| 8/12/04 | JPN: Israel-Palestine
Cease Fire? AIPAC Under Investigation; and A Crucial Mizrahi View of Israel |
www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/about/aboutjvp.html December 8, 2004 JVP’s members extend their wishes for a Happy Chanukah to all of our friends and supporters. May this time bring a renewed commitment from Jews everywhere to justice and peace for everyone. Jewish Voice for Peace needs your support. We are hard at work trying to expand our reach, to create JVP chapters around the country, to escalate our educational and media services like JPN and pushing forward with our Caterpillar Campaign. We can only do all of this with your help. <https://secure.ga3.org/03/donate/nS7aKtJ11ZBYo>Click here to donate now and help keep services like Jewish Peace News coming to you. The views expressed here are those of the editors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Jewish Voice for Peace. Today’s Contents: <>Parties downplay report of Israel-PA agreement on peace deal (Ha’aretz) Egyptian reports say cease-fire deal could serve as basis for broader peace deal <>AIPAC Probe Intensifies (Jewish Times) FBI investigation into AIPAC link to espionage is renewed <>Culture Identity & Borders (Direct e-mail) Interview with a premier Mizrahi writer offers great insight into Mizrahi history and existence in Israel and the Ashkenazi-dominated Jewish world [JPN Commentary: Reports coming out of Egypt have suggested that not only are Israel and the Palestinian Authority close to a cease-fire accord, but that the agreement could even serve as the basis for a final status agreement to end the long conflict. One has to admit, however, that the denials from both sides tend to reaffirm skepticism and a feeling that the Egyptian report is wildly optimistic. On the other hand, a cease-fire agreement does seem possible. Mahmoud Abbas, who is widely assumed to be the next president of the PA, has been involved in talks both in Egypt to restart negotiations with Israel, and back at home getting commitments from militant groups to cease the violent activities. To be sure, after four years of the intifada, it is more in Palestinian interest than ever to move away from violence as a means to advance their cause. Egypt has been working very hard in recent weeks to repair its relationship with Israel and even Syria has renewed its call for peace talks with Israel. Whatever the motivations behind any of these developments, they are all conditions to which workers for justice and peace must respond to quickly and with passion. It is a real opportunity to move the cause of peace forward, if the United States and Israel will take advantage of it. They will only do so if we demand it. Still, even a cease-fire agreement must be watched carefully. In the past, such agreements have been easily torpedoed by violence from one side or the other, inevitably provoking an attack by the other. Whether this has been an Israeli assassination operation or a Palestinian suicide bombing, cease-fires have always been easily thwarted. Part of any serious cease-fire must be a commitment from both sides not to allow such an easy subversion of the agreement. And the US and international community must act forcefully to support such commitments and to pressure both sides to stick to them. Again, that will only happen if we call for it. – MP] Parties downplay report of Israel-PA agreement on peace deal By Haaretz Service and Agencies <>www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/511355.html The United States, Israel and the Palestinians are downplaying an Egyptian report that Israel and the Palestinian Authority have reached an agreement on the principles of final deal. Israel Radio reported Wednesday that a spokesman for the State Department in Washington said that the U.S. has no information on the matter, while Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described the report as “detached from reality.” Meanwhile, Palestinian sources were quoted Tuesday as saying that reports of an Israeli-PA truce agreement were inexact, but gave no further details. Egypt’s official news agency MENA said Tuesday that the sides have agreed in principle to proposals which could serve as the basis of a comprehensive settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. MENA said that significant progress had been made in international efforts to end Israeli-Palestinian violence. But both sides to the conflict termed talk of a deal premature. Quoting unidentified high-level sources, MENA said the steps, including an Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire, had the support of both the U.S. and the European Union. “High-level sources confirmed an important understanding – reaching the point of an agreement in principle – has been completed between