Rafael Shimunov ✡️ 🍉 Profile picture
Mar 3, 2022 14 tweets 7 min read Read on X
Mizrahi (Jews from Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, etc) is the colonialist name for us. Many of us don’t know its use and introduction is similar to that of calling a Chinese or Korean person Oriental.

Thread 🧵
Mizrahi's meaning is largely unknown or misunderstood because we allow it ourselves. We celebrate it. Sometimes I celebrate it.

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But the term Mizrahi, its design and its impact is to erase our origins as Jews from places we called home for thousands of years. Among siblings who look and sound like us more than most of our Ashkenazi beloveds.

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In fact, saying Uzbek Jew or Iranian Jew or Egyptian Jew would frighten most of our own families from Uzbekistan, Iran, Egypt because they were taught and they in turn taught us to be frightened. Of ourselves too. For so many reasons.

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Many of us, those who could see our melanin, our curls, our deep black eyes and furry arms hidden, washed out, or lost to love with lovers are able to choose to be white, to adopt the myth of white. To be adjacent to power.

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Because when they see this photo, they see weakness. And when they see this photo, they see power. But we their children draw our strength from the first. And what we see is celebrating the second--is fear. Of ourselves.

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Note: The Jewish woman in the second photo is Jewish like me and us, and I must be careful to specify that over and over. But most of my family would relate to her more than the photo on the left. Of us.

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We fear that among the truths about our sometimes struggles in the lands of our birth, blood, water, language, food and music, the stories may outweigh our revolutionary kinship, our thousands years embrace as family

(Yes, this Bukharian looks like @ActionBronson's brother)

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...and thus unravel the myths our leaders tell us, the myths conjured to settle lands of our cousins, to drive away children who look like our children, and to hold people we see in the mirror with suspicion and contempt.

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It always sounds corny, but I dream of the day we can say who we are beyond Mizrahi. And I will fight for the day when a border is nothing but lines in history books. And I'll probably say Mizrahi all the time.

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So, to be clear, I may say to you when you ask, because I’m busy: I am Mizrahi.

But know that every time I say it, I swallow just a little bit of poison for your comfort and my convenience.

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And every time I say it I also force half the pill to beloveds from Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Morocco, Egypt, Afghanistan, Libya, and so on.

Because with Mizrahi I am also telling my long lost siblings:

You were simply my roommates.

12/x
Thanks for reading, عزیزم.

I don't have solutions yet, but if you want to figure them out and you are Mizrahi in New York, find me at the next @JFREJNYC Mizrahi & Sephardi Caucus meeting.

jfrej.org/community/mizr…

12/12
Addendum

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More from @rafaelshimunov

Nov 8
Since Maccabi Tel Aviv is trending, come and get to know its soccer/football fans who ignited anti-Arab hate and violence in Amsterdam, leading to reprisals from Arabs who were attacked (and who are universally being smeared as antisemites engaging in pogroms).

🧵
Here is a report from an Israeli agency, who sent observers to every match to find 190 incidents of racist chants, calling 2022-2023 "the most racist and violent" soccer season in Israel's history. Including routinely chanting "monkey" at Black players.

2
nif.org/stories/shared…Image
This predominant fan culture in Israeli soccer isn't only home calling foreign team bigoted things, but also veers into going after each other. The study found 20 matches where fans would call for "Shoah" of the opposing Israeli team.

3 Image
Read 12 tweets
Aug 28
As we go into new campus actions for Gaza across the world, you're going to see a lot of our legacy Jewish orgs using polls to tell you how antisemitic our universities are.

The problem with these polls?

🧵
Nearly all of these polls assume that when a student is asked about antisemitism, they have a good analysis of what it means.

One way to examine the polls that are coming, is to look up their methodology, which is rarely reported in articles that mention the polls.

2/
So @BrandeisU's new poll will be used in media, talks & emails to politicians, agencies, parents etc saying students are swimming in antisemitism.

Who/how they "fixed" the poll won't be reported.

