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Fathom Highlight – Jewish Refugee Day / 30 November / 2015

Today is the second annual commemoration of the exodus of Jewish Refugees from Arab countries and Iran. Jews were an integral part of the Middle East and North Africa before they were driven out of their homes in the second half of the 20th century.

This week’s Fathom Highlight features two pieces on Mizrahi Jews. The first is Lyn Julius’s critique of Rachel Shabi’s book Not the Enemy: Israel’s Jews from Arab Lands. Julius argues that the discrimination and injustice suffered by Mizrahi Jews in Israel has been used instrumentally by Rachel Shabi to attack Zionism itself. Noga Emanuel looks at the work of acclaimed Israeli novelist Sami Michael.

Our Voice of the Week is a panel discussion on ‘The Exodus of Jewish refugees from Arab Lands’ with Lyn Julius, Nathan Weinstock, Fathom editor Alan Johnson and Yiftah Curiel. The panel took place in London, 30 November 2014.

Our Image of the Week is of Israelis protesting against the controversial agreement reached between the government and large energy companies over natural gas production. Tel Aviv, 28 November 2015. Photo by Tomer Neuberg/Flash90.

Rachel Shabi’s Mizrahi post-Zionism: a Critique

by Lyn Julius

The discrimination and injustice suffered by Mizrahi Jews in Israel has been used instrumentally by Rachel Shabi to attack Zionism itself. Lyn Julius of Harif argues that Shabi’s ideas are out-of-date and useless in explaining ‘Israeliness’ today. In the 1930s, Jews from Palestine smuggled date palms out of Iraq and planted them in what became Israel. Supposedly, they never bore fruit as delicious as the original, magnificent, Iraqi dates. As with the dates, so with the people, if we are...

Voice of the Week

Image of the Week

Sami Michael: The Discreet Ironist of Israeli Literature
by Noga Emanuel

The Israeli novelist Sami Michael evolved from an Iraqi Jewish communist writing in his native Arabic language to an Israeli Jewish Mizrahi liberal writing in...

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