Egypt, Israel, the Palestinians and several active international parties, America and Europe, regarding a comprehensive settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian struggle,” MENA said. It said points under discussion included a Palestinian commitment to stop operations against Israel and to control Gaza and the West Bank, while Israel would stop military actions as long as the Palestinian commitment held. “[Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon does not find it necessary to sign a cease-fire agreement until the security and administrative capabilities of the Palestinian Authority are rebuilt gradually,” the report said. The understanding could lead to a “comprehensive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” MENA said. Israel and Palestinians term report premature Israel termed the report “a little premature,” but said it would respond positively if militants ceased attacks. “There are a few correct elements but it’s a little premature to say there’s an agreement,” a senior official in Sharon’s office said. “We will respond positively if on the other side there will be arrangements for a cease-fire, a cessation of hostilities.” “However, it should be understood that whatever arrangement is reached, this is not a substitute for fulfilling the obligations the Palestinians have taken upon themselves under the road map,” the official said. Palestinian officials said the Palestinian Authority and militants were close to an understanding on a cease-fire, but more talks were needed. There was no immediate official comment from Egypt, which has tried to play the role of mediator in previous efforts to ease Israeli-Palestinian violence. There has been a dramatic warming in Israeli-Egyptian relations in recent days, capped by the release on Sunday of Israeli Druze Azzam Azzam after eight years in an Egyptian prison on espionage charges. [JPN Commentary: Back in August, an FBI investigation into a Defense Department official hit the news headlines. Larry Franklin was accused of passing classified materials to Israel through the Israel-advocacy group, AIPAC. AIPAC itself was searched, but the story faded from the news for quite a while. Now, the FBI has searched AIPAC’s office again and has subpoenaed four of its top staff members. Some have speculated that AIPAC is being targeted for its politics more than for its involvement in this espionage affair. This seems unlikely for the FBI. But some reports back in August suggested that the investigation into Franklin and his connection to AIPAC had been prompted by some sectors in the Pentagon who were fed up with the neoconservatives and their allies in AIPAC. Whatever the case, a weakening of AIPAC, as some interviewed in the article below fear, can only help the cause of peace. AIPAC has an almost mythical status as a lobby in Washington, but much of their power is based on the fact that there has been no serious opposition to them. AIPAC uses very heavy-handed tactics to pressure Congress members into full support for even some very gross Israeli human rights violations and into unquestioning financial support for Israel’s occupation. Weakening AIPAC through a criminal investigation would be welcome, but organizing an effective lobby in Washington to oppose them would be far more important. – MP] AIPAC Probe Intensifies Ron Kampeas and Matthew E. Berger <>www.jewishtimes.com/News/4374.stm DECEMBER 07, 2004 A federal prosecutor’s decision to bring an investigation involving the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to a grand jury is, at the least, an unwanted distraction at a critical time for the top Israel lobby – and some worry that it could hamper the organization’s effectiveness. FBI agents searched AIPAC’s headquarters here Wednesday, seizing files associated with two senior staffers who were interviewed in August amid allegations that a classified Pentagon document was leaked and passed on to Israel. The agents also served subpoenas on four other senior staffers to appear before a grand jury later this month. The four were Howard Kohr, the group’s executive director; Richard Fishman, the managing director; Renee Rothstein, the communications director; and Raphael Danziger, the research director. Though AIPAC in past months had sought to portray the investigation as dying down, sources told JTA that federal investigators have interviewed several former AIPAC employees in recent weeks. AIPAC officials deny that any staff member has done anything wrong. “Neither AIPAC nor any member of our staff has broken any law,” AIPAC said in a statement. “We are fully cooperating with the governmental authorities. We believe any court of law or grand jury will conclude that AIPAC employees have always acted legally, properly and appropriately.” But the grand jury