The invention of the Mizrahim

Journal of Palestine Studies

Volumn 29, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 5-20

  Shohat, Ella ^a  

^a CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ISRAEL; JEW; PALESTINE; SOCIAL STATUS;

ETHNICITY; NATIONAL IDENTITY; NATIONALISM; RELIGION;

ISRAEL;

EID: 0033304976     PISSN: 0377919X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2676427     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. Uzi Mahnaimi and Marie Colvin, "Israel Planning Ethnic Bomb as Saddam Caves In," Sunday Times, 15 November 1998.
2. On this concept of a relational approach to identity, see Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London: Routledge, 1994).
3. See Ella Shohat, Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (Austin: University of Texas, 1989); and Ella Shohat, "Columbus, Palestine and Arab Jews: Toward a Relational Approach to Community Identity," in Cultural Identity and the Gravity of History: On the Work of Edward Said, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, Benita Parry, and Judith Squires (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1997).
4. See Ella Shohat, Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (Austin: University of Texas, 1989); and Ella Shohat, "Columbus, Palestine and Arab Jews: Toward a Relational Approach to Community Identity," in Cultural Identity and the Gravity of History: On the Work of Edward Said, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, Benita Parry, and Judith Squires (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1997).
5. For more on the links between European capitalism and the Zionist colonization of Palestine, see Maxime Rodinson, Israel: A Colonial Settler State? trans. David Thorstand (New York: Monad Press, 1973).
6. While Iraqi Jews, for example, had to give up their Iraqi passports to move to Israel, the passports of Moroccan Jews "disappeared" and were recently "discovered" in the state archives.
7. Such attacks were made, for example, on Shimon Ballas after the publication of his novel, Vehu Aher [And he is an other] (Tel Aviv: Zmora-Bitan, 1991), as well as on myself after the publication in Hebrew of my Israeli Cinema (Tel Aviv: Breirot, 1991).
8. Such attacks were made, for example, on Shimon Ballas after the publication of his novel, Vehu Aher [And he is an other] (Tel Aviv: Zmora-Bitan, 1991), as well as on myself after the publication in Hebrew of my Israeli Cinema (Tel Aviv: Breirot, 1991).
9. For a report on this controversy, see the editorial, "Lubnan Makhatir al-Tatbi' am 'Uqdat al-Yahud?" [Lebanon: The dangers of normalization or the Jewish complex?]; Antwan Gharib, "al-'Aqida al-Yahudiyya Tatadamman al-Istila' 'ala 'Ardina" [The Jewish creed includes the takeover of our land]; Elias Khoury, "al-Suhyuniyya 'Unsuriyya wa Kadhalika al-Hamla 'Alayna" [Zionism is racist and so is the attack on us] in al-Wasat, no. 326 (27 April 1998).
10. For a report on this controversy, see the editorial, "Lubnan Makhatir al-Tatbi' am 'Uqdat al-Yahud?" [Lebanon: The dangers of normalization or the Jewish complex?]; Antwan Gharib, "al-'Aqida al-Yahudiyya Tatadamman al-Istila' 'ala 'Ardina" [The Jewish creed includes the takeover of our land]; Elias Khoury, "al-Suhyuniyya 'Unsuriyya wa Kadhalika al-Hamla 'Alayna" [Zionism is racist and so is the attack on us] in al-Wasat, no. 326 (27 April 1998).
11. For a report on this controversy, see the editorial, "Lubnan Makhatir al-Tatbi' am 'Uqdat al-Yahud?" [Lebanon: The dangers of normalization or the Jewish complex?]; Antwan Gharib, "al-'Aqida al-Yahudiyya Tatadamman al-Istila' 'ala 'Ardina" [The Jewish creed includes the takeover of our land]; Elias Khoury, "al-Suhyuniyya 'Unsuriyya wa Kadhalika al-Hamla 'Alayna" [Zionism is racist and so is the attack on us] in al-Wasat, no. 326 (27 April 1998).
12. I hasten to add that I am in no way equating Arab and Zionist nationalism. While historically Arab nationalism was framed in the Middle East/North Africa as pan of a third world anticolonial struggle, Zionism, as I have argued elsewhere, was first formulated within Europe, within a colonial context, resulting in a complex amalgam of colonial practice and liberatory desires, carried out not in relation to the European Christian oppressors of Jews but rather, in a displaced logic, on Palestinian land and against Palestinian people.
13. For Zionist arguments in favor of bringing "Jews in the form of Arabs" to strengthen the hold on Palestine, see, for example, Ya'acov Zrubnvel, Alei-Haim [Leaves of life] (Tel Aviv: Y. L Peretz Library Publication, 1960), and Arthur Ruppin, Pirkei Hayai [Chapters of my life] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1968).
14. For Zionist arguments in favor of bringing "Jews in the form of Arabs" to strengthen the hold on Palestine, see, for example, Ya'acov Zrubnvel, Alei-Haim [Leaves of life] (Tel Aviv: Y. L Peretz Library Publication, 1960), and Arthur Ruppin, Pirkei Hayai [Chapters of my life] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1968).
15. Ya'acov Tehon from the Eretz Israel Office was one of the first Zionists to propose, in 1908, the importation of Eastern Jews to "replace" the Arab agricultural workers. And Shmuel Yavne'eli, who called for an Eastern Jewish solution for the "problem of the Arab workers," wrote in Hapoel Ha Tzair newspaper in 1910 that "The Yemenite of today still exist at the same backward level as the fellahin. . . . They can take the place of the Arabs." Yavne'eli engineered the immigration of more than 10,000 Yemenite Jews before World War I. See his memoir, Masu'Le Teiman [Journey to Yemen] (Tel Aviv: 'Ayanot, 1963).
