Shohat talks about being an Arab-Jew

In coordination with Concordia’s Peace and Conflict Resolution series, Professor Ella Shohat from New York University visited the DeSeve Cinema on Friday to discuss and present the film Forget Baghdad: Jews and Arabs- The Iraqi Connection.

She addressed the subject of being a Jewish Middle Easterner, a subject on which she has lectured and written extensively. The group is known as the Mizrahim and are those who are Jewish and of African and Asian origin.

The Israel-Palestine issue has made it tough for the Mizrahim to retain their culture as Arabs and keep their religion as Jewish, as so many Arab Christians and Arab Muslims can do with their religion and ethnicity. In an article titled “Reflections of an Arab Jew,” featured in Nasawi News & Arts Quarterly, Shohat addressed the difficulty in being an Arab Jew without the history of most Jews in Israel who are focused on the “single Jewish memory,” in which so many European Jews suffered. The negativity affiliated with being Middle Eastern in America and Israel is only another obstacle that further sets those of Mizrahim origin apart from other Jews.

Shohat makes the connection between Iraqi Jews and the involvement of Israel, the US, and Iraq in war. In a tug-of-war struggle, her article states, “My anxiety and pain during the Scud attacks on Israel, where some of my family lives, did not cancel out my fear and anguish for the victims of the bombardment of Iraq, where I also have relatives.”

This seeming “logical paradox” of being an Oriental Jew, as Shohat puts it, has led to discrimination and racism in both Israel and the Middle East. Institutions have systematically deprived Mizrahim and Sephardic Jews to the advantage of European Jews, according to Shohat. She claims, “Sephardic Oriental women often dye their dark hair blond, while the men have more than once been arrested or beaten when mistaken for Palestinians.”

The film Forget Baghdad revolves around this group of people searching for a place, and how they go about their lives in Israel. Four Iraqi communist men, including the director, share their feelings on being seen as Jews in Iraq and Arabs in Israel. Shohat makes an appearance in the film as well.

The men, all authors and scholars, recount the Iraq they remember, and how the nationalism in 1950s Middle East slowly made them strangers in their own country. Fleeing to Israel seemed to be the only option. They were forced to assimilate into this foreign country.

Mixed with clips from British and American airwaves supporting the formation of Israel as a new beginning for Jews, the Arab Jews couldn’t help but feel that this new Israel feigned some idea that there was no life prior to Israel. The communist ideals of the men didn’t help them avoid the ignorance towards the Mizrahim background. The men find themselves, for the most part, adjusting to the fact that their ethnicity is looked down upon.

The lecture by Shohat will be posted on the Peace and Conflicts Resolution site in the next two weeks and Forget Baghdad will be available for order.

For more information visit: peace.concordia.ca.

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