deliberations will preoccupy key AIPAC staffers at a time that Israel’s government is seeking administration and congressional support for renewed talks with the Palestinians and ahead of a planned, controversial withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. “It is obviously a very serious matter,” said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a former prosecutor. “It does not necessarily mean there will be indictments or that we know who the targets are, but a grand jury has a great deal of power, they can call witnesses, documents, people who go can’t bring lawyers – it’s usually all very exhausting.” Officials from other American Jewish organizations continued to stand by AIPAC, and expressed outrage over the course of the investigation. “The behavior is very disturbing, that 10 guys raid an organization that has always been willing to cooperate,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, of which AIPAC is a member. “The pattern here has the appearance of being problematic – behavior that has been going on months, if not years.” Supporters of the pro-Israel lobby have suggested that the investigation is a witch hunt led by one or two FBI rogues with a history of harassing Jews and Jewish organizations. Those close to AIPAC vigorously defended its integrity. “I can never remember a moment when the senior team, from Howard Kohr right down the line, weren’t fully cognitive of what was appropriate and dignified,” said Steve Grossman, AIPAC’s president from 1992-’97. “I cannot think of a single moment when I felt that any information being transmitted or discussed was in any inappropriate. They always understood the art of the appropriate.” Because of the secret nature of FBI investigations and grand jury procedures, few people know the focus of the search, and whether AIPAC or the two staffers interviewed in August – Steve Rosen, the director of foreign policy issues, and Keith Weissman, the foreign policy deputy director – are even the targets. AIPAC insiders had been telling people since August that the case seemed to be petering out. Wednesday’s subpoenas and searches upended that notion, and the case is once again front and center for the group. Most of AIPAC’s senior staff and lay leadership dropped their usual activities Wednesday and Thursday and were preoccupied with the new developments. Other former AIPAC employees suggested the group could be under investigation for acting as an agent for Israel. Under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, a foreign agent is any individual or group that works under the direction of a foreign government. AIPAC, however, has always maintained that it represents American supporters of the Jewish state, not Israel itself. If the grand jury probe leads to indictments and convictions of senior AIPAC staffers, the organization could suffer damage, a top Washington lobby watcher said. “If it turns out that AIPAC staffers were involved in illegal activities, it will hurt AIPAC’s reputation on the Hill,” said Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. “It will present a problem in terms of people having to deal with them.” What ensues depends on whether those at the center of any emerging scandal acted as rogues or were part of a pattern, Noble said. “AIPAC is a powerful lobbying group, it does have a certain amount of capital, but that can be used up quickly in a really damaging situation,” Noble said. A former top Justice Department official suggested that going to a grand jury meant the investigation had become adversarial. “You can’t automatically sound the alarm, but more often than not it means that they don’t believe” that those under investigation have been “totally cooperative,” said Bill Mateja, a former U.S. Attorney in Texas who until last month was the top federal corporate fraud official. Less often, Mateja said, a U.S. attorney will refer a matter to a grand jury simply to wrap it up, “crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s.” Mateja said it was significant that Weissman and Rosen were not among those subpoenaed. Levenson said targets of a probe almost never appear before a grand jury in the early stages of the investigation. “Usually the people who are brought in at the initial stages are designated as witnesses, rather than targets,” she said. “You work from the outside in. The targets are the people in the middle of the bull’s-eye.” When investigators first arrived at AIPAC’s offices in August, seizing computer files and interviewing Rosen and Weissman, many suggested that AIPAC was secondary to an investigation into Larry Franklin, a Pentagon employee suspected of passing the group classified documents on Iran. However, insiders say the investigation has appeared to be moving away from Franklin and toward Rosen and AIPAC. Levenson