Thread by @HenMazzig

I see that the debate about Mizrahi Jewish identity is sparked again with claims that we are “Arabs”. Let’s make some things clear (again):
1. Vast majority of Jews of the Middle East and North Africa live in Israel today & they reject the term “Arab Jews” & identify as Mizrahim

2. The “Arab world” today is the creation of modern pan-Arabism, which arose with the fall of the Ottoman Empire and which has roots in the Arab empires of the Middle Ages. The term “Arab Jew,” was never historically used by Mizrahim (Jews of the Middle East).

3. They’re adopting an Arab nationalist and imperialist narrative. We can all seem to be able to do what these revisionists cannot; to appreciate our Arab culture without caving to an imperial colonial identity that by definition was designed to discriminate & erase us.

4. The term “Arab Jew” subverts Zionism because it is Arab nationalist/imperialist orthodoxy. Arab nationalists/imperialist reject Jewish national identity & political power, while they generally accept Jewish religion (as dhimis). The term “Arab Jew” encapsulates this rejection

5. The claim that Zionism/Israel ( and its more than 50% Mizrahi Jewish population) are the ones responsible to the alleged erasure of the “Arab Jewish identity” is an incredibly patronizing view that has no connection whatsoever to reality.

...They’ve now created a narrative that is reflective of only their wild imaginations & Arab nationalist fantasies. Mizrahi Jews by and large were Zionist long before the establishment of Israel. And while some Mizrahi Jews had friendly relationships with their Arabs neighbors..

...like the Christians in the Middle East they were without sovereignty and equality and were therefore often victimized throughout their history in the Muslim Diaspora. This view also belittle the Mizrahi experience, the lives of 850,000 Jewish refugees who even in the...

...successor states to the Ottoman Empire of the early twentieth century were de facto treated as “dhimmis,” Arabic term for protected minority that pays for said protection, until the oppressor decides to end this agreement. These refugees, many of whom joined relatives who..

...had already left decades earlier, building it like the Kurdish Jewish community in Jerusalem and the Yemenite Jewish community in Tel Aviv. They sacrificed whatever they had left, and returned to their indigenous homeland, Israel, which they contributed mightily to building up

6. Jewish publications who glorify a minority of assimilated Jews who regretted leaving the Arab world, as if they represented the majority are wrong. They do not.

7. These anti-Zionist view in fact reverse the empire-nation narrative. Israel is national entity while the Arab world is an imperial one. You can always tell an empire by language. Arabic is an imperial language like English and French, promoted through settler-colonialism

& imperial hegemony throughout the Middle Ages. Since the 20th century rise of pan-Arabism, leaders advocated Arabization policies of indigenous national groups, whether the Kurds, the Amazigh or Sudanese, and sought to permanently reduce the status & power of indigenous groups

8. This set of ideas neglect the truly oppressed minorities, while promoting Arab imperialistic ideas. They completely ignore the Copts, Kurds, Berbers and Maronites who are now increasingly reclaiming their autonomy and sovereignty. We are so used to the “Arab world”

...that we forget it is a product, in modern terms, of Nasser and his encouragement “Arabization” programs whether in Algeria or Iraq, as well as of the Saudis and other Gulf leaders who have also encouraged “Arab” unity.

Finally, the greater issue is that there is a misguided school of thought which is distorting the whole imperial and colonial history of the region. Jews are Indiginous people who are attacked and hated by an imperial power, which is the (almost totally Jew-free) “Arab World”.