The pro-Palestine blogosphere has been abuzz with the deletion of an article on Zionism by Columbia University professor Joseph Massad from the Al-Jazeera website (you can read the Massad article here). What is interesting about the article is that it – as is usual – identifies Jews as Ashkenazim only.
For all that Massad has relationships with Mizrahi Jews, his thinking remains monocausal and racist. Jews never lived in the Middle East and all discussion of Jewish identity and Zionism must be tied exclusively to Europe.
Now there is no question that this is very much what the Ashkenazi Jews have demanded. They have usurped Jewish identity for themselves and made Jewish nationalism a matter of European provenance. The details of this discussion then become very contentious given the deep ambivalence and outright confusion of European Christian and Jewish identity and how that plays into Zionism as an exclusionary form of Jewish identity which seeks to isolate Jews from the Gentile world.
It is this view of Jewish identity that creates a bizarre linkage to Anti-Semites.
And yet the invisible Arab Jews with their roots in the ancient Near East, Medieval Iberia, and the polyglot Ottoman Empire do not match this Eurocentric pattern. Eliminated from Zionist history, the despised Sephardim are equally absent from pro-Palestinian discourse where their claims to Middle Eastern nativity would potentially serve to upset the neat categories that have been established by the Zionists.
It is therefore ironic that Massad, in seeking to counter Zionism, affirms its basic dogma that Jews are Europeans and not Middle Easterners.
The contentious, ugly, and hateful battle between pro-Israel and anti-Israel forces is thus underscored by a rejection of Arab Jewish history and identity. Sephardim have no allies in this battle and those Sephardim who remain convinced that they are a part of this discussion are seriously mistaken.
A perfect example of how all this works came to my in-box a few hours after I first wrote this comment with Lyn Julius’ article “Throw Away That Rusty Key” for Open Zion. What we see in all of Lyn Julius’ articles is a deeply devoted commitment to Zionism. Her advocacy marks Arab Jews as victims and supports the idea that the Jews of Middle East are indeed just like the Palestinians; homeless refugees who were oppressed by their host countries.
What the article misses is the larger history of Jewish life in the Arab-Muslim world and some articulation of the glorious culture that it produced. All that we see is the hatred of the Arabs in a way that parrots the standard Israeli-Zionist approach.
Of course Israel is greatly supportive of the Arab Jewish groups that do its bidding:
These are organizations that work hand in glove with the Zionist organizations in a way that seeks to aid Israel in its attempt to negate the claims of the Palestinian Arabs. In the course of this advocacy the matter of anti-Sephardi racism on the part of Ashkenazi Israel is completely ignored.
This latter point is critical: These Sephardim-in-Name-Only are more concerned for the feelings and needs of the Ashkenazim who have decimated our culture and impoverished our communities economically and politically. Such individuals are militantly Zionistic and beat down all those Sephardim who would have the temerity to criticize Israel and the Ashkenazim. It is often an ugly sight when the battle is being waged.
The bottom line here is that, as I said earlier, the actual culture and history of the Arab Jews is completely ignored in favor of a bare-knuckles political approach that marks Jews and Arabs as separate categories. The narrative is one that has been constructed by the Zionists and leaves out the existential and cultural substance of the Sephardic community. Those permitted to speak in the name of the community have already shown their allegiance to the Ashkenazim and to Israel. Their actions, as we see clearly in the Julius article, are meant to affirm the things Israel wants said and leave out what it wants left out.
We can also point to the exclusionary practices of the media, in this case Open Zion, which suppresses Sephardic voices. It is something that I have discussed many times.
So long as Sephardim are cut out of the discussion this sort of thing is going to keep happening. There are only two voices permitted in the discussion: the Arab voice and the Ashkenazi voice. Any attempt at presenting a more complete and nuanced picture of the matter is not possible under the current rules of the media. So long as we conform to the pre-existing models all is well. If not, what we see is the exclusionary practices of a media that is mired in its own skewed understanding of the cultural history of the Middle East and hell-bent on perpetuating the stereotypes and racist values that continue to permeate discourse about the conflict.
Pro-palestinian groups/persons fighting each other.
“What is interesting about the article is that it – as is usual – identifies Jews as Ashkenazim only.”
Yes, that’s definitely interesting. It’s only one of many wrinkles Massad ignores in his “Jews are evil white people” rant.
“Now there is no question that this is very much what the Ashkenazi Jews have demanded.”
Of course there’s a question. You confuse cause and effect. The Askenazim came from Europe. They brought some of their customs. But they’ve tried to forge a separate Jewish identity. You can’t argue out of one side of your mouth that Israelis have a habit of appropriating Middle Eastern customs and out of the other that they’re too tied down to their European customs. Arab Jews came to Israel with customs from their countries. It’s no different.
” They have usurped Jewish identity for themselves and made Jewish nationalism a matter of European provenance. ”
Maybe so. But again, they came from Europe. The idea of the nation-state is essentially a European idea. If importing that idea to the Middle East makes Middle Eastern states European constructs, then every nation-state in the Middle East is in some sense a European construct.