said the fact that a grand jury has been convened should serve as a warning bell. Media reports have said AIPAC has been the target of a government investigation for more than two years, and that senior administration officials were made aware of it before President Bush spoke to AIPAC in May. AIPAC officials confirm that Wednesday’s activities focused on Rosen and Weissman. A spokesman for the attorney representing Rosen and Weissman, who remain active employees at AIPAC, had no comment on the investigation, and an attorney for AIPAC did not return request for comment. An FBI official confirmed the search but had no further comment, and a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office also would not comment. Several people said they were surprised that Fishman and Rothstein were subpoenaed. Fishman predominantly is involved in management and fund raising, and Rothstein is best known for coordinating AIPAC’s policy conferences. Steve Pomerantz, a former FBI investigator who consults for Jewish organizations, said the nature of the subpoenas suggests that FBI investigators know what they’re looking for. “This is not a fishing expedition,” he said. “It’s clear to me they have some specific information which is leading them in a specific direction.” A grand jury investigation would allow the U.S. Attorney’s Office to compel witnesses to answer questions, without a lawyer present and on the record. Witnesses could be offered immunity from prosecution if they believe their answers would incriminate them, Pomerantz said. The AIPAC investigation had seemed to be dormant for months, with some speculating that it was put on hold because of the presidential election. In the meantime, AIPAC had garnered strong support from lawmakers and American Jewish leaders, even using the investigation in its fund-raising drive. Condoleezza Rice, President Bush’s national security adviser and nominee for secretary of state, spoke to AIPAC’s national summit in Florida in October. Some Jewish organizational officials have raised concerns in the past about David Szady, the senior FBI counterintelligence official overseeing the probe, and whether he targeted Jews inside the agency. Pomerantz said he had never seen anything to suggest that Szady is anti-Semitic. In any case, he said, the idea that an individual could hijack the nation’s premier law enforcement agency for a personal agenda was far-fetched. “The FBI is not suicidal,” he said. “They are not taking on AIPAC lightly or without full knowledge that this is a powerful organization seen positively by this administration.” [JPN Commentary: The interview below has appeared in the Levantine Cultural Center’s newsletter. Founded in Los Angeles in the summer of 2001 by four Middle Eastern Americans, Levantine Cultural Center (<>www.levantinecenter.org) is a pan-cultural project that bridges new arts, ideas and cultures of the Mediterranean and Middle East, from the historical Al-Andalus (southern Spain and North Africa) in the west to Jerusalem, Baghdad and Tehran further east. The work of contemporary artists in diaspora is a mainstay of the center’s activities and many events include across-section of perspectives, whether Palestinian/Israeli, Armenian/Turkish, or artists from a single country of diverse ethnic or religious heritage. Levantine Cultural Center is supported by its members and event programs. Samia Dodin, A Palestinian American, Interviews Israeli Poet and Author Sami Shalom Chetrit on Israel and Arab Jewish Identity Samia Dodin was born in a village near Hebron, spent much of her childhood and adolescence in Amman, Jordan, and came to the States to study literature and accounting when she was 18. Sami Shalom Chetrit was born in 1960 in Morocco and relocated to Israel with his Arab-Jewish family in 1963. He grew up in an immigrant working class neighborhood in the port city of Ashdod. He writes and publishes poetry, political essays and scholarly articles in many journals and papers. He is an activist for justice and peace in Israel-Palestine. In 1993 Chetrit was among the founders of Kedma – the alternative educational organization for equality in education in Israel, and served as the school principal of Kedma high school in southern Tel-Aviv. In 1996 he was among the founders of the social movement Hakeshet Hademocratit Hamizrahit (The Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition), which has been struggling for economic and social justice in Israel. In 2001 he finished his Ph.D. study on the Mizrahi struggle in Israel. It appeared as a book in Hebrew, by Am-Oved, in December 2003. In 2003 Chetrit wrote and co-produced and directed with Eli Hamo the documentary film “The Black Panthers (in Israel) Speak”. Today, he teaches critical studies and is working on new studies and publications. Chetrit