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If 44.9% (or more) of Israeli Jews are of Middle Eastern descent, and 20% of Israel’s entire population are Palestinian Arabs (I.e. also of Middle Eastern desce

by ido 2y ago

If 44.9% (or more) of Israeli Jews are of Middle Eastern descent, and 20% of Israel’s entire population are Palestinian Arabs (I.e. also of Middle Eastern descent) then more than 50% of the entire population of the country (Jews + non-Jews) are of Middle Eastern descent. And the biggest ethnic grouping (if you choose to group them that way, as all such groupings are somewhat arbitrary) are Middle Eastern Jews. And I’m sorry but it just sounds like you’ve never lived in Israel or even visited for an extended period of time. Aside from the relatively recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union (starting from the 90s) Jews of all backgrounds speak primarily Hebrew, whether Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, or whatever. Aside from some ultra orthodox you will also not find anyone under 80 speaking Yiddish.

runarberg 2y ago
I see, however I was under the impression that Jews in Arabic countries (including Palestine) spoke primarily Arabic, and it was only after they migrated (or were otherwise absorbed into) Israel when they converted to Hebrew. And that the modern Hebrew language was a Zionist effort (a European colonial enterprise) to convert all immigrants to Israel to Hebrew speakers. So even though today most Israeli Jews speak Hebrew, the only reason for that is the colonial prospects of European settlers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo-Arabic_dialects#Present_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo-Arabic_dialects#Present_...
- tptacek 2y ago
  It is hard to understand the point you're trying to make here. Israeli Jewish people of Iraqi origin are MENA people, not "colonial Europeans". I don't know that trying to sort out whether Hebrew is European or not is an especially productive enterprise.
  - racional 2y ago
    Israeli Jewish people of Iraqi origin are MENA people, not "colonial Europeans." I'd recommend you also start reading more carefully, please. This (the idea that "MENA are European") is very clearly not what runarberg is saying. Nor are they even remotely suggesting that "Hebrew is European".
    - tptacek 2y ago
      You're responding to a comment that opens up "it is hard to understand what point you're making". You can tell me what the point he's making is, if you're confident in it. In turn, I'll be more careful about using quotation marks. That's an HN tic that I sometimes forget. While I have both of your attention --- you all get that this is the same group of like 4-6 people talking to themselves, over and over, right? On HN, a 2-day-old threat is necrotic. As I've said elsewhere, I only really have two angles on this issue: (1) that Israelis aren't European and Gazans aren't Hamas, and (2) that none of this is ever going to get settled on HN.
      - runarberg 2y ago
        The thing that sparked my interest here is a sidenote in one of the cited Wikipedia articles: > Not all Jews immigrating to Israel from European countries are of Ashkenazi origin (the majority of French Jews are of Sephardic, and some Jews from the Asian Republics of the USSR are Mizrahi), and the Israeli government does not distinguish between Jewish communities in its census. [1] That is how the Israeli government doesn’t track European vs. MENA ethnicity, instead leaving it up to studies to guess. And it took me on a rabbit hole of trying to figure out why that is. It feels very odd to separate between Arabs and Jews, but not allow Jews to identify as Arab-Jew in the population statistics. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Jews
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - runarberg 2y ago
    What I’m trying to argue is that Israelis of middle east and north African ancestry are also victims of European colonization. That their cultural identity was erased and absorbed into the dominant European identity. The introduction of Modern Hebrew was unmistakably a Zionist enterprise (which it self is a breed of European colonialism). As I’m reading through the linked sources in the Wikipedia article I cited I see how much of a cultural pressure Arabic speaking immigrants were put into speaking Hebrew, not Arabic, in public. As if their language (and by extension their cultural identity) was dirty somehow: > “I wanted people to speak Hebrew,” she said. “Kids who had Yiddish in their house felt the same. It was more so for those of us coming from the Islamic world, since Arabic was identified as the language of the enemy.” [1] Now Yiddish speaker probably experienced something similar, but at least they had other aspects of their culture accepted: > But the builders of