Some recent accounts have sought to present Mizrahim —Jews whose origins are in Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa rather than in eastern and central Europe — as fellow victims of the Zionist project, along with Palestinian Arabs. On this view, Zionism is an essentially Ashkenazi (European Jewish) project. Here, a more complex account of Mizrahi identity in Israel is presented, showing how Jewish immigrants from Muslim countries, despite being regarded as culturally inferior and treated as colonisation fodder by the Zionist leadership, were nevertheless successfully co-opted to the Zionist project. The Mizrahim continue to face socio-economic disadvantages in Israel but these are predominantly a reflection of class barriers and are fundamentally distinct from the national oppression of Arabs.
Broadly speaking, the Mizrahim -the term is Hebrew for Orientals -are Jews belonging to, or originating from, communities that have lived for several centuries in Muslim countries. They should not be - but often are - confused with the Sephardim: Jewish communities originating from the Iberian peninsula, from which they were expelled at the end of the fifteenth century by the Catholic Kings. Those Sephardim who migrated to Mediterranean Muslim countries lived there alongside Mizrahi communities and partly merged with them but largely preserved their distinct cultural identity and Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) language.
2.
Broadly speaking, the Ashkenazim - the term is Medieval Hebrew for Germans - are Jews belonging to, or originating from, Yiddish-speaking communities that lived in Central and Eastern Europe.
3.
For a recent typical example of this kind of narrative by an Israeli, see Smadar Lavie, `Colonialism and imperialism: Zionism', in the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, Vol. 6 (Leiden, Brill, 2007). A seminal text in this line of narrative is Ella Shohat, `Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the standpoint of its Jewish victims', Social Text (Nos. 19/20, 1988), pp. 1-35. For a Palestinian Leftist acceptance of this claim, see `Adel Samara, `Why the socialist solution in Palestine: and why the secular democratic state will serve the Zionist and Arab comprador solution', Kana`an e-Bulletin (Vol. 8, no. 1592, 2008), <http://www.kanaanonline.org/articles/01592.pdf>.
4.
We are speaking here of Zionism in the proper sense: the political movement that arose at the end of the nineteenth century - not of earlier Jewish messianic movements that are sometimes described as `proto-Zionist'. Of these, the two most important ones were led by non-Ashkenazim: David Alroy (twelfth century) was an Iraqi Jew and Shabbetai Tzvi (seventeenth century) was a Romaniot (member of the ancient Greek Jewish community).
5.
Raphael Shapiro , `Zionism and its Oriental subjects', Khamsin (No. 5, 1978), pp. 5-26; reprinted in Jon Rothschild, ed., Forbidden Agendas ( London, Saqi Books, 1984), pp. 23-48. By recommending Shapiro's article we do not imply that we agree with everything he says. A more impassioned but analytically far less rigorous account is given by Shohat, op. cit., who totally ignores Shapiro's earlier article.
6.
Alex Bein, Toldot Ha-Hityashvut Ha-Tzionit [History of the Zionist Colonisation] (Tel-Aviv, Massada, 1970), pp. 97-8, quoted by Haim Hanegbi, `Hatteymanim' [`The Yemenites'], Matzpen (No. 58, 1971 ), <http://www.matzpen.org/index.asp?p=Temanim> ;, and by Shapiro, op. cit. Shohat, op. cit., also quotes Thon (whose name she misspells as `Tehon').
7.
In the event, the immigrants from Yemen did not quite fulfil the hopes of the Palestine Office. They were mostly artisans, unused to agricultural labour, and were unable to compete with the indigenous Palestinians employed by Jewish colonists. The Palestinians were themselves peasants, for whom wage labour was a supplementary source of income and so could manage even if employed for very low wages. The Yemenites had no other source of income, yet were expected to work for the same low wages. This created great poverty and distress; the women were forced to work as domestic servants for the colonists and the children had to start working from an early age.
8.
Shapiro, op. cit, pp. 19-20.
9.
Government of Israel, Statistical Abstracts (Jerusalem, Central Bureau of Statistics, 1967); quoted by Moshe Behar, `Palestine, Arabized-Jews and the elusive consequences of Jewish and Arab national formations', Nationalism and Ethnic Politics (No. 13, 2007), p. 585.
10.
See Sergio DellaPergola , `Demography' in Encyclopaedia Judaica (Philadelphia, Coronet Books , 2006), table 2.
11.
True, not all Mizrahi immigrants were Zionists: some must have immigrated to Palestine out of other motives. But the same must be true, to at least the same extent, also of Ashkenazi immigrants, especially after the rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe.
12.
Acronym for Plugot Mahatz (`Strike Companies').
13.
During the first three months of the 1947-49 war (30 November 1947-29 February 1948) - that is, well before the state of Israel came into existence - 378 Jews, all volunteers, were killed in active service, of whom 73 (19.3 per cent) were Mizrahim according to their biographies in the official memorial site of Israel's Ministry of Defence, <http://www.izkor.gov.il>.
14.