is the editor of the alternative web portal: Kedma – Middle Eastern Gate to Israel. He has taught at the Department of Near Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley, and is a Visiting Research Associate at UCLA. The interview brings up some of the themes which have been central to progressive Mizrahi* analysis and struggle. Among them: the way Zionism – an Eastern European movement – used Mizrahi Jews for its own ends; the erasure/silencing of Mizrahi Jews’ history and culture; the pervasive discrimination, economic and otherwise… and how the conflict with the Palestinians is manipulated to put off any serious attention to the problems within. *Mizrahi Jews are Jews of Middle Eastern or North African descent. – RG] Culture Identity & Borders Edited by Jordan Elgrably <>www.levantinecenter.org/pages/chetrit_dodin_interview.html SAMIA DODIN: When did you first experience racism/oppression in Israel as a Sephardic Jew? Sami: As a kid, I didn’t feel anything until later on, because we grew up in a slum, an immigrant neighborhood. We didn’t see other Jews, other Israelis. There was no TV until ‘68, so we had no idea what was going on. In school we were taught only the history of European Jews. Slowly my father started talking and I listened and objected to most of what he had to say, because he was very critical. The first time maybe was when the Black Panthers in Israel in 1971 started organizing and speaking out, and there was TV already, but I didn’t know what was going on. I heard my father talking; I was 11 years old and then I understood there was really something, there was another life outside of our neighborhood in Ashdod. Samia: But did you in a really personal, visceral way encounter that kind of discrimination or racism, such as going for a job, or? Sami: No, nobody will tell you we don’t like you because you are dark, but you can feel it. Samia: Did you ever feel that you were denied access to housing, education, or in dating, was there any sense of discrimination? Sami: When I was younger, as I said, it was difficult to put your finger on social discrimination. The cultures are very separate, very segregated, like blacks and whites here. The way they settled the Arab Jews when they brought them in the ‘50s was to settle them separately from the Ashkenazim. They built new towns in the desert, in the Galilee; they put us in Palestinian neighborhoods in the big cities-until it became valuable real estate, and then they took Arab Jews out and relocated them elsewhere. So we didn’t mix really, maybe in the army. It’s not the personal experience of discrimination. It’s only when you go back you realize it. For example I go back to school, I can tell you what I’ve been taught, in high school. As I said a moment ago, the history of Arab Jews wasn’t even mentioned in the history textbooks. Samia: When in Israel did they begin teaching Mizrahi, Arab Jewish history? Sami: Never, they never started. They teach what they call Zionist waves of immigration; they teach about European waves of immigration, not about the Jews who came from Arab/Muslim lands, or if they are mentioned at all, it amounts to only a few pages in textbooks that contain hundreds of pages. There is some mention of only the very last years of Jewish communities in Arab countries, which they refer to as the destruction or eradication years. There is a sense that this was a positive development, that these communities were leaving behind their history of oppression to come to Israel. So we learned through the educational system really nothing but the history of European Jews, anti-Semitism in Europe, persecution. Samia: Where are the voices within Israel, whether artists or politicians, who challenge the status quo, who are raising the consciousness about this problem of Arab Jewish identity? Sami: We do it all the time, but the establishment doesn’t care. You know of course what the Zionist position is toward Palestinians, and how stubborn it is, and how they won’t change anything; it’s exactly the same position toward Arab Jews. They’ll publish some nice poems about “my grandfather in Baghdad,” but nothing political or controversial. It’s nice, nostalgic Sephardic kitsch, nothing to rock the boat. Samia: Cosmetic stuff. Is there a core group of people whose vision of Israel and Zionism is so bound up with European values and identity that they don’t want to alter that in any way? Sami: They don’t want Jewish identity to have anything to do with Arab identity, with the Arab world or Arab history or Muslim history or Muslim culture, because that is the enemy, that is the inferior culture. You’re talking about the ultimate enemy. That’s why the establishment is so adamant about erasing that part of our identity. Samia: What percentage of the Israeli Jewish population is Middle