the Israeli state faced a major ideological challenge with the Jewish population of the Middle East, who were encouraged to mass migrate to Palestine and used as cheap labour to build Zionist settlements. What the European colonisers found particularly “disturbing” about the Mizrahi Jews was their “Arab character”. > As Israel’s first female prime minister, Golda Meir, declared: “Every loyal Jew must speak Yiddish, for he who does not know Yiddish is not a Jew.” > That is, the only true Jewish identity was the one that the Ashkenazi elite had brought from Europe; the Jewishness of the Mizrahim (or Sephardim) was “impure”. Because of that, they were deemed susceptible to “Arab influence” and their loyalty questioned. Action had to be taken swiftly to control this “suspect” Jewish community which soon became half of the Israeli population. [2] This kind of reminds me of modern day California, how many Latin American immigrants (first and second generation) don’t feel comfortable speaking Spanish in public, instead speaking the language of the dominant culture, and having a part of their cultural identity erased as a result. 1: https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/recovering-judeo-arabic/ https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/recovering-judeo-ar... 2: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/3/21/singing-in-europes-last-middle-eastern-colony https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/3/21/singing-in-euro...
    - tptacek 2y ago
      I took this to #judaism on a Slack I'm on (I'm not Jewish; I'm Irish/Slavic Catholic) and got an earful about how complex the history is here: * The people of the Old Yishuv spoke Yiddish and Ladino, European languages, as well as Israeli Arabic; European language influence long predates Zionism. * The European character you're imputing to Modern Hebrew is its pronunciation, but Hebrew itself is the common character of all those languages, Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Arabic. * Jewish people in the Middle Eastern diaspora generally spoke Hebrew-inflected dialects of the regional languages (as you noted with the Judeo-Arabic page). * Israel is a melting pot of influences from the Jewish diaspora; for instance, Morrocan Jewish people determined the way Passover is celebrated (with Mimouna). Everything cuts in every direction. I'm not doing all this stuff justice (in case anyone from that Slack is reading this comment); just to say, all of this stuff is super complicated. What I'd like to understand better is: the comment you were responding to was defending the proposition that significant numbers (a plurality, I think?) of Israelis are indigenous MENA people. I get that there was probably cultural pressure to adopt Hebrew, and that modern Hebrew is associated with the Zionist cause. The Mizrahim generally arrived in Israel after the Nakba (in a series of counter-Nakbas), and were poorer, more rural, and less privileged than the Israelis who met them there. Sure, that rings true. But what difference does that make to the point the parent commenter was making? I'm just trying to understand the argument. (This I guess is a second reason I pop up on these threads: to get an excuse to get my head blown off with historical and linguistic facts from friends on Slacks).
racional 2y ago
Aside from the relatively recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union (starting from the 90s) Jews of all backgrounds speak primarily Hebrew. It sounds like you’ve never ... You must not be reading the post above yours. Because very clearly, the commenter wasn't saying that the Mizrahi don't currently speak Hebrew (some 60-70 years post-migration). Rather they were referring to loss of identity, de-facto forced assimilation and other unhappy circumstances they faced as a consequence of that migration. You may not like where they're going with the "colonial" interpretation, and other ideological implications they're drawing on top of this (e.g. the erasure of Judeo-Arabic identity). But that's no reason to start putting words into their mouth, and making them out to say something that they're plainly not.
- ido 2y ago
  But the Yiddish speaking culture of Ashkenazi Jews was also erased. At the founding of Israel the ideology was "we're all Israelis now, so speak Hebrew and forget your experience in the diaspora (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golah). It was certainly harsh and from modern perspective wrong but it applied to everyone, not just Mizrahi Jews. My grandparents had their last name "Hebrew-ised" and spoke Hebrew at home rather than their native Romanian/Ukranian/Russian.
  - racional 2y ago
    An excellent point + thanks for the golah/galut reference. I certainly didn't mean to imply that forced assimilation was an issue solely for the Mizrahi.

