Trip to Amman and Conversation with Mizrahi Jews

Coloured windows that shows how in Yemen, the word Allah was used in Arabic, exactly the same for both for Muslims and Jews.

Last Thursday I travelled from Tel Aviv to Amman for a Peace Conference. I did this with a group of Israelis from an NGO called Wounded Crossing Borders, which has managed to create dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians that have suffered physically and psychologically due to war.

The trip took us through the North of Israel in order to cross through the Jordan River Crossing and then we took a bus to Amman. In total we travelled for around 8 hours. In the bus I get to talk about the members of this group. One of them is an Iraqi Jew, now living in Israel. She explains me how she had never thought about going to Israel and considered herself even anti-Zionist some decades ago. However, when Saddam Hussein came to power she was expelled from the country, leaving all her properties there, and after travelling to Turkey and to other countries in the region, the only realistic option left was to go to Israel. She arrived in Israel as an Arabic native speaker and had to learn Hebrew, get into the new culture, etc... Nowadays she is integrated in the Israeli life, but longs for the day she can go back to her beloved Iraq, of which she still keeps deeds of property and even a passport. On the topic of Mizrahi Jews, Arab Jews and their forced immigration to Israel and current situation in the country, I think it might be interesting to read this article by David Sasha, the director of the Sephardic Heritage in Brooklyn, or this paper, (also available here) by professor Ella Shohat, from NYU.

Almost one million of Arab Jews sought refugee in Israel since its creation in 1948.

Another member of the group comes originally from Lebanon. She explains me that she never experienced persecution herself but something drew her to Israel (even if I later learn that her uncle, a professor, was killed in Lebanon just for being Jewish). She talks about the beauty of Lebanon and how much she misses this city and would love to go back (Israelis are not allowed to travel to Lebanon and Lebanese are not allowed into Israel). It seems to be a general feeling in her family. As a matter of fact she tells me a story about it. Her late father was hospitalized in the USA 20 years ago and she wanted to visit him. It happened that the Hospital authorities in the USA would not let her in his room due to some schedule restrictions. She called her father and told him to tell the nurses that he felt he was going to die and he urgently needed to see his daughter now. Some minutes later the nurses let her in and she saw her father plunged into tears. Wow dad, you’re a really good actor, how can you pretend to be crying so realistically? He answers: I was not pretending, I was just remembering Beirut.

Mizrahi Jews in Yemen (only a couple of hundreds are left in the country due to persecution). We can even observe their physical similitude and even similar dressing style with the current Muslim Arabs of the Middle East.