Eastern in origin, and am I confusing Sephardic with Mizrahi? Sami: They are the same population, but Mizrahi is a political term, which we have used to reflect a taking back of the eastern or Middle Eastern part of our identities. This population is 50% of Israelis, or a little more. Samia: So how can a country, can a culture, survive, when they’re in denial about half their population? Sami: Because by and large that population that is Sephardic, Mizrahi, they cooperate. Most of us cooperate. Samia: So the non-European Jewish population tends to take on this idea of the Israeli identity, agreeing to negate what is Arab or Middle Eastern about themselves? Sami: Yes. They are very patriotic, and they’re happy with that, or they believe they’re happy-because often they’re not. The media cooperates. Before the Black Panthers, in the 1970s and 1980s, people were sometimes furious, just as you could go to any black ghetto in this country and every kid could tell you about a history of oppression. But after the Black Panthers got attention, the establishment understood that this Arab Jewish identity movement was dangerous, and so they started taking measures. For example, the government invested money in researching the folklore-nothing political-of these communities. At that time TV was entirely government run, and you would start to see faces of Mizrahim. Today, with commercial television, it’s very big; since the early ‘90s you’ve got cable TV and there are dozens of channels and you see Mizrahim everywhere-singers, dancers, comedians, actors, but no one serious or influential. This is part of Israeli entertainment, and hasn’t had any impact on national Israeli identity, which remains European to its core. There are many radio channels in Israel today that play only Mizrahi, Middle Eastern music, and this seems to pacify people for the most part. They can hear and see themselves and therefore they feel reflected and included in that way. Samia: Do you see many Mizrahi academics or talking heads on TV talk shows, giving their views? Sami: No, it’s very rare. I mean they will ask someone like me to come, to be the clown. They’re all Ashkenazi and they have one of us on the show to be the comic foil, really. I learned that trick a long time ago. They need someone to look stupid, because everybody is in consensus. And they sometimes will have another Mizrahi guest who is very Zionist and supports the status quo, while you represent the radical view and get boos from the audience. I learned how to play them. I think I’ve been on almost every talk show, and what I do is use and quote only Ashkenazi sources, and only data from official Israeli sources. That is how I wrote my most recent book, Mizrahi Struggle in Israel, 1948-2003 (Am Oved 2004), which has 1,000 footnotes and references, 90% of them Ashkenazi sources, Ben Gurion and others, and they can’t argue. Sometimes you’ll hear an outraged response, and I’ll say, “I’m just quoting Ben GurionïΔ¿” What they want is that you should get angry and go crazy. I’ve had friends who called me after a show and said, “How can you be so calm? Are you nuts? Do you take drugs or what? I would have just killed the guy.” And that’s what they want you to do, be the crazy Moroccan Jew. Samia: So why isn’t there any kind of militant component or struggle to re-enforce Mizrahi identity and force the government to come to terms with it? Sami: Well, to listen to Israeli politicians today, they will tell you they made mistakes in the past, but they’ve fixed all these social problems and inequalities and you won’t see anyone complaining. Samia: Beyond the curriculum, what other examples of repression does one see? Sami: Again, there is a striking similarity between Mizrahi history in Israel and the history of blacks in this country. Blacks were so-called “liberated” from the oppression of social discrimination with new civil rights, and then often found themselves in poor communities where there were few opportunities for advancement, thus the cycle of poverty was hard to break. The infrastructure in both cases has been the trap. Mizrahim were brought from Arab/Muslim lands and settled in those communities in the desert, in border towns, or in remote areas, often on confiscated Palestinian land, and usually they were confronted by Palestinians because they were on the borders. Meanwhile, 70% of the Ashkenazim who arrived in the ‘50s were settled in Tel Aviv, so later when their children inherited property in Tel Aviv, an apartment or a house might be valued at $300,000 while a property in a Mizrahi community might be valued at $30,000. Economically, the third generation of Ashkenazim is much stronger than the first generation; conversely, the third generation of Mizrahim is much weaker than the first generation of Mizrahim. Today