By Rachel Shabi
Yale University Press, £18.99
Rachel Shabi was born in Israel to Iraqi parents and grew up in England. She is a journalist who explores in this book the experience of Jews from Arab and Muslim lands who entered Israel after 1948. Using eye witness accounts, Shabi lays down the full spectrum of experience of the Oriental/Mizrahi Jews in modern Israel. Much of it echoes the viewpoints of my husband’s Iraqi family and friends, related to me over our 30-year marriage.
There is almost universal agreement amongst Mizrahis, from Communist and atheist to right-wing religious, that the cultures they brought with them from Arab lands were looked down upon by the dominant Ashkenazi group in Israel, certainly in the early days. As a result, the Mizrahi Jewish experience has largely been that of second-class citizens. The Mizrahis were indeed “not the enemy” but were silenced if they spoke Arabic. Their culture was ignored in the media and schools and they were markedly absent from government.
Shabi writes: “Being Arab was a way of being Jewish” for nearly 800,000 Jews across the Middle East — and had been for thousands of years. But, once in Israel, this rich heritage became a badge of shame.
