A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity The Arab Jews A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity Yehouda Shenhav S T A N F O R D U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS Stanford, California 2006 Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2006 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo­ copying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival- quality paper Library' of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shenhav, Yehouda A. [Yehudim-ha-’Arvim. English] The Arab Jews : a postcolonial reading of nationalism, religion, and ethnicity / Yehouda Shenhav. p. cm. — (Cultural sitings) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8047-5296-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Jews, Oriental — Cultural assimilation — Israel. 2. Jews —Arab countries —Migrations. 3. Politics and culture. 4. Ethnicity—Israel. 5. Israel — Emigration and immigration. 6. Israel — Ethnic relations. I. Title. II. Series. DS113.8.S4S5413 2006 956.9405 — dc22 2006004889 Original Printing 2006 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 Typeset by BookMatters in 10/13 Electra Contents Acknowledgments xi History Begins at Home 1 1 The “Discovery” of the Arab Jews 19 2 Encounter in Abadan: Colonialism, Eurocentrism, and Jewish Orientalism 49 3 How Did the Arab Jews Become Religious and Zionist? 77 4 What Do the Arab Jews and the Palestinians Have in Common? Population Exchange, the Right of Return, and the Politics of Reparations 110 5 The Arab Jews and Zionist Historical Memory 136 Beyond Methodological Zionism 185 Notes 205 Select Bibliography 231 Index 249 Acknowledgments This book summarizes five years of archival research on the social history of the Arab Jews against the backdrop of Zionist nationalism. The story' I tell di­ verges from mainstream studies of Israeli society in several respects. First, using the term “Arab Jews” (rather than “Mizrahim,” which literally means “Orientals”) challenges the binary opposition between Arabs and Jews in Zionist discourse, a dichotomy that renders the linking of Arabs and Jews in this way inconceivable. Second, I argue that the study of the Arab Jews should begin in the early 1940s, when the Zionist movement turned to the Arab Jews as a reservoir for Jewish immigration, rather than with their arrival in Israel in the 1950s. This enables me to situate the study of the relationships between Mizrahi Jews and Ashkenazi Jews in the context of early colonial en­ counters between the Arab Jews and the European Zionist emissaries — prior to the establishment of the state and outside of Palestine — and to examine the manner in which these relationships were reproduced upon the arrival of the Arab Jews in Israel. Third, I provide a new prism for understanding the intricate relationships between the Arab Jews and the Palestinian refugees of 1948, a link that is usually obscured or omitted by studies informed by Zionist historiography and epistemology. This book, however, does not merely tell a new story about the relationships between social groups or the history of their construction, but also uses that history to look beneath the surface of Zionism itself. I use that history, not only to transcend what I call “methodological Zionism,” but to open the door to an epistemology that sheds new light on the basic assumptions upon which Zionism was founded, and on the articu­ lation of those assumptions in Israeli politics and culture today. rrhe personal and professional context within which this book was written is described at length in the introduction. Here, I would like to thank and ac­ knowledge my dear colleagues, friends, and students who helped, read, ad­ vised, and encouraged me at various stages of the project. First and foremost, I owe special thanks to three devoted students and friends who shared the process of research and writing with me. Nadav Gabay, now a Ph.D. student Acknowledgments at the University of California in San Diego, was there from day one. He helped me collect the archival documents and shape some of the theoretical ideas presented in the book. Shoham Melamed, now a Ph.D. student at Yale, helped me organize the empirical materials, provided a great deal of wisdom on ideas, and encouraged me to see the novelty in the project beyond the agony of writing. Shirley Hauser gave me detailed comments and wonderful suggestions for improvements. Four colleagues and friends provided invalu­ able contribution to the development of the theses presented in the book: Hannan Hever, Adriana Kemp, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, and Yossi Yonah. Their fingerprints are to be found on every page. This project thrived and developed owing to several institutional com­ munities. Initial thoughts were first presented to my students in the Department of Sociology at Tel Aviv University. I benefited from the differ­ ences, controversies, and intellectual debates that it generated. Large parts of this book were developed within the framework of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute (VLJI) and the Forum for Social and Cultural Studies. The book benefited from the unique intellectual atmosphere that emerged in the Forum over a period of four years. I thank the members of the Forum during these years: Meir Amor, Abed Azam, Yehuda Goodman, Shlomo Fischer, Hannan Hever, Adriana Kemp, Aziza Khazzoom, Yossi Loss, Pnina Mutzaphi-Haler, Boas Noiman, and Yossi Yonah. I would like to extend a special thanks to Shimshon Zelniker, the head of the VLJI, for his vision, his generosity in establishing the Forum, and his unconditional support. Sara Soreni from the VLJI provided me with invaluable advice throughout these years and on the professional work on the initial texts in Hebrew. Haggay Ram and Hanna Herzog, two dear friends, with whom I have spent the past two years in New York City, took the time to read the manu­ script from cover to cover and to provide endless comments and suggestions. I benefited greatly from their wisdom, sensitivity, and broad scope. Alexandra Kalev, now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and Joshua Guetzkow, now at Harvard, are terrific friends. They both gave me immense support during the process of writing this book, helped me organ­ ize some of the archival material, and generously provided wise theoretical and stylistic suggestions in the writing stage. Adi Ophir and Aziza Khazzoom provided insightful comments on the writing and editing, which 1 have gladly adopted. Many other friends and colleagues have helped in conversations, discus­ sions, and criticism, among them Shimon Balias, Zvi Ben-Dor, Simon Bitton, Haggay Boas, Yinon Cohen, David De-Vries, Tamar El'or, Cynthia Fuchs- XII Acknowledgments Epstein, Bracha Eshel, Gil Eyal, Michal Frenkel, Haim Hanegbi, Haim Hazan, Gideon Kunda, Nissim Leon, Varda Levanon, Ronit Matalon, Adi Ophir, Motti Regev, Tilde Rosmer, Nadim Rouhana, Areej Sabar, Gershon Shafir, Ronen Shamir, Natan Sznaider, Sy Spilerman, Catherin Silver, Ilan Talmud, Yfaat Weiss, Yuval Yonay, and Aviva Zeltzer. Gershon Shafir, in par­ ticular, believed, endorsed and supported this manuscript all along. There is no doubt that my activity in the Rainbow Mizrahi Coalition (known as Keshet) had a remarkable impact on my research agenda and ori­ entation. 