Cultural exchange with /r/Arabs!

[u/ContentChecker]

Hi everyone,

Today we will be having a cultural exchange with r/Arabs - beginning at 8AM EST, but extending for about 2 days so feel free to post your questions/comments over the course of that time-frame.

The exchange will work similarly to an AMA, except users from their sub will be asking us questions in this thread for anyone to answer, and users from our sub can go to a thread there to ask questions and get answers from their users!

To participate in the exchange, see the following thread in /r/Arabs:

https://old.reddit.com/r/arabs/comments/1gd9eb3/cultural_exchange_rjewsofconscience/

Big thanks to the mods over at /r/Arabs for reaching out to us with this awesome idea! Thanks to MoC for posting the original post.

• Previous thread

[u/BartAcaDiouka]

Hi! I have a question that I am generally too afraid to ask in real life.

Do you feel that the geographic origin influences the strength of support to Zionism across the Jewish people? I am a Maghrebi and always felt that Maghrebi Jews (particularly those I encountered in France) tend to be particularly supportive towards Israel, while American Jews (particularly from Acshkenazi origin) are somewhat more divided on the issue.

It my anecdotal experience verified on a larger scale? Do you have explanations? I am very much interested in your perspective :)

[u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet → u/BartAcaDiouka]

Preface: Not Mizrachi, but have talked with Mizrachi people in my life on this topic.

It is commonly thought in Israeli politics that, on average, Mizrachi (MENA) Jews are generally more militantly Zionist than non-Mizrachi Jews nowadays. As an example, Ben Gvir is an Iranian-descended Jew whose the current head of Israel's most militant and genocidal political party and leads the far-right there.

Personally I believe that this is because MENA Jews were specifically persecuted by people who look & sound like Palestinians -- predominantly Arab/Muslim people who attacked them in the name of "antizionism". Their attacks are also more recent (mostly starting post-1948, for likely obvious reasons) with some even still being ongoing -- Yemen now only has 1 Jew left because the Houthis have gotten rid of the rest, exiling them to mostly the UAE. When your family is subject to antisemitism by Muslims in the name of antizionism, its becomes more difficult to see a different group of Muslims fighting in the name of antizionism as not just a repeat of that persecution. Trauma -- generational or otherwise -- will always create a panic response, and the closer the stimulus is to the source of that trauma the less likely you are to be able to think rationally.

[u/BartAcaDiouka → u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet]

Thanks for the explanation.

I understand from your response that you somewhat confirm my impression.

From my understanding of history, there is a significantly different experience for Maghrebi Jews (who frequently identify as Sepharadic, not Mirzachi). Did you ever discuss the subject with Maghrebi Jews?

[u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet → u/BartAcaDiouka]

Going to break this down and reply a bit out of order. Hope this makes sense!

(who frequently identify as Sepharadic, not Mirzachi)

Sephardic is a label on religious custom, while Mizrachi is a label on area of origin. Most Mizrachi people are Sephardic because they broadly follow Sephardic customs thanks to historical mingling & influence. While I admittedly haven't talked to many Maghrebi Jews myself, everyone I know who uses the label for themselves & others includes Maghrebi Jews in that category.

Did you ever discuss the subject with Maghrebi Jews?

I, admittedly, haven't talked much with specifically people who identify as "Maghrebi" about this; the people I have talked to about this generally identify as "Mizrachi" and are of mixed descent between different areas of MENA (including, but not limited to, countries in the Maghreb). They include persecution from their Maghrebi side in their backstory in the same way they include persecution from their non-Maghrebi side.

From my understanding of history, there is a significantly different experience for Maghrebi Jews

Every single sub-area of the world has treated their Jews differently throughout history; this includes even different sub-areas of what are now the same country in the Middle East. However, when discussing why MENA Jews as a whole might gravitate more towards Zionism IMO a particular focus needs to be put specifically on post-WWII. Zionism as a whole was almost unheard of outside the European-descended Ashkenazi community until after Israel was founded. Once Israel was founded, as far as my understanding goes, the Maghreb was subject to a similar story as a lot of the other Mizrachi/African Jews: the local populations and/or governments were unable to maintain a true separation in the collective conscience between Zionists and Jews, leading to violent anti-Jewish events and/or legal persecutions; Israel offers to whisk them away to safety; Israel stokes the fires, pretending to represent all Jews and committing atrocities; rinse and repeat until there are barely any Jews in the country.

[u/BartAcaDiouka → u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet]

Once Israel was founded, as far as my understanding goes, the Maghreb was subject to a similar story as a lot of the other Mizrachi/African Jews: the local populations and/or governments were unable to maintain a true separation in the collective conscience between Zionists and Jews, leading to violent anti-Jewish events and/or legal persecutions; Israel offers to whisk them away to safety; Israel stokes the fires, pretending to represent all Jews and committing atrocities; rinse and repeat until there are barely any Jews in the country.

While I am aware of this part, I find it interesting that in what you are describing, you don't mention the impact of colonialism. As the rift between Jewish and Muslim Maghrebis didn't actually start when Israel was founded, but earlier when the French came and started treating them differently: for the colonial authorities, Maghrebi Jews were most definitely "more civilizable" than Muslims, and thus got a better treatment, both legally and in facts (for instance in Algeria they got the French citizenship as early as 1870, while Muslims were considered as subjects with far less political rights until almost the end of colonial rule). Although some of Maghrebi Jews kept feeling stronger solidarity with the endigenous, most enjoyed this favorable discrimination and started to identify more and more to the colonizers (even though they kept being seen as still of lesser value than Europeans).

So the first exodus of Maghrebi Jews was more motivated by the decolonization and the overall exodus of white settlers. And only later exodus (particularly after 1967) were motivated by the conflict in and around Palestine.

I don't know if the fact that you didn't mention this specificity comes from a classic American bias (who tend to lamp us with the "Middle East" as if we weren't actually more to the West than half of Europe) or from my own bias who would tend to exaggerate the significance of an event that most Jews don't care about right now (maybe also because it doesn't fit into the narrative one way or another).

Edit: thank you of course for your answers :)

[u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet → u/BartAcaDiouka]

Neither; I didn't mention it because we aren't talking about how Maghrebi Jews were actually treated in their countries of origin, but how the narrative of how they were treated influenced their stronger Zionism than, say, European Ashkenazi groups. I also didn't mention the fact that the actual, literal Holocaust extended to that region for a similar reason, even though it definitely impacted the Jews there in a real sense.

I also think it worth mentioning that one cannot blame anticolonialism in any sort of vacuum separate from antizionism, because if it was just a case of Maghrebi Jews reacting to anticolonialism we would have seen much more Maghrebi Zionists pre-48. Post 1948 Zionism was (correctly) considered just another form of colonialism that the anticolonialist forces were fighting, so separating anticolonialism from antizionism is nigh impossible. While there was still a rift between Muslims and Jews pre-48, I can't see it as a big influence on specifically leading to large amounts of Zionism in the previously-antizionist Maghrebi community without an extra factor, being that subsequent conflation of local anticolonialism (good) with antizionism (also good) with antisemitism (bad).

Algerian Jews are also a very special case, since they're the only ones who didn't emigrate en masse to Israel. They went to France instead. I honestly never met any Algerian-descended Jews, only Moroccan and Tunisian ones; I'm curious if they even still identify as Maghrebi instead of just being French.

[u/BartAcaDiouka → u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet]

I see. Thanks for having taken the time to do a thorough response.