Leftist Arabised Jews on the Conundrum of Individual and Collective Rights: three Chapters between 1919 and 1954

A belief prevails among many liberal (and pseudo-liberal) white Jews (and non-Jews): that Israeli descendants of the Middle East’s Arab-Jewish communities are right-wingers who are the chief reason for effectively all that is wanting in post-1967 Israel. Due to space constraints I cannot debunk this rather convenient rationalisation – popularised since 1977 by affiliates of the very communities who founded Zionism/Israel to begin with. I instead use this perception as background to highlight, both historically and analytically, three chapters in the regional history of Arabised Jews that exemplify their distinctive articulations of notions of individual and collective rights and – by extrapolation – their thoughts on the process of de-colonisation. These three chapters concern Ottoman Jews in pre-1922 Palestine, anti-Zionist Jews in mid-1940s Iraq, and communist Iraqi Jews in early 1950s Israel. While all these articulations by Arabised Jews were ultimately defeated by empirical history, I suggest that they nonetheless remain of great relevance to discussions that concern 21st century Israel/Palestine.

Moshe Behar holds a PhD in Comparative Politics from Columbia University and is Senior Lecturer in Arabic & Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Manchester. His work includes the anthology Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought: Writings on Identity, Politics and Culture (1893-1958) and can be further explored here. Moshe is also co-founder of the Mizrahi Civic Collective.