Here's fine print admitting they only polled kids who went on trips to Israel.

3 Note: See Table B3 in Technical Appendix B for 95% confidence intervals and significance tests. The 2023 data on Jewish students were drawn from applicants to Birthright Israel.
Read 16 tweets
Aug 28
We’ve been told as Jews that the slightest micro aggressions by individuals births antisemitism so dangerous we must have zero tolerance.

Today we’re told that open genocide, apartheid & ethnic cleansing in co-opting our name, faith, history & even synagogues doesn’t fuel antisemitism & we should tolerate it for our survival. 🧵
If some among us can’t navigate through hasbara engineered to rob us of our humanity for Palestinians and Arabs, and instead favor an often outsized moral panic over our daily safety, one would think maybe at least you can attempt to see our own self interest in ending this. This which will fuel antisemitism for decades to come, putting our lives in danger.

2
A common reply to this idea has been a smear. That this frames Jews for our own antisemitism. Yet, if you stay beyond the sound bites you’ll learn that many of us who look deeply into antisemitism history know that it’s invented by right wing Europeans and utilized by white supremacy as a middle man, a steam valve, to offer the poor a target.

3
Read 4 tweets
Aug 20
From a booklet distributed by @DemMaj4Israel at the DNC today, touting 22 years of Kamala Harris' support for Israel, including this bit of her backing the criminal prosecution of Muslim students who interrupted an Israeli government speaker at their school. 62. 5/8/11: As 11 UC Irvine students “accused of conspiring to, then successfully executing, a disruption of Israel Ambassador Michael Oren's speech in February 2010” sought to evade prosecution, Harris said in court documents that “Orange County prosecutors should remain on the case.” [Daily Pilot, 05/08/11] - Democratic Majority for Israel
@DemMaj4Israel The students prosecuted are referred to as the Irvine 11, who were moved by Israel's 2008-2009 massacres inside Gaza which killed 1500 Palestinians and left 100,000 homeless.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvine_11…
@DemMaj4Israel Here's the amicus brief from lawyers at @theCCR and @jvplive on discriminatory enforcement on the Muslim students, such that had not been seen for other protestors first amendment rights and those who had interrupted even longer.

ccrjustice.org/files/Irvine%2…
Read 8 tweets
Aug 3
9 reasons Josh Shapiro could sink Kamala Harris ‘ campaign. 🧵 Image
1. Josh Shapiro is racist 1 Josh Shapiro is racist.  In college, alongside his classmate’s pro-peace article, Shapiro wrote an opinion titled “Peace not possible”, opposing a two-state solution, claiming Palestinians are “too battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own.” and the Palestinian president who aimed for peace would be killed “by his fellow belligerent Arabs.”
2 Josh Shapiro volunteered with the IDF 2 Shapiro volunteered with the IDF  Josh Shapiro isn’t Israeli, and has lived as an American all his life, but volunteered with the Israeli Defense Forces. The IDF was implicated then with supporting apartheid and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and today with genocide.  During this period, Palestinians embarked on the “First Intifada”, a largely non violent protest movement for freedom, while IDF’s leader promised to “break their bones” and Israel’s Prime Minister promised to have their “heads smashed against the boulders and walls” and “crushed like grasshoppers.”
Read 11 tweets
Jul 29
Kamala's entry to the race affords Democrats not a reset in swing state voter excitement but an opportunity to reset.

An opportunity she can throw away, in whole, by selecting PA Governor Josh Shapiro as her VP.

Here's why. 🧵
White nationalist aligned Republicans use Gaza protests to do what they've dreamt of doing for generations: delegitimize secular higher learning in favor of far right religious dogma.

Democrats have an opportunity to position themselves in contrast by choosing freedom of speech.

2/
Josh Shapiro did the opposite, and collaborated with GOP strategies to vilify and criminalize free speech by students, even repeating far right talking points against those students, and against the freedom of speech we'll need to fight for democracy.

3/
Read 9 tweets

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