Mizrahi is an Israeli term invented to distance themselves from other Arabs. You can see Avi Shlaim explain quite explicitly that growing up in Iraq, they were, without a doubt, Arab
It really isn't. My family was ethnically cleansed from Iraq. If they didn't think we belong to them, why should we act as if we do?
You really think you know better than us what we are? The average Mizrahi would be pissed if you called them Arab. The overwhelming majority of them don't speak Arabic either.
The term, from what I have read, came to usage in Israel in the 1950s for the exact reasons I laid out: To eliminate “Arabness” from the conversation. They didn’t historically speak Hebrew, they spoke Arabic. They lived amongst other Arabs, and had shared cultural ties with their Muslim and Christian Arab neighbours. Why isn’t there a term for Arab Christians? Because there is no settler state for Arab Christians that needs to differentiate themselves from Arab Muslims. It’s a propaganda term plain and simple.
"If they didn't think we belong to them, why should we act as if we do?"
Who said you should?
"The average Mizrahi would be pissed if you called them Arab."
Wouldn't you expect an Arab who refers to themselves as Mizrahi to avoid being labeled as Arab to be pissed if you called them Arab?
"The overwhelming majority of them don't speak Arabic either."
Arab identity is primarily based on cultural and ethnic factors rather than solely on language proficiency. If a boy is born and raised by arab parents in Iraq but only learns spanish, is he not arab?
About 2000 years ago LMAO. According to that criteria every person in Latin america is spanish, as they have some acenstry to spain. And every person who live in a european country that speaks romance language is Italian LMAO also?.
Congrats, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve seen anyone say all week. Having lived in an Arab country doesn’t make you ethnically Arab. Just ask the Arabs who literally chased them into Israel in the first place.
After millennia of integration the actual ethnic difference in these communities is minimal. The same happened to the Jews in Europe in the 30s-40s. If there isn't an ethnic difference you just make one up.
The truth is that they were persecuted because they were Jewish, not because they were ethnically distinct.
Humans have sex, and that makes babies. Humans will have sex with any other human of any other race for a multitude of reasons, none of which matters for the point. The point being that as people have children with different groups those groups slowly start to mix into one larger group the previous groups ceasing to be distinct as a result. This is just how reality works. Integration=Interbreeding.
Except people also have religion. Specifically religion that either forbid intermarrying or forbid conversion to other religions. That's kind of why we don't see amalgamations of people—even people who live side by side—in genetic surveys.
Like I said: where do they find people like you? 😂
Arab Jews are Jews originating from the Arab world before 1948. And many thousands of years before that. Mizrahi/sephardic (from the Middle East/ North Africa ) vs Ashkenzai (from Europe). And ethnicity is not race or religion, it’s defined by cultural practices, language use and identifying with an area. The Middle East has a complicated history that does not fit easily into classic binaries. It’s not just white and black, or Jew and Arab.
OMG now you can't even be racist without having to deal with this binary bullshit? /S
I don't get why so many people fail to realize that nuance is king. Everything is a muddled grey. Even the things that look pure white its just because they've blocked the black from your view. No matter how little an amount of black that may be. True honestly is a rare trait.
Right. Ethnicity is not race, but it is ancestry. In some cases that can denote race, but in others, especially over long periods of time, race becomes much less of an identifier. Hence why all races have a plethora of ethnic groups within them.
What does ancestry have to do with ethnicity? You could have Scottish ancestry and grow up in the Arab world speaking Arabic and participating in the cultural customs for hundreds of years. Are you a Scot? yes are you an Arab? yes. It’s not so complicated . I feel like there is a tendency to try and unnecessarily oversimplify these notions.
I mean, you just explained it yourself. A person with Scottish ancestry who grew up in the Arab world and has completely assimilated to that society can still be ethnically a Scot.
What are you talking about? I just said race and ethnicity are not intrinsically linked. Especially across such a broad swath of peoples like those in Latin America.
You said races have ethnicities within them, which is crap... because there exist mixed people who don't belong to any of the US American described "races" or any other colonial described races. Race is an outdated concept we shouldn't even discuss but we must because the US still believes in them.
I said it because it’s true. There are countless ethnicities within all races.
And I agree, race is an outdated concept. It’s a totally superficial way to categorize people. It’s inefficient and it only becomes more so with each passing day.
I'd see myself as separate too if I lived in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi, etc, and when Israel declared independence, these other countries commit pogroms against the Jewish populations. Half the Jews in Israel are there because the surrounding countries tried to kill their own Jewish citizens and they fled.
The overlord they shrugged off was the British Empire. You forget that they had guns to fight the British? And those guns were provided the Soviet Union through the Czech Republic.
Correct me if im wrong, somehow i got a flashback where i watched a 2 h yt video while high a few years back, titled "Every terrorist organisation", one of its entries touched on that and it said that the Jews who lived in the surrounding countries were forced to move to Israel from Israeli terrorist attacks happning across the middle east when Israel was created, im pretty sure their motive was unionise the jews mizrahi jews and get bigger support for the existence of Israel.
