Contested Histories & Disembodied Voices: How to Speak Of the Arab Jew

A Lecture Presented by David Shasha, a major

progressive intellectual leader who writes on subjects
ranging over Sephardic Jewish identity, history,
culture and politics.

“The term Arab Jew is one that is at the very foundation of the contestation of the history of Jews who once
lived in the Arab world.

Zionism has sought to negate the whole of the Diaspora Jewish history.
The Jews who lived in the Middle East, outside the orbit of Europe and its Modernity, have been viewed as primitives and as lacking in refinement and culture.

In addition, these Arab Jews, pejoratively known in Israel as Mizrahim –
Orientals, represent an uncomfortable link to the current enemies of the Jewish state…”