16. Both Zionist and anti-Zionist historiography fail to make the links between the Zionist settlement of Palestine and the Mizrahi question. I began to address this connection in my essay, "Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victimsv [Social Text, nos. 19-20 (Fall 1988), pp. 1-35, which was republished in Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives, ed. Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997)]. See especially the section: "'Hebrew Work': Myth and Reality."
17. Both Zionist and anti-Zionist historiography fail to make the links between the Zionist settlement of Palestine and the Mizrahi question. I began to address this connection in my essay, "Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victimsv [Social Text, nos. 19-20 (Fall 1988), pp. 1-35, which was republished in Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives, ed. Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997)]. See especially the section: "'Hebrew Work': Myth and Reality."
18. Both Zionist and anti-Zionist historiography fail to make the links between the Zionist settlement of Palestine and the Mizrahi question. I began to address this connection in my essay, "Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victimsv [Social Text, nos. 19-20 (Fall 1988), pp. 1-35, which was republished in Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives, ed. Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997)]. See especially the section: "'Hebrew Work': Myth and Reality."
19. See Haolam Haze, 20 April 1966; Black Panther Magazine, 9 November 1972; Abbas Shiblak, The Lure of Zion (London: Al Saqi Press, 1986); and G. N. Giladi, Discord in Zion (London: Scorpion, 1990).
20. See Haolam Haze, 20 April 1966; Black Panther Magazine, 9 November 1972; Abbas Shiblak, The Lure of Zion (London: Al Saqi Press, 1986); and G. N. Giladi, Discord in Zion (London: Scorpion, 1990).
21. See Haolam Haze, 20 April 1966; Black Panther Magazine, 9 November 1972; Abbas Shiblak, The Lure of Zion (London: Al Saqi Press, 1986); and G. N. Giladi, Discord in Zion (London: Scorpion, 1990).
22. See Haolam Haze, 20 April 1966; Black Panther Magazine, 9 November 1972; Abbas Shiblak, The Lure of Zion (London: Al Saqi Press, 1986); and G. N. Giladi, Discord in Zion (London: Scorpion, 1990).
23. A number of Arab Jewish Zionist activists came to lament that they ever set foot in Israel. Na'im Giladi, a former Zionist activist in Iraq, for example, has become an anti-Zionist activist.
24. Yehoshua Porat, The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement 1919-1929 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1976), p. 49.
25. See Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1992).
26. The phrase "imagined communities" is borrowed from Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections of the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).
27. For an account of travel in the region, from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, see Amitav Ghosh, In an Antique Land (New York: Knopf, 1992).
28. For writing that tries to perform this kind of linkage, see Shohat's "Sephardim in Israel"; Israeli Cinema; "Taboo Memories, Diasporic Visions," in Hybrid Performance, ed. May Joseph and Jennifer Fink (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999); Joseph Massad, "Zionism's Internal Others: Israel and the Oriental Jews," Journal of Palestine Studies 25, no. 4 (Summer 1996), pp. 53-68; and News From Within 13, no. 1 (January 1997), which is a special issue on Mizrahim and Zionism, with articles by Shiko Behar, Zvi Ben-Dor, and Sami Shalom Chetrit (published by the Alternative Information Center, Jerusalem/ Bethlehem).
29. For writing that tries to perform this kind of linkage, see Shohat's "Sephardim in Israel"; Israeli Cinema; "Taboo Memories, Diasporic Visions," in Hybrid Performance, ed. May Joseph and Jennifer Fink (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999); Joseph Massad, "Zionism's Internal Others: Israel and the Oriental Jews," Journal of Palestine Studies 25, no. 4 (Summer 1996), pp. 53-68; and News From Within 13, no. 1 (January 1997), which is a special issue on Mizrahim and Zionism, with articles by Shiko Behar, Zvi Ben-Dor, and Sami Shalom Chetrit (published by the Alternative Information Center, Jerusalem/ Bethlehem).
30. For writing that tries to perform this kind of linkage, see Shohat's "Sephardim in Israel"; Israeli Cinema; "Taboo Memories, Diasporic Visions," in Hybrid Performance, ed. May Joseph and Jennifer Fink (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999); Joseph Massad, "Zionism's Internal Others: Israel and the Oriental Jews," Journal of Palestine Studies 25, no. 4 (Summer 1996), pp. 53-68; and News From Within 13, no. 1 (January 1997), which is a special issue on Mizrahim and Zionism, with articles by Shiko Behar, Zvi Ben-Dor, and Sami Shalom Chetrit (published by the Alternative Information Center, Jerusalem/ Bethlehem).
31. For writing that tries to perform this kind of linkage, see Shohat's "Sephardim in Israel"; Israeli Cinema; "Taboo Memories, Diasporic Visions," in Hybrid Performance, ed. May Joseph and Jennifer Fink (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999); Joseph Massad, "Zionism's Internal Others: Israel and the Oriental Jews," Journal of Palestine Studies 25, no. 4 (Summer 1996), pp. 53-68; and News From Within 13, no. 1 (January 1997), which is a special issue on Mizrahim and Zionism, with articles by Shiko Behar, Zvi Ben-Dor, and Sami Shalom Chetrit (published by the Alternative Information Center, Jerusalem/ Bethlehem).