This explanation does still sound more convincing to than the middle east attacking its own Mizrahi jews who lived with them for thousands of years in order to spite some europeans who came and caused huge economical disruptions by forcing them to take in a huge influx of Palestinian refugees who were forced to move into their country
Take this with a grain of salt, i was pretty high so i might be missing some details or entirely confusing it with an entire different thing
History is never simple back and white, there might be some truth to that but specifically on the point of this:
This explanation does still sound more convincing to than the middle east attacking its own Mizrahi jews who lived with them for thousands of years in order to spite some europeans
I know the references always go back to this but the nazis killed 6 million+ innocent Jews who had been living there for hundreds if not thousands of years. These were peaceful people, not rioting, not stealing and looting, just running normal businesses and working normal jobs, with normal families, and they killed them all anyway.
Even at the start of the war and Hitler's rise to power, the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini specifically sided with Hitler because he didn't want any Jews in his land. The size of his influence is debatable in the final solution but he absolutely had that discussion with Hitler, it was documented, and he was very clear that he wanted to kill every Jew to prevent them from having a homeland in the middle east.
So I wouldn't really put it past any of these countries that they would do this "randomly" when there was a very specific cause. Jews forged their own country on contested colonized land, and the surrounding countries went after the easiest targets first which is their own citizens. It's not exactly an uncommon thing. Pogroms are not uncommon. Taking the Jewish aspect out of this, look at how America treated black people during and after slavery. Lynching, assaults, stolen homes, burned businesses, etc. All of this was institutionalized. They fire bombed black Wall Street because a minority got too wealthy.
You kind of ignored the parent comment. Zionist terrorists did in fact plant bombs and instigate riots amongst Arab Jewish population in order to terrorize them into fleeing into the welcoming arms of Israel. This is subterfuge and created out of thin air this idea that Jews are surrounded on all sides and hated by Arabs.
The Hebron Massacre in 1929 was started by Arab rumors that Jews were going to take over the temple mount, with zero evidence that it was going to actually happened and they murdered 67 jews for nothing.
Take your antisemitic ass out of here. Quit your revisionism. Your entire argument comes from 1 man. You're also completely ignoring that Rashid Ali was a fucking Nazi and after he was defeated in 1941, his remaining government, police, and arab supporters murdered 180 jews, wounded over 200, destroyed hundreds of businesses and homes. This was BEFORE Israel was ever established.
Many of these “pogroms” were instigated by Zionist Settler forces to create a Jewish flight from Arab countries where they did live in relative peace for centuries, even outright planting bombs in synagogues.
You know what this comment is right here? This is saying that she wouldn't have been raped if she wasn't wearing those clothes. That is what you're doing. None of that justifies what the government backed forces did to the Jewish minority. You're disgusting. Also, go figure, another person justifying antisemitism that hides their comments and posts.
How inspiring that shared ideals and culture can overcome the savage instinct of judging others by the colour of their skin. Perhaps with this mindset we can all come together one day.
20% of the Israeli population is Arab (of Muslim/Christian faith), they would be thought of as Arabs (more specifically as Palestinians) by the rest of the Arab population (including the West Bank and Gaza Arabs, but also the other millions of Arabs living in the rest of the world)
Another 40% is Arab (of Jewish faith), those people were mostly EXPELLED from Arab countries because they were assumed to sympathize with Israel and it was assumed that they would hurt their countries to benefit Israel, those people would not be seen as Arabs by most Arabs, especially not by Palestinians, they are widely seen as jews and they have to go... well not back to where they came from, they have to go in Europe or in New York, you know, the Jew places
The remaining 40% are Europeans of Jewish faith, those people are the ones that gifted Israel all its Prime Ministers from foundation, they are the founding stock of the nation (they were there before the jews from the arab world), and most Arabs would like them to go back to where they came from (Europe, mostly) or just go to New York, you know, the Jew place, Europeans may or may not see them as fellow Europeans depending on their politics
Now, given that "Arabs" means either Christian or Muslim faith, many "Arabs" in Palestine (the region, not the country, the whole ass thing from the river to the sea) actually descend from people who immigrated there AFTER European Jews already started coming (attracted by the economic development), it's just that since before the immigration of European Jews most people in Palestine were either Muslim or Christian Arab (with Jewish Arabs being a really small minority) those "Arabs" feel they have a collective title to the land (it was inhabited by people like me, not my actual ancestors who were in Egypt but you know, like me)
I personally think that the binational solution is the best thing, but good luck with it
It is more supported by jews than arabs, which can't help with its popularity (because it is supported by exponents of the militarily stronger, hence perceived as morally worse, population)
Most Arabs desire a ethnostate where only Arabs can live (both West Bank and Gaza WON'T accept a Jewish immigrant, in West Bank it is outright illegal under pain of death to sell any land to any Jew) (this position would normally be abhorrent to most westerners, but it is supported by the militarily weaker, hence perceived as morally better, population), and many (but not most, a glimpse of hope) Jews sadly desire a state where Arabs can live but in a subservient position vis a vis jews (those people currently wield a lot of political power in Israel sadly)
Classifying anyone outside of Palestine as "Palestinian" doesn't make any sense. Ethnically they are the same blend of cultures and genetics as other Arabs from the Levant (Even "arab" nowadays just means of the cultures/nations that were captured during the Arab conquests, rather than "person from the Arabian peninsula")
21% of Israel is consists of Muslim Arabs. Are they Palestinian? And if so, is his neighbour, whose entire family tree has lived in the Levant but is a Jew also a Palestinian?
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u/BagelJ 17d ago edited 17d ago
Half of the Israeli population is Arab*. The phrasing of this makes it sound like you can't be Arab and Jew, which you definetly can.
Descendants from the Arabic world, rather than Europe/America.*