XPost: sci.military.naval, or.politics, ca.politics
XPost: seattle.politics, alt.law-enforcement
from
https://www.newsweek.com/protesters-against-israel-fail-key-history-test-opinion-1898994
Only evil anti-Semitics would try claiming these people don't
have a right to live somewhere.
Protesters Against Israel Fail Key History Test | Opinion
Published May 09, 2024 at 1:44 PM EDT
00:59
Americans' Support for Israel Aid Slides
By Roya Hakakian
Author
63
In the war between Israel and Hamas, there have been far too many casualties—thousands of innocent civilians have died, primarily in
Gaza. But this war has another less visible casualty: the hundreds of
thousands of Jewish immigrants to Israel from the Middle East and North
Africa known as Mizrahi, whose history is being erased from the popular narrative about Israel. My community is among them.
When angry protesters hurl charges of apartheid and colonialism at
Israel, they are, knowingly or not, repudiating the truth about Israel's
origin and the vast racial and ethnic diversity of its nation.
I was born and raised in Iran in a family of Jewish educators. I came of
age during the tumultuous years of the Iranian revolution, just as
Ayatollah Khomeini rose to power in 1979, and soon thereafter,
annihilated his opposition—feminists, leftists, even the Islamic
Marxists who had long revered him as their spiritual leader. Until 1979,
if anyone had told my observant Jewish family that we would someday
leave Iran, we would have laughed. In fact, at our Passover seders, the
words "next year in Jerusalem," were always followed by chuckles and
quips, "oh, yeah, sure, Watch me pack!" all underlining our collective
belief that we were exactly where we intended to remain. We loved
Israel, but Israel was a Nirvana—a place we revered but never expected
to reach.
False Understanding of History
Protesters march with a sign "Paris mobilizes against genocide and
colonialism" on Dec. 2, in Paris, France. OWEN FRANKEN - CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES The 30 years preceding the Islamic revolution had led the Jewish
community to believe that the dark days of bigotry were behind them. And
for good reason! When my father was a schoolboy in the late 1930s, he
was not allowed to attend school on rainy days. In the highly
conservative town where he grew up, in Khonsar, his Shiite neighbors
considered Jews "unclean," or Najes. They barred them, among other
things, from leaving their homes on rainy days, lest the rainwater
splashed off the bodies of the Jews and onto the Muslim passersby, thus
making them "unclean," too. Yet, that same boy grew up, left the insular
town, attended college in Tehran, earned a master's degree, and served
in the royal army as a second lieutenant. (To his last day, my father's
photo in military uniform was among his most prized possessions.) After service, he became the principal of a school, purchased a home in what
was then a relatively upscale neighborhood of Tehran. The distance
between my father's childhood and adulthood far surpassed two decades.
It was the distance between two eras—between incivility and civility, bigotry and tolerance.
Yet, as if on cue, the demon of antisemitism was unleashed again. The
1979 Islamic revolution summoned all the prejudices my father thought
had been irretrievably buried. One day, on the wall across our home,
graffiti appeared, "Jews gets lost!" Soon thereafter, the residence and
fabric store my aunt and her extended family owned in my father's
childhood town were set on fire after a mob of protesters looted it.
Within days, she and her family, whose entire life's savings had burned
in that fire, left for Israel. As young as I was, I could see that the
regime was indiscriminately brutal to all those it deemed a threat to
its reign, especially secular Muslims. But the new laws were
specifically designed so that non-Muslims, and women, all but became second-class citizens. Members of religious minorities, especially the
Baha'i, could no longer eye top jobs in academia, government, the
military, etc. Restaurateurs had to display signs in their windows
making clear that "the establishment was operated by a non-Muslim." In a
court of law, members of religious minorities could offer testimony in
criminal trials, but theirs would only count as half that of a Muslim
witness. Jews were once again reduced to Dhimmis—tax-paying citizens
who were allowed to live, but not thrive. Then came a handful of
executions of prominent Jewish leaders in the early months after the revolution, which sent shockwaves through the community. Jewish schools
were allowed to operate, but under the headmastership of Muslims who
were officially appointed.
Sign up for Newsletter
NEWSLETTER
The Bulletin
Your Morning Starts Here
Begin your day with a curated outlook of top news around the world and
why it matters.
Within a few years after the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini to power, the
Jewish population of Iran, which once stood at 100,000, shrank to a
fraction of its size. Today, of the ancient community whose presence in
Iran predates that of Muslims, only 8,000 remain. For centuries, Iran
has been home to the most sacred Jewish sites in the Middle East outside
of Israel. But those monuments have either fallen into disrepair or are
targets of regular attacks by antisemitic mobs. Only last week, the tomb
of Esther and Mordecai—the memorial to the heroine and hero from the
Book of Esther who saved the Jews from being massacred in ancient
Persia, was set on fire.
READ MORE
President Joe Biden Is Good for the Jews and for Israel
Hamas Is to Blame for Israel's Rafah Operation
The Mainstream Media Is Biased Against Israel. I Know, I Was Part of It
How is it that the 90,000-plus who left Iran, many for Israel, are now
deemed as occupiers? How do Iranian refugees fleeing persecution become "colonizers" upon arrival in Israel? These families, my aunt among them,
were not emissaries of any standing empire, nor were they returning to a
place where they had no history. For them, Israel was not a home away
from their real homeland. It was their only homeland. The vitriolic
slogan that appeared across my home in 1979 demanded that we "get lost!"
In 2024, once again, the same Jews are being called upon to leave, this
time Israel. Where, then, are Jews allowed to live?
Iranian Jews were not alone. Jews from Iraq, especially in the aftermath
of the 1941 pogrom called Farhood, similarly fled their homeland. So did
the Jews of Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Morocco, Algeria,
Ethiopia, Afghanistan, etc. All, destitute and dejected, they took
refuge in Israel. Today, they make up nearly 50 percent of Israel's
population. To call such a nation colonial GRAVELY misrepresents the
facts about Jews and Israel.
In his timeless essay, Looking Back on the Spanish Civil War, George
Orwell said that in the Spain of 1937, he "saw history being written not
in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according
to various 'party lines.'" With the alarming rise of antisemitism around
the world, and in light of the bloody attacks on Israel by Hamas on Oct.
7, the greatest massacre of Jews since World War II, 2024 bears an
uncanny resemblance to Orwell's 1937. But perhaps in no way more
ominously than the way truth has been upended to serve an ideological narrative—one in which Jews, who have lived uninterruptedly in that
land for more than two millennia, are cast as white non-indigenous
interlopers, with no roots in what has always been their ancient homeland.
A public scholar at the Moynihan Center (CCNY), Roya Hakakian is the
author of several books including, Journey from the Land of No: A
Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran (Crown, 2005).
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Request Reprint & Licensing Submit Correction View Editorial Guidelines
About the writer
Roya Hakakian
Building A
10 May, 2024
Palestine must give up both the Hostages and Hamas, and condemn the
behavior. Until then, they have not shown the ability to self-govern.
Wyrd
9 May, 2024
""Jews of Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Morocco, Algeria,
Ethiopia, Afghanistan, etc. All, destitute and dejected, they took
refuge in Israel. Today, they make up nearly 50 percent of Israel's population."""
Wow, I never knew that. Great article.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)