A unique coming-of-age story from the lost world of #ArabJews
Avi Shlaim was born in Baghdad and grew up in Israel. He is a Professor of International Relations at St Antony's College, Oxford. His previous books include the critically acclaimed The Iron Wall and he writes regularly for the Guardian, Middle East Eye and other outlets.
In July 1950, Avi Shlaim, only five, and his family were forced into exile, fleeing from their beloved Iraq into the new state of Israel. Now the rump of a once flourishing community of over 150,000, dating back 2,600 years, has dwindled to single figures.
For many, this tells the story of the timeless clash of the Arab and Jewish civilizations, the heroic mission of Zionism to rescue Eastern Jews from their backwards nations, and unceasing persecution as the fate and history of the Jewish people. Avi Shlaim tears up this script. His mother had many Muslim friends in Baghdad, but no Zionist ones.
The Iraqi Jewish community, once celebrated for its ancient heritage and rich culture, was sprayed with DDT upon arrival in #Israel. As anti-Semitism gathered pace in #Iraq, the Zionist underground may have inflamed it – deliberately.
This memoir celebrates the disappearing heritage of Arab-Jews – caught in the crossfire of secular ideologies.
In this introductory lecture “Memoirs, Memories & Personal Histories” at a #SOAS conference about the Jewish community of #Iraq, the two aspects come together.
He briefly touches on what he calls “cruel Zionism” — that is, Israel’s activities to co-opt and conscript Jews from around the world into a project they never wished to be part of, and the price paid by both Palestinians and Jews as a result.
#history#reference / Peretz, Dekel. 2022. Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine. De Gruyter.
Introducion: Zionism for the Diaspora: Bridging the Gap between German
and Zionist Historical Narratives [p. 6]
An important step towards interlinking these narratives is to contextualize Oppenheimer and like-minded Zionists in a period when Germany’s colonial and imperial aspirations were peaking. It seems to go without saying that historical research needs to consider contemporaneous geographical, political and intellectual conditions. Yet this basic staple of the historian has been often neglected by researchers of German colonialism and of German Zionism in respect to the correlation between these two coetaneous affairs. It is not the purpose of this book to examine the causes of this neglect. Nevertheless, I would like to make some hypothetical suggestions.
First, Germany did not have a long-established colonial apparatus of the size and quality of France and England. There were certainly fewer Jews active within the German colonial service and, apart from a few prominent protagonists mentioned in this book, research into this matter is sparse. However, the lack of active service within the colonial bureaucracy alone is not indicative of the level of enthusiasm and advocacy of German colonial ambitions among German Jewry. There were other spheres in which support for colonial undertakings could manifest themselves
Second, due to the racialist and outright racist aspects of colonialism as well as the ultimate devastation that German colonial and imperial ambitions brought on the Jews during the Second World War and the Holocaust, it retroactively seems unfathomable that Jews could have ever been involved in any way with
German colonialism.
Third, the Zionist narrative is shaped by a teleological perspective. The focus of Zionist historiography on the contributions made to building the state of Israel, together with the ideology of diaspora negation¹⁷ – preaching total separation and distancing from Europe – blurred out conceptions of Zionism in which the establishment of Jewish sovereignty did not contradict a continued Jewish life in Europe or even envisioned realizing this sovereignty in places other than Palestine. During the First World War, Oppenheimer and his Zionist contemporaries proposed the establishment of Jewish cultural sovereignty or autonomy within (Eastern) Europe, in remarkable affinity with the anti-Zionist Bundism prevalent in Eastern Europe, revealing the diversity of opinions within early German Zionism. Furthermore, the Balfour Declaration and the subsequent British endorsement of Zionism overshadowed earlier attempts by German Zionists to integrate
Zionism into a broader German colonial scheme.
Fourth, further clouding the vision is the tension in Zionist historiography between the depiction of the intellectual origins of the Zionist movement within the context of European nationalism on the one hand, and the conceptualizing of Zionism as an anomaly of nationalism with independent roots in the ethnic, messianic character of Judaism on the other. The international nature of the movement makes it from the start a difficult object for comprehensive study.¹⁸ Finally, and probably most importantly, the negative association of colonialism with violent subjugation, foreign transgression, and unjustifiable occupation made it an unlikely candidate for integration by a Zionist historiography charged with constructing the national narrative of a Jewish state in a long-running conflict with indigenous and neighboring populations.