Acronyms, respectively, for Irgun Tzva'i Le'umi (`National Military Organisation') and Lohamei Herut Israel (`Combatants for Israel's Liberty'). Both were described as `terrorist' by the British Mandate authorities. LEHI -also known as the `Stern Gang' - described its own activities as `terroristic' in a notorious document in which it offered to collaborate with the Third Reich: see Lenni Brenner, ed., 51 Documents: Zionist collaboration with the Nazis (Fort Lee, NJ, Barricade, 2002), p. 302. Ya`akov Bannai (Mazal), Hayyalim Almonim: Sefer Mivtza`ei LEHI [Anonymous Soldiers: the book of LEHI operations] (Tel-Aviv, Hug Yedidim, 1958), lists 119 LEHI members killed in action, of whom 34 (28.5 per cent) may be identified by their names as Mizrahim.
15.
See <http://tinyurl.com/yrvlsf>.
16.
See Abbas Shiblak , Iraqi Jews: a history of mass exodus (London, Saqi Books, 2005).
17.
The first outbreak was in the `Ein-Shemer immigrant camp on 14 February 1950. This soon spread to other camps of immigrants from Yemen: Beit-Lid, Rosh-Ha`ayin and Be'er-Ya`akov. The outbreaks kept erupting sporadically until the end of May and approached the scale of an uprising, suppressed by large police forces. On 8 April, the immigrant Salem ibn-Salem Ya`qub Jarafi was shot dead by a guard. There was another outbreak on 25 October 1952 in the Yemenite transit camp in `Emeq Hefer . (Wadi Hawarith). . After a force of twenty-five policemen had been attacked and forced to leave the camp, the police reacted as an army of occupation: 200 policemen, armed with batons and seven rifles, encircled the camp in the early morning, declared a curfew in Hebrew and Arabic and then made house-to-house searches for suspects. Initially, 450 men were arrested, of whom 105, including thirteen soldiers on leave, were detained; thirty-nine suspects - `mostly Yemenites, the rest Iraqis and Persians' - remained in custody after questioning (see Ha'aretz, 27 October 1952).
18.
See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadi_Salib_events>.
19.
This involvement was widely reported and somewhat sensationalised by the Israeli press. Thus, for example, a headline in Ha'aretz of 3 March 1971: `Jerusalem police arrested 13 youths known as "Black Panthers" and members of Matzpen'. See also Yedio`ot Aharonot of 4 March 1971. A leading article by Uri Avnery in Ha`olam Hazeh of 19 May 1971 excoriates Matzpen for trying to manipulate the Panthers and foster the dangerous illusion that the struggle of the Mizrahim is going to overthrow Zionism.
20.
For a typical example, see Samia Dodin and Sami .Shalom Chetrit, Culture, Identity and Borders: Samia Dodin, a Palestinian American, interviews Israeli poet and author Sami Shalom Chetrit on Israel and Arab Jewish identity (2004), <http://tinyurl.com/5288va>. Lavie, op. cit., speaks of `the first wave of Arab Jewish labor migration from Yemen to Palestine' in 1882.
21.
`Towards the democratic Palestine', Fateh (Vol. 2, no. 2, 1970). Probably authored by Nabil Sha`ath. Fateh was the English-language newspaper published by the Information Office of the Palestine Liberation Movement.
22.
By the way, the claim that a majority of Israeli Jews are Mizrahim, which was correct in 1970, has often been repeated by various authors long after it ceased to be true due to the immigration to Israel of about a million Jews from the former Soviet Union. By 2000, only 47 per cent of all Israeli Jews were Mizrahim: see Sergio DellaPergola, `"Sephardic and Oriental" Jews in Israel and western countries', in Peter Y. Medding, ed., Studies in Contemporary Jewry, No. 22: Sephardic Jewry and Mizrahi Jews: Vol. XXII (New York , Oxford University Press, 2008 ).
23.
Thus Behar, op. cit., is correct in referring to them as `Arabized Jews' in this cultural sense.
24.
In traditional Arabic discourse, the term `Arab' had quite a different connotation from its modern national sense. Thus the translator of the Muqaddimah, the monumental fourteenth century sociological work by the great Ibn Khaldûn, notes: `As a sociological term, "Arab" is always synonymous with "Bedouin, nomad" to Ibn Khaldûn, regardless of racial, national or linguistic distinctions.' Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah: an introduction to history: Vol. I (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967), p. 250. Five centuries later, the term `Arab' was still used to describe the Arab Bedouin tribes (by others and by themselves). The rest of the Arabic-speaking masses normally self-identified according to their locality or religious community. See Adeed Dawisha, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: from triumph to despair (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2003).
25.
An extreme special case is that of the Algerian Jews, who were granted French citizenship in 1870 under the décrets Crémieux. Although indigenous Algerians, the vast majority regarded themselves as French, took no part in the Algerian liberation struggle, and finally - like the European colonists - chose to leave en masse.
26.
See Dawisha, op. cit
27.
What we say here applies at least to the vast majority of Jews in Arab countries. This was in stark contrast to the important role played by their Christian compatriots in the Arab nationalist movement, as well as to the significant participation of Jews in the Communist Parties in several Arab countries, principally Iraq and Egypt.
28.
Behar, op. cit, p. 591f, is right in contending `that in so doing such Arab nationalists effectively embraced the Zionist conflation between Judaism and Zionism'. He is right in pointing out that in principle the Arab nationalists could have made a different choice.
29.
In this list, only the most senior positions held by each person are mentioned. `Amir Peretz was succeeded as chairman of the Histadrut - a key political position - by `Ofer `Eini (father born in Iraq, mother in Libya).
30.
By the way, the ancestral Yiddish language and culture of the Ashkenazim were also frowned upon and disparaged by the Zionist leadership.
