The sight of Paul Kessler, an American Jewish citizen, lying on the sidewalk in Los Angeles after a pro-Palestinian protester hit him in the head with a megaphone did not shock the crowds of demonstrators. They were not moved by anyone who went out into the street with an Israeli flag, and continued to call for the liberation of Palestine even when he was loaded bleeding into an ambulance. He later died of his wounds. The same cruel indifference to Israel and the Jews also appeared in the reactions to the massacre on 7 October: from the jubilation among the Gaza masses, some of whom took an active part in it, to the explicit calls for the elimination of the State of Israel, heard in the early days of demonstrations around the world.
The Jews' possession of the Land of Israel is found in the Book of Books, and Jewish history is documented in every archaeological excavation of the land. In Mandatory Palestine, Jews aspired to self-determination as part of the rise of national movements. So why is the right of Jews to a state in Israeli territory easily undermined? Unlike the inalienable right of the Germans, Americans or the British to their land? At the very least, we contributed to this, by creating an incomplete historical narrative that dominates the world today.
The story we learned in school dealt with the Enlightenment and Enlightenment, Herzl and the First Zionist Congress, the thoughts and perceptions that were woven in Europe, the Jews who fled from Europe to the Land of Israel with the intensification of anti-Semitism. But in the Land of Israel and the Middle East, there has been a continuum of Jews throughout history. There is innumerable evidence of Jewish life in the region as early as the first centuries CE. With the conquests of Islam, most of them lived under the Ottoman Empire, purchased tens of thousands of dunams, established Jewish settlements in Safed, Jerusalem, Tiberias, Tel Aviv and even Gaza. They lived there during the British Mandate and remained after it, writing piyyutim, conducting international trade and extensive relations with Jews in other countries.
These stories were omitted from history in order to promote a secular, limited, monolithic Zionist narrative of pioneering and growing out of thin air. The historical story of Jews in Arab and Muslim countries was also excluded from the central narrative because it did not fit the image of Israel as a Western state. The life experience of Jews living in Muslim countries was complex. It had good neighborly relations and love, but also an inherent inferiority and violence.
With the rise of Arab nationalism, the Jews of Arab and Islamic countries, which were an inseparable part of the Arab cultural space, became an enemy bearing the crimes of the West. But it was clear to the Jews in these countries who they were: Jews. Not Arabs - but not Westerners either. Their strong hold on Jewish identity vis-à-vis the Middle East stemmed from the need to be separate, precisely because of living in a shared cultural space. But in Israel it was interpreted as primitive racism, and they were seen as the enemy of cosmopolitanism or universalism.
The institutional disregard for the pogroms experienced by Jews in Muslim countries also erased a story of Nazi-Muslim persecution. The Arab nations never bore responsibility for their part in the Nazi movement – like the Holocaust of Libyan Jewry, which also disappeared from the historical story in Israel.
The story we learned in school dealt with the Enlightenment and Enlightenment, Herzl and the First Zionist Congress, the thoughts and perceptions that were woven in Europe, the Jews who fled from Europe to the Land of Israel with the intensification of anti-Semitism. But in the Land of Israel and the Middle East, there has been a continuum of Jews throughout history
But even before that, the Arab states did not bear responsibility for the systematic persecution of Jews and for massacres and looting, such as the Farhud in Iraq, the pogroms of Aden, Aleppo, Tripoli and other pogroms that took place over the years. They all bore a similar character to the atrocities that took place here on 7 October. We didn't want to hear the stories of the adults about the Arab nationalism they experienced. They seemed dark and extreme to us. And here, we find ourselves with the same historical dilemmas that preoccupied them.
The Zionist movement's strong belief that the source of Israel's legitimacy is its resemblance to the West has cast a shadow over entire parts of our identity. With our own hands, we interrupted the historical Jewish continuum, emphasized certain sides and hid others. And so we became, in our own eyes and in the eyes of the world, a foreign plant, a white colonial state. But the Jews from Arab countries are the majority in Israel today, and they – we, have always been here. We are natives of this place.
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