Mizrahi Open Letter is an Israel-bashing exercise

Writer and poet Almog Behar, an Open Letter signatory

They're back.

A group of 'young' Mizrahi descendants of 'Arab Jews' in Israel have written another Open Letter to the Arab world. (Who are they? Israelis with at least one Jewish parent of Middle Eastern or North African origin. Those with one German, Polish or Latin American parent attest to the onward advance of intermarriage in Israeli society).

The signatories are all fired up by the revolutionary fervour sweeping the Arab world, and are begging to be part of the action.

Are they applauding the Arab protesters for wishing to aspire to the values of the only democracy of the region - Israel?

No such luck. The signatories feel they have been torn away from their true 'Arab' culture and language and have been repressed by Israel's domineering 'colonial, European' culture. Like the demonstrators of Tahrir Square, they live under a 'regime'. As leftist radicals they cannot help reverting to the well-worn slogans of 'solidarity' with repressed 'Palestinian-Israelis - a 'workers of the Middle East unite' type of solidarity.

Their ultimate goal reveals itself : an Andalusian model of interfaith coexistence. A 'golden era' revived.

My objections to this Open Letter are very much what they were to the last Open Letter, which this Mizrahi group wrote after President Obama's Cairo speech in 2009.

The letter-writers protest that their cultural past has been erased by Israeli racism, but they are in denial about their historical past - the Arab world's repression and persecution of their own parents. This is, after all, the reason why they are now Israelis. Their unwillingness to come to terms with the brutality and injustice of their past in the Arab world puts them at variance with the vast majority of Israelis who descend from Arab countries. Sharing a culture and language has never protected Jews from being 'ethnically cleansed'.

Next, the signatories commit the very mistake they accuse Israel of doing to them in reverse - they are asking to be taken into the comforting bosom of the dominating Arab, Muslim culture. The Andalusian model assumes thriving Jews and Christians are not equal partners, but under Muslim rule. Moreover, Arab Muslim culture has ruthlessly suppressed indigenous Berber, Kurdish, Coptic, Assyrian culture and language, and imposed dhimmi subjugation on Jews and Christians.

Is this what this tiny misguided group of starry-eyed Israelis really wants?

Here is an excellent comment from E. Eskel, who sums up the argument brilliantly:

"It’s amazing just how self-denigrating some of these individuals are, who claim to speak for all Mizrahim. While their intentions might be good, their naivety and ignorance is so painful that it drives them to try and reconcile with those who have no desire to reconcile with them, let alone acknowledge the tragic uprooting of millenia old Jewish communities throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

Our families never identified as Arabs. They were comfortable with speaking Arabic (more specifically our unique Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic dialect) and in fact Jews had used Arabic even BEFORE Islam. They participated in the society, contributed immensely to the economy, culture, arts, literature and music. But they also maintained their unique separate identity as Babylonian Jews who pre-date the muslim conquests by at least 1,000 years. It was only a minority from the more secular middle-upper class who identified as “Arabs” and even then, not all of them did. One needs to understand this in its proper historical context. The pan-Arab Baathist movement was founded by a Muslim and a Christian. But for many non-Muslims, it became a way of exiting their less-than-equal reality and create a new identity not modeled on religion, but one on a secular Arabness that would somehow unite Muslims, Jews, Christians…etc The problem was, most Muslims weren’t so immediately swayed by this development, and religion remained an important part in their self-identification with the Muslim Umma.

The price for that illusive equality was a downplaying of one’s non-Muslim or non-Arab identity, whether you were a Copt or Assyrian or Maronite or Syriac or Jewish or Berber. That to me, doesn’t speak of equality but of further inequality, one were Arab culture and Arabic language trumps older regional identities and languages. I challenge these young Mizrahim to find a period in history where Jewish communities voluntarily chose an Arab identity for themselves. Let them pour over the wealth of Jewish writing, literature, letters and historical record and find one such instance.

That is not to say that one can’t be an Arab-Jew if so they choose or even be an Arab convert. In Yemen for example, many Yemenite tribes embraced Judaism and were absorbed into the pre-existing and ancient Jewish community of Teiman. The same with Amazigh tribes in North Africa. However, these communities themselves came to view themselves as part of the Jewish nation and the Jewish people accepted them into the fold. We are an old and diverse people and that is what enriches us and makes us so strong.

The problem with many pan-Arabists is that if you say you’re not an Arab it means its an insult or you hate Arabs, which is of course ridiculous! What is an insult is imposing a foreign and politicized identity on people without their consent. That attitude is rooted in contempt for minorities and a belief in the superiority of everything Arab. That is why many of us Middle-Eastern Jews resent these paternalistic attempts to lecture us on OUR history and how we should identify and “rediscover” our Middle-Easterness or “true arabness.”

I don’t need to rediscover anything. My family has always known where it came from (Iraq) and took great pride in it, despite the violence they faced in Iraq and the discrimination in Israel. They are unapologetic Babylonian Jews who are loud, warm, love listening to Arabic classics (many many of which were composed or sung by Jews by the way) and cook with our strong and beautiful pungent spices.

That being said, it is unfortunate that many of the younger generation has lost touch with their parents’ culture but that is due to many factors: racism, eurocentric views of Jewishness but also the violent dispossession of Jewish communities throughout Arab/Muslim lands that dealt a massive blow. The culture and traditions are rooted to the land where one lives and one can try to preserve what they can, but one can’t expect it to remain the same as when our fathers and mothers lived in Baghdad or Zakho or Arbil.

If there is to be a true reconciliation, let be one where we stand on equal grounds. Let it be one where our Arab brothers and sisters open their eyes to the lies their governments and politicians have been feeding them for decades, and learn about the disappeared Jews who once lived in their midst. Let them acknowledge that we are the face of Israel and are a part of this landscape as much as they are, not more, not less. Let them look to how other minorities today are experiencing what we once experienced and maybe they could stop the disappearance of yet another fragment of diversity. Only then can we even begin to speak of a real, genuine dialogue."

E.Heskel

Update: look who's now showing interest - card-carrying antisemite Gilad Atzmon.