Our Wednesday News Analysis | How Ties Between Mizrahi Jews and Arabs Were Ruined – With Help From Ashkenazi Israelis

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-10-31/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/how-ties-between-mizrahi-jews-and-arabs-were-ruined-with-help-from-ashkenazi-israelis/00000184-2929-dd56-adc7-6b2fb3e40000

By Gideon Levy
Published October 31, 2022

Scholar Hillel Cohen embarks on a journey to the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, offering in his new book a sharp indictment of the country's racist elites

There is a story that apparently evaded the memory of the author of this important new book, about relations between Mizrahi Jews and Arabs since the advent of Zionism.

About the time I was reading “Haters: A Love Story” by Prof. Hillel Cohen, they were showing on TV the beautiful and also sad documentary “Savoy” by Israeli filmmaker Zohar Wagner, about the act of terror that took place in the Tel Aviv hotel by that name in 1975.

The movie’s heroine is Kochava Levi, a Mizrahi woman who was among the hostages taken by members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization; the incident ended in the deaths of 11 Israelis and seven of the eight perpetrators. Levi bravely conducted the negotiations with the kidnappers, and even praised them briefly after they had been killed by elite Israeli forces, citing their relatively good treatment of their victims.

When the Ashkenazim would embark on murderous acts of revenge and reprisal against Arabs, no one classified them according to their ethnic origin.

Levi’s story is the story of this book by Cohen – a scholar of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies – in a nutshell. Of how a woman of Mizrahi origins (i.e., of Middle Eastern or North African descent) knew how to talk with the kidnappers in their own language thanks to her own upbringing and appealed to their hearts by drawing on her own family background in an Arab country, but whose character was later intentionally slandered and blackened, rendering her virtually forgotten and unseen.

Had she been a male Ashkenazi fighter, she would likely have gained global fame. But Levi was a woman of Kurdish-Yemenite descent, and it was therefore decreed that her fate would be one of besmirchment – some people even called her a prostitute – and of being wiped clean from the collective memory...

Read more: How Ties Between Mizrahi Jews and Arabs Were Ruined – With Help From Ashkenazi Israelis

MAKING THE DECISION TO LEAVE GAZA IS HARDER THAN SOME WOULD THINK

Source: Mondoweiss
https://mondoweiss.net/2022/10/making-the-decision-to-leave-gaza-is-harder-than-some-would-think/

By RANA SHUBAIR
Published October 23, 2022

Many of Gaza's youth decide to leave the open-air prison and many of those who leave end up alienated or refugees. Sometimes to realize the value of your homeland, you have to leave it.

Survival is a word that has become attached to us Palestinians who live in the besieged Gaza Strip. In the last thirteen years alone, we’ve survived five major Israeli aggressions and other smaller-scale attacks.

Just after the last Israeli attack, which ended August 7, 2022 at around midnight, many of the people here posted on their social media statuses: “Good morning world. We’re alive. A new lease on life to accomplish our dreams.”

Although physically surviving is a blessing, it doesn’t mean that we’re OK from within. The heavy dosage of military attacks we’ve had to endure, and life under a tight blockade, is itself mentally taxing. People rarely have the luxury to find ways to deal with these circumstances. It turns into a burden, wrecking us from within.

The burden of surviving

We’re the ones expecting to carry the torch, to uphold the struggle, to remain steadfast in the face of everything, to carry the legacy of every martyr and the responsibility to obtain justice. At many times, this constant battle and the everyday fight to live an ordinary life becomes too heavy. Sometimes it feels enough of a feat to just keep on surviving.

Among all this anarchy, I’ve observed how my people respond to the prodigiously difficult circumstances they inhabit, asking myself how they do it — how do they recover after every attack? How do they maintain their sanity amidst the daily electricity cuts, the restrictions on travel, the denial of access to proper medical care, the unemployment, the lack of a horizon...

Read more: Making the decision to leave Gaza is harder than some would think

PALESTINIAN PARTIES MUST ABANDON ISRAEL’S DEMOCRACY CHARADE

Source: Arabnews
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2191306#.Y2AEWTM93sc.twitter

By RAMZY BAROUD
Published October 31, 2022

Regardless of the outcome of Tuesday’s Israeli elections, the Palestinian parties will not reap meaningful political benefits, even if they collectively achieve their highest ever representation. The reason for this is not down to the parties themselves, but Israel's skewed political system, which is predicated on racism and the marginalization of non-Jews.

Israel was established on a problematic premise of being the homeland of all Jews, everywhere — not of Palestine’s own native inhabitants — and on a bloody foundation; that of the Nakba, the destruction of historic Palestine and the expulsion of its people.

Such beginnings were hardly conducive to the establishment of a real democracy. And not only did Israel’s discriminatory attitude persist throughout the years, it actually worsened, especially as the Palestinian population rose disproportionately compared to the Jewish population.

The unfortunate reality is that some Palestinian parties have participated in Israeli elections since 1949, some independently and others under the ruling Mapai party umbrella. They did so despite Palestinian communities in Israel being ruled by a military government until 1966 and practically governed, until this day, by the unlawful “Defense (Emergency) Regulations.” This participation has constantly been touted by Israel and its supporters as proof of the state’s democratic nature.

This claim alone has served as the backbone of Israeli hasbara throughout the decades. Though often unwittingly, Palestinian political parties in Israel have provided the fodder for such propaganda, making it difficult for the Palestinian people to argue that the Israeli political system is fundamentally flawed and racist.

Palestinian citizens have always debated among themselves the pros and cons of taking part in Israeli elections. Some understand that their participation validates the Zionist ideology and Israeli apartheid, while others argue that refraining from participating in the political process denies Palestinians the opportunity to change the system from within...

Read more: Palestinian parties must abandon Israel’s democracy charade