jews. Shortly thereafter, most of those Jews who had still remained in Iraq left the country in an organized operation and were brought to Tel-Aviv.
What does the State of Israel do with the story of the expropriated Jewish property? In March 1951, Moshe Sharet informed the Knesset that the State of Israel now has an account to settle with Iraq since the latter expropriated the property of its Jewish subjects. The government of Israel allows itself to balance the value of the property that the Palestinians left with the value of the property that was taken from Jews in Arab lands. The connection is made by a political logic, however the basic assumptions behind this interesting linkage are not very clear. What is the connection between Iraqi Jews and Palestinians? How can the State of Israel use the property of Iraqi Jews, which is not even in its hands, to settle the account of another problem that it created?
In order to clarify this issue, I would like to tell you how systems of memory create the Mizrahi understanding of the conflict. As I mentioned before, what one or another person thinks is a product of a long history. These systems of memory are mobilized and used to form the insight and positions of people. People’s standpoints do not take shape on their own as an individual and rational process. What kind of memory do Mizrahim consume regarding the Palestinian issue? We go to many memory sites such as memorials, museums etc. and we consume logic that shapes our viewpoints. I think that a large part of the struggle over multi-culturalism in Israel is a struggle over memory. For example the memory of the holocaust has been taken from the Jews for the benefit of the State of Israel. We see it everywhere. The "marches of life" or the trips of death in which children are sent to visit concentration camps in Poland is a case of the State expropriating memory. This reached the height of absurdity three years ago when General Yosi Ben Hanan suggested that the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) use Auschwitz as a place to conduct initiation ceremonies for its elite units.
Pardon me for dwelling on examples of the holocaust, but here the examples are so obvious that they work best in making my point. In 1952 the government of Israel conducted a discussion on the proposition of establishing Yad Vashem. In the course of this discussion Ben Gurion suggested granting Israeli citizenship, or a "citizenship of memory" to all Jews who died in the holocaust. What is the story behind this idea of automatic and virtual Israeli citizenship? Naturally there is the element of our identifying with those who suffered from the holocaust. But the point here is how the holocaust is used for political ends. We could speak about how memorial sites paradoxically isolate memory. Memorial sites are certainly not about individual memories and in fact they are not about memory at all. Driven by an external logic that isolates and constantly reproduces a particular memory, these sites are ultimately more concerned with forgetting then with remembering.
Regarding the Mizrahi issue, which is connected to the Palestinian issue, it is important to understand how memory works. The Mizrahim, as opposed to the Palestinians, have a very ambivalent attitude towards Zionist nationalism. And Zionist nationalism has a very ambivalent attitude towards the Mizrahim. There is tension between processes of inclusion and exclusion in relations between Jewish nationalism and Mizrahim. It is as if we are told, "You are one of us, but a distant relative." That is to say you are almost like the Ashkenazim - but not exactly. As opposed to the Palestinians, you are a part of the collective. However within the Zionist nationalist movement you are marginal and have become ethicised.
In a letter to the German philosopher Karl Jaspers, Hanna Arendt once wrote (paraphrased) "I’m worried. Adenauer has decided to regard 1945 as the ‘Zero Hour’. That means that at the moment the war ended all of the Germans have become normal. Seventy million Germans have become normal and the only remaining Nazi is the Mufti of Jerusalem." Looking at Zionist historiography we can see how nationalist logic creates memory to its convenience. Seventy million Germans have in fact been exonerated while the Mufti still remains a Nazi.
In 1941 there was a pogrom in Baghdad. In this pogrom, known as the farhud, 160 Jews and 70 Muslims were killed. On the basis of evidence we have today it is known that the British were interested in entering the city, and that British soldiers were involved in provoking the violence. They waited 48 hours allowing a degree of anarchy to reign before making their move. It was classic colonial practice. Apropos memory, it would be interesting to see how Iraqi Jews who were there see this event in retrospect. The Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center is now publishing a book entitled Sin’at Hayehudim Ufra’ot Be’iraq ("Hatred of the Jews, and the Pogroms in Iraq"). In this book the farhud is described as part of the events of the holocaust. The centre even sent a letter to the Ministry of Education asking why the holocaust in Baghdad is not a major part of the State history program. All of this is part of the Mizrahi aspiration to be included in the Jewish national collective by taking part in the civil religion called the holocaust.
In my opinion the connection of the Mizrahim to the political right is circumstantial and not essentialist. Mizrahim are not by nature any more right wing, nationalist, or excitable than the Ashkenazim. The historical pact between the Right and the Mizrahim is generally attributed to Menahem Begin’s climb to power in 1977. Though this was in fact a significant change, the more important turning point was in 1967. This is the Mizrahim’s formative year. They missed out on the war of 1948 since most of them had not yet arrived in the country. The 1967 War was the Mizrahim’s first opportunity to prove their loyalty to the State of Israel. Because of the intensity of the conflict the Mizrahim had to prove that they were holier than the Pope. We are all familiar with the efforts that Mizrahim make in order to avoid being mistaken for Arabs. How many wear a Jewish Star or a "Hai" around their neck, and how many wear a kipa on their head for national rather than religious motives? Internalised oppression is at least partially responsible for the very nationalist positions that Mizrahim have adopted. I can find nothing else that might explain why Mizrahim are more nationalist than Ashkenazim.
Finally I would like to say that there is something misleading in the Zionist Left’s attempt to end the conflict by separation from the Palestinians. Sami Samoha expressed this well in his call to adopt the Swiss model, ending the struggle over total territorial domination. Zionism, after all, is a colonialist movement built on concepts of Orientalism, negating the East. The question is whether these concepts will disappear once there is peace. Will Arab culture and identity suddenly gain respect in the eyes of the European Jews who have settled in Israel? The negation of the East and the crystallization of western culture within Zionism is a powerful driving force. As Edward Said expressed it, the East serves as a wall, or as "the other" which the West uses in order to define itself. What kind of peace will bring the European Ashkenazi Jew to suddenly like the East?
When Matan Vilnai became the Minister of Cultural Affairs he asked Professor Zohar Shavit to prepare a report about policies regarding cultural matters for the year 2002. We interviewed her about the decision by Yosi Sarid to add poetry by Mahmoud Darwish to the educational program. Sarid had said that the poetry chosen was lyrical, or light poetry. This reflects the attempt to depoliticise every subject. Zohar Shavit added that before introducing Mahmoud Darwish and Sami Michael, students must learn Bialik and Amichai – in other words the canonized assets of Israeli culture. Bialik was born in Odessa, Darwish was born in Birweh (Palestine), and Michael was born in Baghdad, but Bialik is considered more Israeli than the other two. By placing Darwish and Michael together, Shavit, with a slip of the tongue, exposed what Zionism constantly tries to hide i.e. the connection between the Zionist movement’s attitude towards the Mizrahim and towards the Arabs.
From Neveh Shalom/Wahat al-Salam School for Peace Annual Review 1999 - 2001
Reprinted in SHU 110, June 30, 2004