1 was fortunate to be able to enjoy the company of wonderful, in­ tellectually inspiring friends who are committed to social and political justice in ways that are rare to find. I especially would like to mention Yossi Dahan, Shoshana Gabay, David Mahlev, Nissim Mizrahi, Itzhak Saporta, and Yossi Yonah — knights of social and political justice in todays cynical world. In 2003, an earlier version of this book appeared in Hebrew under the im­ print of the Am-Oved Publishing House. I am indebted to Eli Shaltiel, the editor of the Hebrew version of the book, for his excellent suggestions; to the Association for Israeli Studies, which awarded me with the Yonatan Shapiro Award for the best book in 2004 (for the Hebrew version); to Ralph Mendel, who translated the empirical documents and other segments of text from Hebrew; and to my daughter Noa Shenhav, who did a wonderful and metic­ ulous job in preparing the manuscript for publication. Thanks also to Noa Lavie, Ora Slonim, and Seffi Shtiglitz, who helped me during the process. Several of the chapters are based on segments previously published as journal articles. Parts of Chapter 2 were published in Social Identities (Shenhav 2002b); parts of Chapter 3, in Nations and Nationalism (Shenhav 2003); parts of Chapter 4, in the International Journal of Middle East Studies (Shenhav 1999a); and parts of Chapter 5, in the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (2002a). Permission has been granted by the editors of Nations and Nationalism, the Journal of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (London School of Economics); by Cambridge University Press (for IJMES); and by Taylor and Francis (for BJMES). I thank the editors of these journals for making it possible for me to publish these texts in their revised and elaborated new forms. Parts of this book were presented at the Howard Gillman Conference at New York University, December 2000; at two conferences in Elmau, Germany, “Jews as Cosmopolitans" in July 2001, and “Challenge to Citizenship and Ethnonationalism” in July 2002; at the Conference on Immigration at American University, Washington, D.C., in May 2002; at the City University of New York, co-sponsored by the Sociology Program and Xlll Acknowledgments Middle Eastern Center, in May 2003; at the Columbia University' Seminar on Boundaries in April 2003; at the Princeton University' Seminar for Economic Sociology* in April 2003; a* the Association for Israeli Studies, Keynote Address, San Diego, May 2003; and at the Association for Israeli Studies, Best Book Award, Jerusalem, August 2004. I am grateful for com­ ments made by participants in all of these forums. Finally, I would like to extend my thanks also to Elazar Barkan for his comments and encouragement on an early draft, and to Peter Dreyer for his fantastic copyediting. Norris Pope, Angie Michaelis, Mariana Raykov, and the editorial staff at Stanford University Press did wonderful professional work throughout the project. Stanford University is my alma mater, and I am proud to have the Stanford University Press publish my work. My special love goes to Inbar and Noa, who are not only my wonderfiil daughters but also my best friends; and to Jennifer Vorbach, whose support helped me complete this project. The Arab Jews History Begins at Home This book is about the complex, conflict-ridden, and ambivalent encounter of Jews from Arab countries with Zionist nationalism and the Jewish state.1 These conflicts had a tremendous bearing on my own upbringing, as the fol­ lowing personal story will show. Some time ago, as I sat down to work in a Tel Aviv cafe in the area where I live, an elderly man suddenly approached me. “You are the son of Eliahu Shaharabani, of blessed memory ” he said, half stating a fact, half asking. I looked at the man standing in front of me. I had never seen him before. He was handsome, about seventy years old, and spoke with a heavy Iraqi accent. This is what my father would look like if he were alive, I thought to myself. “My name is Avner Yaron,” the man explained. “I recruited your father into the intelligence community in the 1950s.” The tables in the cafe were close together, and I had the feeling that every one in the place was listening to our conversation. “1 have proof,” he said, as though revealing a secret. “If you like, I'll show you.” I felt a sense of relief when he left. I watched him as he walked under the big awning of the cafe, crossed the street, and receded into the distance. My discomfort had nothing to do with the suddenness of the mans ap­ pearance or his reference to my father’s work. What he had told me came as no great surprise. 1 knew a little about my father’s history, and somehow I had expected an episode like this sooner or later. I wasn’t sure 1 would ever hear from Yaron again. Nor did I really want to. Two weeks later, a fax arrived in my office from the secret agent, saying: "There is an envelope for you in the cafe.” I was a bit put out: unmarked brown envelopes have unpleasant connotations these day's. Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist. The envelope contained two group photographs, in black and white, and a note: ‘These are photos with your late father from 1950.” One photograph showed four young men and a young woman, all in their early twenties, some wearing khaki shirts, the others white shirts. All were Arab Jews. The other photograph showed four young men and two young women