#hisotry#reference / Between Prague and Jerusalem : the idea of a binational state in Palestine. Dimitry Shumsky (2010). [Hebrew; German edition 2013]
Prof. Dimitri Shumsky, a Russian-born historian at Hebrew University, argues that the Zionist vision prior to 1948 was for a bi-national political entity in Israel/Palestine, not an ethnic Jewish nation-state as exists today.
Most early Zionist thinkers and leaders, across ideological camps, advocated some form of bi-national framework that would provide collective rights for both Jews and Palestinian Arabs. This view changed drastically after 1948.
Shumsky says the bi-national vision broke down due to the Holocaust, World War II, and the 1948 war, which led to Jewish sovereignty and control rather than a power-sharing agreement.
He sees reviving the civic currents in Zionist thought as a way to "re-Zionize" and make more inclusive the Israeli state today, though he recognizes the challenges given dominant Zionist nationalism that resists such change.
Shumsky situates himself as trying to uncover suppressed Zionist intellectual streams that were responsive to the reality of a land shared by two peoples, not just idealistic notions. Bringing these to light can impact views today.
The paradox of the infamous "Blafour Declaration" (1917):
“The most significant and incontrovertible fact is, however, that by itself the [Balfour] Declaration was legally impotent. For Great Britain had no sovereign rights over #palestine, it had no proprietary interest, it had no authority to dispose of the land. The Declaration was merely a statement of British intentions and no more”.
Sol M. Linowitz. 1957. “Analysis of a Tinderbox: The Legal Basis for the State of Israel.” American Bar Association Journal 6 (43): 522–25.
The Iranian intellectual Jalal Al-e-Ahmad (1923-1969) visited #Israel in 1964, and published his rather positive impressions of the Zionist project. Being a communist, he was impressed by the Kibbutz model, among other things.
His travelogue was published by his brother only in 1984, under the title "The land of Azrael*" (سفر به ولايت عزرائيل), which was translated to English under the suggestive title "The Israeli Republic" (i.e. The Islamic Republic of Iran).
About the book:
Written by a preeminent Iranian writer who helped lay the popular groundwork for the Iranian Revolution, The Israeli Republic should be required reading for anyone interested in the history and current political landscape of the Middle East. Documenting Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s two-week-long trip to Israel in February of 1963, his account “Journey to the Land of Azrael” caused a firestorm when it was published in Iran, upsetting the very revolutionary clerics whose anti-Western sentiments Al-e Ahmad himself had fueled. Yet, in the thriving Jewish State, Jalal Al-e Ahmad saw a model for a possible future Iran. Based on his controversial travelogue, supplemented with letters between the author and his wife, Simin Daneshvar (the first major Iranian woman novelist), and translated into English for the first time, The Israeli Republic is a record of Al-e Ahmad’s idealism, insight, and ultimate disillusionment toward Israel. Vibrantly modern in its sensibility and fearlessly polemical, this book will change the way you think about the Middle East.”
In case you have the appetite for really depressing pearls of wisdom from #Netanyahu and #Begin's ideological master Jabotinsky... in the 1920's Revisionist Zionism pronounced what #Zionism didn't dare to speak (in public). It also set the foundations for #Israel's security doctrine ever since.
"[...] There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realized long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority."
"[...] But the only way to obtain such an agreement, is the Iron Wall, which is to say a strong power in #Palestine that is not amenable to any Arab pressure. In other words, the only way to reach an agreement in the future is to abandon all idea of seeking an agreement at present."
--- The Iron Wall... translated to English from the original Russian, Razsviet, 4.11.1923.
It's sad to say, but the media of the "only Democracy in the Middle East" is fully mobilized. Except for #Haaretz, which operates outside the consensus, Israel's news sites and daily newspapers highlight #IDF heroism, while concealing the kidnapped and ignoring or downplaying the killing of thousands of Gazan children.
Israeli readers are getting a daily diet consisting of every food fight on #socialmedia between celebs pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, truly bizarre opinion columns written by an Israeli Palestinian, glorifying #Zionism and admiring Jews, or simplistic and obnoxious opinion pieces like "Gaza minus Israelis = Auschwitz".
