Israel - Oppressor of the Indigenous, Arab AND Jew

"They Were Lost"
BR17 (Book Review), Saturday 10/11/08
Review by Gal Beckerman

In this article, Gal Beckerman reviews Israeli journalist Ariel Sabar's personal biography of his father in My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq.

In general, the book seems to be quite fascinating, particularly regarding the family's escape from persecution in Iraq, the discrimination they faced as mizrachi Jews in the newly created Jewish State, and his father's role in preserving the neo-Aramic language of the Jews of Kurdistan.

Nevertheless, narrative disortions (either by the author or book reviewer - it's difficult to tell) slip into the book review. The reviewer, Beckerman, writes that in the book, "we hear of a unique 20th-­century Jewish upheaval, a community whose central trauma, after living peacefully with their Christian and Muslim neighbors, was being dispatched to a Europeanized Israel that failed to properly absorb them."

The first error is the idealization of the condition of Jews in Arab-Islamic lands. In the twentieth-century, the conditions of Jews did improve in Iraq, but much of this improvement was a result of the top-down pluralism that the British colonial administration brought to the country. Historically, the Jews of Islamic lands in the Middle East were institutionally discriminated against and socially marginalized. This historic characterization reemerged when the Arab world demonstrated it would not tolerate any sort of Jewish sovereign presence in the Middle East and that there own Jewish populations would be punished, even though the overwhelming majority did not affiliate themselves with Zionism.

Secondly, the reviewer speakers of a "Europeanized Israel that failed to properly absorb" the mizrachi immigrants. While the Ashkenzi-elite did dominate the incipient state, characterizing Israel as Europeanized implies that the Jews had no indigenous claim to the land. This demonstrates an internalization of a principle tenet of the anti-Zionist Arab narrative by which the Jews had no legitimate connection to Israel.

In relation to Israel's failure to "properly absorb" the mizrachi Jews, it is evident that the Ashkenazi leadership discriminated against these peoples. Nevertheless, one must understand the full context of the situation. First of all, at the same time Israel was accepting the refugees from Arab countries, they were also absorbing Europe's remaining Jews that survived the aftermath of the Holocaust. As a result of this situation, the mizrachi Jews were not always accorded the necessary attention, but in the context of the situation, Israel still did its utmost to accommodate these refugees, even while lacking the requisite funds. Furthermore, many mizrachi, particularly those from Morocco and Yemen, were very uneducated and their former professions did not correspond well with Israel's modernized society.

In this context, Israel's failure to properly absorb these refugees must be understood. Today, mizrachi Jewry is an integral part of the country and while still underrepresented in many sectors in various ways, the community has generally succeeded.

Given the lack of context, this review provides support to the notion that Israel is a racist, fabricated state, an alien among the indigenous. As usual, the NYT behaves as a platform for those that are willing to strongly criticize the Jewish State without providing the necessary context or balance.