And they have hardly usurped Jewish identity for themselves. No one is stopping Sephardim from being Jewish.
“The details of this discussion then become very contentious given the deep ambivalence and outright confusion of European Christian and Jewish identity and how that plays into Zionism as an exclusionary form of Jewish identity which seeks to isolate Jews from the Gentile world.”
Again, this is a very silly notion. Zionism posits that Jews are a nation and that to be accepted in the world community, they must form a nation-state. Zionism is about being a part of the Gentile world, not being excluded from it. It was never the contention of the Zionists that every last Jew had to make aliya. By your definition, any minority community that seeks a form of autonomy, or even chooses to set up communal institutions of any kind is engaging in exclusionary forms of identity. Indians who belong to Indian-American organizations must be exclusionary, right? Muslims who belong to Muslim-American organizations must be exclusionary, right?
Why do you need a separate organization for Sephardic heritage. You’re obviously endorsing an exclusionary philosophy.
“What the article misses is the larger history of Jewish life in the Arab-Muslim world and some articulation of the glorious culture that it produced. ”
I’m sorry, David, but I don’t see Ashkenazim denying that Jews had a glorious culture in the Arab world. I see them arguing that despite their contributions, they were never quite treated equally, and when they exhibited political consciousness, they were persecuted and pushed out. Their culture has been largely destroyed, like the Eliahu HaNavi synagogue in Syria.
“We can also point to the exclusionary practices of the media, in this case Open Zion, which suppresses Sephardic voices.”
Was one of your articles denied publication?
I had a similar reaction when I read Massad’s piece, regarding the elision of Mizrahi/Arab, Sephardi, and other Jews of color from his piece and its thinking. BUT, I also loved his piece and was really glad to see the discussion of Jewish whiteness, which is a central scourge in current institutionalized Jewish thinking, and within most (but certainly not quite all) Jewish communities that one finds oneself spending any time in. Very nearly most. This needs far more discussion, and certainly does not need to be dismissed.
One sentence in your piece was especially telling:
“For all that Massad has relationships with Mizrahi Jews, his thinking remains monocausal and racist.”
While Massad made some real, but minor mistakes in his essay, en route to a courageous and missing argument in our world’s popular cultural consciousness, it is sheer equalization to refer to him as racist.
This is precisely why more discussion of race and Judaism, race and Israel is needed, and why we need to start getting a much deeper discussion of Jewish whiteness going. Black scholars of race and anti-racism in the US, and their many allies before, during and after the Civil Rights Movements, have developed very sophisticated tools for holding such discussions. One such tool is the important note that race and racism is not just an individual phenomenon. Once the -ism or -ist shows up, we are dealing with something that is predominantly a structural phenomenon, in which individual actions bolster it at times, but which is upheld at an institutional level, across many institutional sites.
To claim that Massad or any Palestinians or Arabs has some sort of institutional, structural power over any Jews, Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrachi or otherwise, is pretty ridiculous. Without this structural power, Massad cannot be racist in this critical sense, and calling him such is a profound equalization in the face of very real institutions of power on the Jewish and Israeli sides of the equation.
It doesn’t mean Massad cannot be wrong. Or that we cannot discuss with him, and add to his work, but it does mean that countering him with specious equalizations only underscores his important intervention, and proves the point that we need more, not less of it…
While I agree that Sephardim, and even more, Mizrahim and Black Jews, and other Jews of Color are truly left out of most discussions, and that this is unfortunate, and that reversing this can play a role in making our discussion more complex, I do not think we can safely argue that most of this exclusion is racist, or a form of oppression. While some racism may play a part in some of this, and I think there may be some prejudice involved, and certainly some injustice and exclusion, if we use our words and tools of analysis carefully, we would be more precise.
There is still much privilege as well in the Sephardic community, for example, even in light of Ashkenazi centered-ness and privilege. Especially in Israel, Sephardim play significant roles in the institutionalized manifestations of racism, against Black Jews, Arab, especially Palestinians, and now also African migrants. In the US, most Sephardic Jewish communities and families have pretty deep entanglements with US whiteness, different from but parallel to Ashkenazi versions, if sometimes thankfully less extreme…
Lets be more precise…
Massad didn’t “identify Jews as as Ashkenazim only” in his article, nor did he suggest anything along the lines of “Jews never lived in the Middle East”. Rather, he wrote about “European Jews” in particular, which implicitly acknowledges the fact that only some Jews are Ashkenazi.
A person can only address so much in single article, and Massad’s focus was on those who control the Zionist native, those who determine which Sephardi are “permitted to speak in the name of the community”, and who do the same with Mizrahi who you barely give mention to. If you want to speak for Sephardi against Zionism, why are you joining with Zionists in reading things into and attacking Massad for what he didn’t say rather than addressing what he actually has said?
Like the DNA waffle, “we made the desert bloom” or the cherry pickings from Mark Twain, it’s another stupid distraction.
As of 00:01 may 15th 1948 (ME time) it’s completely irrelevant to the internationally recognized legal sovereign extent of the State of Israel and the State of Israel ‘s legal obligations as an Occupying Power over territories “outside the State of Israel” … “in Palestine”!