Thursday, June 25, 2009

Mizrahi refugees, summed up in 26 words

David Shasha - a US Jew of Syrian origin - is considered an authority on Jews from Arab countries by 'progressives' such as 'rabbi' Michael Lerner of Tikkun. But Shasha's views are superficial and unrepresentative, argues Israel Bonan. He should know: Bonan was forced out of Egypt in 1967 wearing a torn shirt and broken spectacles. Here's his rebuttal to David Shasha's "Why Jews left Arab Lands" a Progressive Sephardic view (Via Zionation:)























Are Mr Shasha and Professor Shenhav, neither of them refugees, being intentionally obtuse and blind to the fact that it is more than just assets and businesses that matter to a refugee, especially the ones who were left with nothing to call their own?

That takes me back again to the twenty-six words I alluded to earlier, and Shasha's attempt to cover all the bases for historical completeness. In the process Shasha saw only what he wanted to see and felt what he could only touch; the rest to Shasha, remained conceptual, at arm's length and clinically sterile.







One last note, that is conspicuously absent from Shasha's writings, save for the inherent braggadocio vis-à-vis the Arabs. I again happen to share Shasha's notion, as I truly believe that the Mizrahi Jews are in a unique position to enhance the dialog between Israel and her Arab neighbors.


Read post in full


Eliyahu m'Tsiyon said...

AS to Michael Lerner, he calls himself a rabbi but I would like to know where he got his rabbinic "smikha". Israel Bonan expresses himself beautifully with great clarity. As to David Shasha, his writing is very slick and I have seen of his way of expressing himself before, not necessarily in regard to the Arab-Israel or Arab-Jewish conflicts.

"The absence of a perspective that could allow us to see the Middle East in different ways".

I really am irked by the slickness of this remark. What Shasha wants to do with it is to promote the assumption implied in the statement that the claim that "the Arabs have always been mean to Jews" has been some sort of dominant narrative whereas, I believe, the narrative that Shasha promotes has long been the dominant one. In fact, major publications such as the NYTimes have often promoted the same narrative as Shasha does in their columns and articles, although their news articles sometimes contradicted it.

bataween said...

I think people like Shasha have shifted their position somewhat - from denying that Jews left 'of their own free will', they now admit they fled under duress. . But the Arab 'backlash' is highly excusable since it was a response to the 'unjust' creation of the 'Zionist entity'. Before Israel, of course, as Bonan writes sarcastically, life for Jews in Arab countries ws idyllic.

Victor said...

Bataween, you mentioned the often-repeated but false notion that the Arab "backlash" was justified because of the creation of Israel: I'd like to add that anyone claiming that the Arab "backlash" was justified is endorsing collective punishment, and is in absolutely no position to criticize Israel for supposedly inflicting "collective punishment" on the Gazans.

bataween said...

Of course no backlash resulting in collective punishment is defensible, but apologists are always rationalising Islamist terrorism as a 'backlash' to western foreign policy, or violent Muslim riots as a 'backlash' to offensive cartoons. So it is with the creation of Israel. Just another means of 'blaming the victim', really.

Victor said...

Bataween, Just to clarify -- I was not criticizing any of your own assertions but rather the repeated assertion by anti-Israel hypocrites that the Arab "backlash" against Jews in their lands was an "understandable" response to the creation of Israel. Of course we all know that's nonsense. I only wanted to point out the double standard of those who criticize Israel for so-called "collective punishment" against Palestinians and at the same time "justify" as "understandable" the collective punishment inflicted by Arabs.

bataween said...

Dear Victor
No, I understand what you are saying but it makes me wonder why Arabs and Muslims are not only excused, but expected to behave in this way! A kind of patronising racism, perhaps?

Victor said...

Bataween, it probably is a patronizing form of racism, but I also think it's part & parcel of an overall hypocrisy that one sees all too often among lefists. For example, I recall an argument between an American journalist and the former (thank God!!) mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. The journalist was arguing that Stalin was an evil man, and Livingstone argued he was NOT evil (never mind that he murdered literally tens of millions! Livingstone looks the other way). The left excuses Stalin, saying that he had "good intentions" to build a better society or they would say that he was trying to create a better society "under difficult circumstances." They fabricate all kinds of excuses. Jean-Paul Sartre remained an unrepentant Stalinist till the end. Similarly, the left doesn't want to hear that Chairman Mao murdered tens of millions either. And they demonize the US for dropping A-bombs on Japan (e.g. the notorious "reverend" Jeremiah Wright) but suddenly come down with a bad case of laryngitis when it comes to Japanese atrocities against the Koreans, Chinese, Filipinos, or Allied POWs. I think it's a general hypocrisy that excuses anybody who is not perceived as "western" or who is fashionably "third world."

bataween said...

victor, your explanation sounds spot on: The BBC News has just reported that reports of torture by US troops in Afghanistan 'may trigger terrorism among British Muslims.'

Eliyahu m'Tsiyon said...

Victor is right in his insight about the excuses made for Arab violent behavior as actually justifying collective punishment. They accuse Israel of criminally practicing collective punishment ["a war crime"] against Arabs in Judea-Samaria or Gaza. Then they turn around and excuse, for instance, attacks by Muslims in France against Jews there as understandable reactions to what Israel supposedly did, etc etc.

by the way, since Shasha's family comes from Syria, one wonders if he knows about the Damascus Affair of 1840 when scores of Jews were jailed and tortured [to confess] --four of them dying-- because of the charge of ritually murdering a European priest. It is curious that liberal, Westerners, especially the French consul in Damascus, joined with Muslims and local Christians to persecute the Jews at that time.

bataween said...

'The soft bigotry of low expectations' is a good expression to describe western expectations of Arabs and Muslims.
I don't suppose Shasha hasn't heard of the Damascus affair - he just chooses to ignore it.