their communities are all collapsing. I have for example a cousin in a town in the remote Negev, who once owned a restaurant and a gas station, because people used to spend time there, on their way to Eilat or the Dead Sea. Tourist buses would pass through and people spent money in his town. But since the last Intifada, everything started to shut down, because no one was on the road anymore. He’s 50 years old and he and his kids just moved in with his mother. I hear stories like this every week from my family and you can just multiply these stories across the Mizrahi population. Everything is collapsing. The second generation of Mizrahim is collapsing, and the third generation is lost. They don’t know what to do and most of them have no higher education. Samia: Is there any possibility at all that those people would turn around and ally with the Palestinians, because of the social oppression they have in common? Sami: That’s what we hope, all the time, me and a handful of others-there are perhaps one to two thousand progressives in Israel who are working on these issues. That’s why I always vote only for Arab political parties; I never vote for Jews. Samia: You’re not a typical Israeli, then? Sami: No, not at all, neither a typical Israeli nor a typical Mizrahi. Of course not. To answer your question, Samia: It’s going to take a lot more oppression before this underclass of Mizrahi Israelis rise up and take matters into their own hands. The first thing is losing their loyalty to the regime, and rejecting their token status. What’s ironic, though, is that after 20 years of hard work by Mizrahi activists, they are all proud today of their Mizrahi identity and their cultural roots; yet at the same time, the government, through the education system, after 50 years of indoctrination, has whitewashed their Arab or Persian or other Middle Eastern identities right out of them. When you learn that Jewish history is European Jewish history and that the Arab culture is inferior or bad and there’s nothing to learn from the Arabs, and there’s nothing in Jewish history where you see a positive benefit from Arab/Muslim experience, and the strident idea is that, “Thank God, we got you all out of there,” there is very little left for Mizrahim to experience something positive from their Arab/Muslim historical roots, even though we are talking about a 1,000 years or more that Jews had important communities in Morocco or Iraq or Egypt or Iran. You grow up and you know that to be an Israeli is not to be an Arab, because an Arab is the enemy. It’s not only what they teach you, it’s the way they treat Arabs. You look at the Arab and actually you’re looking the mirror, and
you’ve been taught that the reflection in the mirror is actually
bad, negative, low, enemy, so you start spitting in the mirror. It’s
hard to spit in the mirror everyday, because you go crazy. It’s
hard to live with self-hatred, you get sick, so what do you do? You channel
everything to the Arab? It’s very simple social psychology. That
is how we all became Arab haters, because if we don’t hate them,
we’re going to hate ourselves. That’s the trap, it’s
why they keep the Occupation going and why they’ll never end the
Occupation, unless it comes to an end by force majeure or by outside
forces-never because the Israeli establishment will voluntarily cede
the territories. They won’t back down because if they do, they
will lose their Ashkenazi, Zionist hegemony-I say that because today,
many Mizrahim are Zionist you know. When I say Ashkenazi Zionist, that
includes many Mizrahi Jews. Once they give up the territories and let
the Palestinians get on with their lives, and deal with the whole issue
of the refugees, and Jerusalem, and will have a generation of a relatively I once did a study and found that each time protest begins to build momentum, there is a war that breaks out or there is some turmoil in the territories, and so the country’s attention turns away from its social problems, from everything we’ve been talking about. Samia: It sounds very Orwellian, but that’s what all governments do, even here. Why did the Ashkenazi Zionists want to bring all the Arab Jews into Palestine/Israel? Sami: It’s simple math: They couldn’t declare a Jewish state without a [demographic] majority. There were only about 600,000 Jews in Palestine. There were 1.5 million Arab Palestinians. Eastern European Jews couldn’t leave, American Jews didn’t want to come, so Zionists deferred to about one million Jews in Arab/Muslim lands, and expelled half of the Palestinians. Jewish Peace News Editors: Jewish Peace News needs your support. Your ga3.org/ct/odaKtJ11kaKv/ donation to Jewish Voice for Peace is the only way that JVP can continue its important work, including this news service. |
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