No, Israel isn’t a country of privileged and powerful white Europeans

Together with resurgent identification politics in the US and Europe, there’s a rising inclination to border the Israeli-Palestinian battle when it comes to race. In line with this narrative, Israel was established as a refuge for oppressed white European Jews who in flip grew to become oppressors of individuals of coloration, the Palestinians.

As an Israeli, and the son of an Iraqi Jewish mom and North African Jewish father, it’s gut-wrenching to witness this shift.

I’m Mizrahi, as are the vast majority of Jews in Israel right this moment. We’re of Center Jap and North African descent. Solely about 30% of Israeli Jews are Ashkenazi, or the descendants of European Jews. I’m baffled as to why mainstream media and politicians all over the world ignore or misrepresent these information and the Mizrahi story. Maybe it’s as a result of our historical past shatters a stereotype concerning the identification of my nation and my folks.

Israel, the world’s solely Jewish state, was not established for only one kind of Jew however for all Jews, from each a part of the world — the Center East, North Africa, Ethiopia, Asia and, sure, Europe. Regardless of the place Jews bodily reside, they preserve a connection to the land of Israel, the place our story began and the place right this moment we proceed to craft it.

The likes of Girls’s March activist Tamika Mallory, Temple College professor Marc Lamont Hill and, extra not too long ago, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) falsify actuality of their discussions of Palestinians’ “intersectional” wrestle, their use of the time period “apartheid” to characterize Israeli coverage, and their tendency to outline Israelis as Ashkenazi Jews alone.

I imagine their misrepresentations are a part of a strategic marketing campaign to taint Israel as an extension of privileged and highly effective white Europe, thereby justifying any and all assaults on it. This mind-set alerts a harmful development that positions Israel as a colonialist aggressor moderately than a haven for these fleeing oppression. Worse, all of it however erases the story of my household, which got here to Israel from Iraq and Tunisia.

For many of historical past, the Mizrahim have been with out sovereignty and equality within the Muslim world. In Iraq, regardless of being “equal residents” on paper, my household skilled ongoing persecution. The primary organized assault got here in 1941, the brutal Farhud, a Nazi-incited riot that claimed the lives of a whole lot of Jews and compelled the survivors to dwell in worry. My great-grandfather was falsely accused of being a Zionist spy and executed in Baghdad in 1951. My mom’s household was permitted to to migrate that very same 12 months, however with just one suitcase.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the information of the minute »

Any erasure of the Mizrahi expertise negates the lives of 850,000 Jewish refugees similar to them, who, even within the successor states to the Ottoman Empire of the early twentieth century, had been handled as “dhimmis,” an Arabic time period for a protected minority whose members pay for that safety, which may be withdrawn at any time. Demographic ignorance additionally works to disclaim the existence of just about 200,000 descendants of Ethiopian Jews who had been threatened by political destabilization within the early Nineteen Nineties and airlifted to Israel in a daring rescue operation.

One among Judaism’s central themes is a narrative of nationwide liberation within the face of imperial powers. Israel is a spot the place an indigenous folks have reclaimed their land and revived their historical language, regardless of being surrounded by hostile neighbors and hounded by radicalized Arab nationalists who can not tolerate any political entity within the area apart from their very own. Jews that had been expelled from nations throughout the Center East, who sacrificed all they’d, have been essential in constructing and defending the Jewish state since its outset.

Definitely, the creation of Israel offered a haven for Jews who survived the Holocaust and excessive oppression in Europe. Nevertheless, we can not acknowledge that historical past on the expense of Mizrahi Jews, who with so many others, no matter pores and skin coloration, shared the will for a Jewish state lengthy earlier than the institution of Israel.

Hen Mazzig, an Israeli author and activist of Iraqi and North African descent, is editor-at-large on the J’accuse Coalition for Justice. @HenMazzig

Comply with the Opinion part on Twitter @latimesopinionand Fb