Mizrahi Zionism?

Over at Point of No Return, there's a story from JTA News about:

They call it the 'Sephardi Spielberg' project. An international effort to gather the oral testimonies of Jews displaced from Arab countries before they all disappear, and record these stories on videotape, is gathering steam.

A wonderful effort.

As part of an international consortium led by Hebrew University and the University of Miami that is collecting and documenting testimony from these Mizrahim, or Jews from Arabic-speaking countries, Jimena has launched a visual history project to interview those now living on the West Coast.

Jimena's East Coast partner, the American Sephardi Federation in New York, began its interviews of New York-area Sephardim in September, while partners in several other countries are working to collect oral testimonies in their regions. Each project is responsible for its own funding.

Jimena, btw, has a FAQ with an interesting emphasis. Mizrahim have been claimed for a variety of political agendas, often at odds with each other and often with a galling refusal to actually listen to what Mizrahim say. So there's an impulse for me not to try to speak for Mizrahim and to stick to my own experiences. Except that would mean abandoning a role as an ally. So, hopefully, I can do a fine job of listening while drawing attention to the difficulty of my role. In this particular moment, however, I don't think there's much difficulty in listening to what Jimena is trying to say:

Q. Is there a connection between the Palestinian issue and the Jewish refugees from Arab states?

A. Yes. Much of the responsibility of the expulsion of the indigenous Jews of the Middle East and North Africa by Arab governments lies with the Palestinian political leadership who engaged in anti-Jewish incitement throughout the Arab world, with the help of Nazi Germany during World War Two, and after the war.

Are 'Arab Jews' really accepted as Arabs?

I'm pretty sure the rumors of Haim Saban buying part-ownerswhip in Al Jazeera are false -and I also think any creator or the Power Rangers has a lot to answer for- but I also think this commentary is worthwhile:

It's what Richard Silverstein calls 'an AIPAC wet dream'. Further proof, if proof were needed, that 'Arab Jews' like Saban are only acceptable when they are not also Zionists. After all, who in the Arab world would watch al-Jazeera if it were more sympathetic to Israel?

Now If Saban is really accepted as an 'Arab Jew' -that is, if he's understood as Arab- then what would be the problem with an Arab having part ownership of Al Jazeera? The problem is that Arab Jews are understood as minorities without power in Arab society. To claim power of any sort would be uppity, and so Jewish otherness is foregrounded. Silverstein, for example, refers to Saban as an Israeli-American rather than as an Egyptian Jew, entirely hiding the fact that Saban was born in Alexandria in 1944.

playing games with Israel's left and right

Anti-Israel activists often love to talk about the plight of Mizrahim in Israel. Ashkenzi dominate nearly all Jewish institutions including Israel. This is supposedly proof that Israel is fundamentally racist (in a way supposedly different from, say, Iran). Yaacov Lozowick points to this article from YNet News. Tzipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz are vying for head of Kadima.

The first real black candidate (meaning, in this case, Mizrachi, i.e. non Ashkenazi), vs. almost the first woman candidate (Golda, he reminds us, wasn't really much of a woman).

So, I wonder, are all these anti-Israel activists excited about Mofaz? In Amnon Levy's words:

The man who sent oil prices up with idiotic statements about Iran and who irresponsibly escalated our relationship with it. The man who promoted targeted assassinations but insisted on declaring that the IDF is the world’s most moral army. The man who is no stranger to any worn-out cliché and who makes Bibi Netanyahu look like an island of sanity and diplomatic moderation.

Sylvain Sylvain: A Mizrahi Jew, Joins Moz defying the boycott

A neat article about Sylvain Sylvain. From Z-Word, The New York Dolls are backing up Morrissey for his PACBI-defying gig in Tel Aviv.

The last time Sylvain Sylvain was in the Middle East, he was being expelled from his Egyptian home because he was a Jew.

Previously Sylvain Mizrahi, the 59-year-old guitarist for the legendary New York Dolls was born in Cairo to a prominent Jewish family.

"My daddy had a great job at the National Bank of Egypt. But in the mid-'50s, they fired him, then they confiscated all our belongings and kicked us out," Sylvain told The Jerusalem Post during a conversation ahead of a Dolls' show last week in Italy.

Let's not make comparisons of tragedies

I've seen a lot in just the past few days on the history of Mizrahi Jews in Muslim countries. See here, here (which comes to me via here), and of course this dedicated site.

Israel is perhaps the least efficient "ethnic cleanser" in the history of mankind, calumnies to the contrary notwithstanding.

In 1947 some 740,000 Palestinians lived in the British Mandate for Palestine. Today, the Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza, together with Arab citizens of Israel, comprise a total of over five million Palestinians (altogether over nine million people worldwide refer to themselves as Palestinian.)

Using a popular population growth rate equation, the Palestinian growth rate has been calculated as close to double that of Asia and Africa over a comparable period of time.

Drazen Petrovic defines ethnic cleansing as "a well-defined policy of a particular group of persons to systematically eliminate another group from a given territory." By this definition, only one type of ethnic cleansing has occurred in the Arab-Israeli conflict - that of the Jews of Asia and North Africa. Whereas before 1948 there were nearly 900,000 Jews living in Arab lands, by 2001 only 6,500 remained.

There are two very important points here. First, Israel's evilness is greatly exaggerated. Second, Jewish refugees from Arab and Mulsim countries suffered greatly and deserve to have their stories heard. However, I do have a problem with the way these two points are made together. It's true that many Palestinian supporters are hypocrites incapable of recognizing Jewish suffering except through token insincerities, but it seems the rhetoric is to undermine sympathy for the Palestinians by saying, "We had it worse."

It is possible and necessary to recognize the suffering of all parties without diminishing the suffering of any.