Not the Enemy: Israel’s Jews from Arab Lands by Rachel Shabi
Yale University Press, £18.99
TO ATTEMPT to analyse and reconcile Ashkenazi and Mizrahi identities and differences is an emotionally charged and politically contentious undertaking. Rachel Shabi is a courageous writer to tackle the inherent prejudices within Israeli society that have marked the lives of Mizrahi Jews since 1948. “Ashkenazi”, from the old Hebrew word for German, is used to define the Jews of European descent; a dominant force in the global Jewish population. The Mizrahi Jews, from the Arab countries of the Middle-East and North Africa, make up around 40 per cent of the Jewish population in Israel.
Mizrahis were initially viewed as backward and stigmatised as underachievers in the newly born Israel. It’s a label that, Shabi suggests, has stuck. Largely confined to the development towns, they had to contend with an inferior education and low-skilled, poorly paid jobs compared to their Ashkenazi counterparts. In the 1950s, there was a segregated system of teaching and, later, Mizrahi children were stuck in “special nurture programmes”. Education policy assumed Arab-Jews were emerging from “disadvantageous environments” and helped to sustain their low self-esteem; encouraging vocational rather than academic careers.
Until recently, there was a conspicuous absence of positive Mizrahi representation in Israeli school text books, which also served to reinforce negative stereotypes. Shabi’s shocking conclusion is that some Mizrahis today are worse off than their grandparents who were educated in Arab countries.
Shabi also examines Mizrahi music. Deemed populist, “common and low quality” by the dominant Ashkenazi society, it was denied a national platform for many years. She includes interviews with a variety of musicians, who complain of marginalisation, a lack of airplay on mainstream radio stations, and the difficulties involved in being recognised as Israeli artists.
The point Shabi makes so eloquently is that the terms “Arab” and “Jew” are not mutually exclusive. As well as the conflict between European and Middle-Eastern Jews, Shabi does not shy away from examining the self-hatred of many Mizrahis that causes them to deny their Arab roots or Arab-ness. Many Mizrahis are notably pro-force against the Palestinians and far less likely to concede land in the region than the liberal left.
Inevitably there have been improvements, but what of the next generation? “My heart is in the East and my culture is Western culture, Ashkenazi culture” one fellow Iraqi-Jew tells Shabi. “They dressed me up in a culture that isn’t mine.” But what most worries this interviewee, and many Mizrahis, is the fate of their children: “What culture will [they] have? Their culture has gone. It has all been wiped out…”
Lucy Popescu