by ido 2y ago

runarberg 2y ago

I see, however I was under the impression that Jews in Arabic countries (including Palestine) spoke primarily Arabic, and it was only after they migrated (or were otherwise absorbed into) Israel when they converted to Hebrew. And that the modern Hebrew language was a Zionist effort (a European colonial enterprise) to convert all immigrants to Israel to Hebrew speakers. So even though today most Israeli Jews speak Hebrew, the only reason for that is the colonial prospects of European settlers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo-Arabic_dialects#Present_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo-Arabic_dialects#Present_...

tptacek 2y ago
It is hard to understand the point you're trying to make here. Israeli Jewish people of Iraqi origin are MENA people, not "colonial Europeans". I don't know that trying to sort out whether Hebrew is European or not is an especially productive enterprise.
- racional 2y ago
  Israeli Jewish people of Iraqi origin are MENA people, not "colonial Europeans." I'd recommend you also start reading more carefully, please. This (the idea that "MENA are European") is very clearly not what runarberg is saying. Nor are they even remotely suggesting that "Hebrew is European".
  - tptacek 2y ago
    You're responding to a comment that opens up "it is hard to understand what point you're making". You can tell me what the point he's making is, if you're confident in it. In turn, I'll be more careful about using quotation marks. That's an HN tic that I sometimes forget. While I have both of your attention --- you all get that this is the same group of like 4-6 people talking to themselves, over and over, right? On HN, a 2-day-old threat is necrotic. As I've said elsewhere, I only really have two angles on this issue: (1) that Israelis aren't European and Gazans aren't Hamas, and (2) that none of this is ever going to get settled on HN.
    - runarberg 2y ago
      The thing that sparked my interest here is a sidenote in one of the cited Wikipedia articles: > Not all Jews immigrating to Israel from European countries are of Ashkenazi origin (the majority of French Jews are of Sephardic, and some Jews from the Asian Republics of the USSR are Mizrahi), and the Israeli government does not distinguish between Jewish communities in its census. [1] That is how the Israeli government doesn’t track European vs. MENA ethnicity, instead leaving it up to studies to guess. And it took me on a rabbit hole of trying to figure out why that is. It feels very odd to separate between Arabs and Jews, but not allow Jews to identify as Arab-Jew in the population statistics. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Jews
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- runarberg 2y ago
  What I’m trying to argue is that Israelis of middle east and north African ancestry are also victims of European colonization. That their cultural identity was erased and absorbed into the dominant European identity. The introduction of Modern Hebrew was unmistakably a Zionist enterprise (which it self is a breed of European colonialism). As I’m reading through the linked sources in the Wikipedia article I cited I see how much of a cultural pressure Arabic speaking immigrants were put into speaking Hebrew, not Arabic, in public. As if their language (and by extension their cultural identity) was dirty somehow: > “I wanted people to speak Hebrew,” she said. “Kids who had Yiddish in their house felt the same. It was more so for those of us coming from the Islamic world, since Arabic was identified as the language of the enemy.” [1] Now Yiddish speaker probably experienced something similar, but at least they had other aspects of their culture accepted: > But the builders of the Israeli state faced a major ideological challenge with the Jewish population of the Middle East, who were encouraged to mass migrate to Palestine and used as cheap labour to build Zionist settlements. What the European colonisers found particularly “disturbing” about the Mizrahi Jews was their “Arab character”. > As Israel’s first female prime minister, Golda Meir, declared: “Every loyal Jew must speak Yiddish, for he who does not know Yiddish is not a Jew.” > That is, the only true Jewish identity was the one that the Ashkenazi elite had brought from Europe; the Jewishness of the Mizrahim (or Sephardim) was “impure”. Because of that, they were deemed susceptible to “Arab influence” and their loyalty questioned. Action had to be taken swiftly to control this “suspect” Jewish community which soon became half of the Israeli population. [2] This kind of reminds me of modern day California, how many Latin American immigrants (first and second generation) don’t feel comfortable speaking Spanish in public, instead speaking the language of the dominant culture, and having a part of their cultural identity erased as a result. 1: https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/recovering-judeo-arabic/ https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/recovering-judeo-ar... 2: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/3/21/singing-in-europes-last-middle-eastern-colony https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/3/21/singing-in-euro...
  - tptacek 2y ago
    I took this to #judaism on a Slack I'm on (I'm not Jewish; I'm Irish/Slavic Catholic) and got an earful about how complex the history is here: * The people of the Old Yishuv spoke Yiddish and Ladino, European languages, as well as Israeli Arabic; European language influence long predates Zionism. * The European character you're imputing to Modern Hebrew is its pronunciation, but Hebrew itself is the common character of all those languages, Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Arabic. * Jewish people in the Middle Eastern diaspora generally spoke Hebrew-inflected dialects of the regional languages (as you noted with the Judeo-Arabic page). * Israel is a melting pot of influences from the Jewish diaspora; for instance, Morrocan Jewish people determined the way Passover is celebrated (with Mimouna). Everything cuts in every direction. I'm not doing all this stuff justice (in case anyone from that Slack is reading this comment); just to say, all of this stuff is super complicated. What I'd like to understand better is: the comment you were responding to was defending the proposition that significant numbers (a plurality, I think?) of Israelis are indigenous MENA people. I get that there was probably cultural pressure to adopt Hebrew, and that modern Hebrew is associated with the Zionist cause. The Mizrahim generally arrived in Israel after the Nakba (in a series of counter-Nakbas), and were poorer, more rural, and less privileged than the Israelis who met them there. Sure, that rings true. But what difference does that make to the point the parent commenter was making? I'm just trying to understand the argument. (This I guess is a second reason I pop up on these threads: to get an excuse to get my head blown off with historical and linguistic facts from friends on Slacks).

racional 2y ago

Aside from the relatively recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union (starting from the 90s) Jews of all backgrounds speak primarily Hebrew. It sounds like you’ve never ... You must not be reading the post above yours. Because very clearly, the commenter wasn't saying that the Mizrahi don't currently speak Hebrew (some 60-70 years post-migration). Rather they were referring to loss of identity, de-facto forced assimilation and other unhappy circumstances they faced as a consequence of that migration. You may not like where they're going with the "colonial" interpretation, and other ideological implications they're drawing on top of this (e.g. the erasure of Judeo-Arabic identity). But that's no reason to start putting words into their mouth, and making them out to say something that they're plainly not.

ido 2y ago
But the Yiddish speaking culture of Ashkenazi Jews was also erased. At the founding of Israel the ideology was "we're all Israelis now, so speak Hebrew and forget your experience in the diaspora (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golah). It was certainly harsh and from modern perspective wrong but it applied to everyone, not just Mizrahi Jews. My grandparents had their last name "Hebrew-ised" and spoke Hebrew at home rather than their native Romanian/Ukranian/Russian.
- racional 2y ago
  An excellent point + thanks for the golah/galut reference. I certainly didn't mean to imply that forced assimilation was an issue solely for the Mizrahi.