From "The massacre brought Jews back to the beginnings of Zionism", penned by Mahmud Abu Raj'ab:
"[...] And before they [the Jews] forget the spirit inspired them when they established the state [of Israel], and before they reach the stage where "blindness blinds their eyes", someone comes who wakes them up from their deep slumber and brings them back to the ground of reality. So do not be frightened or dismayed."
(last expression taken from Joshua, 10:25)
The text on Ynet (which never publishes anything in Arabic) is available in both Hebrew and Arabic, "بعد المذبحة: عودة الى البدايات دولة اليهود لا تزال في صعود."
🚨 FAO UK academics concerned about academic freedom and/or #Palestine:
Tory minister Michelle Donelan is trying to intimidate UKRI into silencing #academics who have expressed legitimate criticism of the genocide in #Gaza. She appears to be succeeding.
If you want UKRI to stand up for us, please sign this open letter.
Zionism's colonial "sugar daddy" 🧐 ... Some Israeli, including in academia, get really upset when #Zionism is classified as Settler-Colonialism ...
Weizmann requests following the Zionist Commission's visit to #Palestine in 1918 (after the publication of the infamous Balfour Declaration):
"...[But] we find among the Arabs and Syrians, or certain sections of them, a state of mind which seems to us to make useful negotiations impossible at the present moment, and so far as we are aware – though here our information may be incomplete – no official steps have been taken to bring home to the Arabs and Syrians the fact that His Majesty’s Government has expressed a definite policy with regard to the future of the Jews in Palestine”
Military Governor, Colonel (later Sir) Ronald Storrs reply to Weizmann indicates that, at least at this stage, the British thought they should not disturb the status quo of a Muslim majority territory:
“Speaking myself as a convinced #Zionist, I cannot help thinking that the Commission are lacking in a sense of the dramatic actuality. Palestine, up to now a Moslem country, has fallen into the hands of a Christian Power which on the eve of its conquest announced that a considerable portion of its land is to be handed over for #colonization purposes to a nowhere very popular people. The dispatch of a Commission of these people is subsequently announced … From the announcement in the British press until this moment there has been no sign of a hostile demonstration public or private against a project which if we may imagine England for Palestine can hardly open for the inhabitants the beatific vision of a new heaven and a new earth. The Commission was warned in Cairo of the numerous and grave misconceptions with which their enterprise was regarded and strongly advised to make a public pronouncement to put an end to those misconceptions. No such pronouncement has yet been made; …”
British Government, Public Record Office Cabinet No. 27/23 (1918). In Ingrams, Doreen. 1972. Palestine Papers, 1917-1922: Seeds of Conflict. London: J. Murray. pp. 25-26.
The paradox of the infamous "Blafour Declaration" (1917):
“The most significant and incontrovertible fact is, however, that by itself the [Balfour] Declaration was legally impotent. For Great Britain had no sovereign rights over #palestine it had no proprietary interest, it had no authority to dispose of the land. The Declaration was merely a statement of British intentions and no more”.
Sol M. Linowitz. 1957. “Analysis of a Tinderbox: The Legal Basis for the State of Israel.” American Bar Association Journal 6 (43): 522–25.
A unique coming-of-age story from the lost world of #ArabJews
Avi Shlaim was born in Baghdad and grew up in Israel. He is a Professor of International Relations at St Antony's College, Oxford. His previous books include the critically acclaimed The Iron Wall and he writes regularly for the Guardian, Middle East Eye and other outlets.
In July 1950, Avi Shlaim, only five, and his family were forced into exile, fleeing from their beloved Iraq into the new state of Israel. Now the rump of a once flourishing community of over 150,000, dating back 2,600 years, has dwindled to single figures.
For many, this tells the story of the timeless clash of the Arab and Jewish civilisations, the heroic mission of Zionism to rescue Eastern Jews from their backwards nations, and unceasing persecution as the fate and history of Jewish people. Avi Shlaim tears up this script. His mother had many Muslim friends in Baghdad, but no Zionist ones.
The Iraqi Jewish community, once celebrated for its ancient heritage and rich culture, was sprayed with DDT upon arrival in #Israel. As anti-Semitism gathered pace in #Iraq, the Zionist underground may have inflamed it – deliberately.
This memoir celebrates the disappearing heritage of Arab-Jews – caught in the crossfire of secular ideologies.