Israel’s other Arabs

[sullivan]

By Khaled Diab

A new book lifts the veil off Israel's Arab face and shows how, like the Palestinians, Middle Eastern Jews fell victim to political forces beyond their control.

To the outside world, Israel  stands, depending on your political perspective, as either a proud outpost of the west or humiliating western implant in the Middle East. Although Zionism was born and developed in Europe, up to 3.5 million Israelis trace their roots back to Arab lands – in fact, until the early 1990s, these Mizrahim  and Sephardim, as they are known, made up the majority of Israel's population.

Not the enemy by Rachel Shabi, herself an Israeli of Iraqi Jewish ancestry, provides a fascinating account of the personal stories and history of Mizrahi Jews, whose world fell into the abyss of the Arab-Israeli conflict, while their dual identities as Arabs and Jews proved unable to bridge the ever-widening chasm.

"The absence of the Mizrahi face from the global snapshot of Israel feeds back into a polarised position, serving those on both sides who favour the dichotomous formula of Arab versus Jew," writes Shabi, who is also a regular contributor to the Guardian.

Even though I knew about Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews beforehand, I was, nevertheless, rather taken aback by how Middle Eastern Israel seemed when I was there a couple of years ago. In fact, my first encounter was with a Moroccan Jewish taxi driver who could shame any Cairo cabbie with his colourful use of curses and expletives and his love of Umm Kalthoum, the Arab world's legendary singing diva.

Subsequently, I met numerous Mizrahi Jews, including a colourful oud player called Murad (Mordechai), nearly all of whom recalled fondly their previous lives before coming to Israel. These encounters sparked a fascination in me to learn more about their history and tragic plight, and Shabi's book compellingly fleshes out how Middle Eastern Jews were first yanked out of Arab lands and then had the Arab yanked out of them in Israel.

Shabi documents the ironic descent of Arab Jews from generally well-integrated and successful minorities at the very heart of Arab culture, politics and business to a relatively marginalised and disadvantaged population in Israel. Through a mix of personal narratives and historical research, the book examines how, despite its pseudo-messianic pledge to provide salvation for Jews, Zionism actually hurt Middle Eastern Jews as Arabs eventually committed the monumental crime – and one for which they need to apologise – of equating Judaism with Zionism and started viewing their Jewish populations as "enemies within".

In fact, some Mizrahim are very blunt about the link between Zionism and their plight. "If Israel had not been established, nothing would've happened to the Iraqi Jews," opines the Iraqi-Jewish poet Me'ir Basri.

But the suspicion and distrust did not end there. Their resemblance to Arabs – in fact, you could argue that they are also 'Israeli Arabs' – in everything but religion caused them to be viewed with a mixture of condescension, contempt and even fear. This kind of culture shock is, at one level, understandable, as it is a myth to expect the simple fact of belonging to a single faith automatically means that people are the same. "We have here a people whose primitiveness sets a record," wrote a Ha'aretz reporter in 1948, not of the Palestinians, but of Mizrahi refugees.

This anti-Mizrahi prejudice among the Ashkenazim (European Jews) elite translated into them being whisked away to live in the remotest parts of Israel and populate what are known as 'development towns' which failed to develop into anything beyond a receptacle for broken promises and shattered dreams.

The Ashkenazi elite also set about 'civilising' the Mizrahi Jews and shaping them into modern 'Israelis'. Of course, up to a certain extent, this happened to all immigrants, but since the Ashkenazi were calling the shots, it was their culture that most influenced the Israeli ideal. "I don't have a cultural identity," confesses Sasson, an ex-teacher from Sderot, the development town on the edge of Gaza whose population is almost exclusively Moroccan Jewish. "My heart is in the east and my culture is western... They dressed me up in a culture that wasn't mine."

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