Avi Shlaim: An Israeli Born in Iraq and Now Living in England

Avi Shlaim, in the course of an interview in the Palestine Chroncile (May 14, 2004):

You were born in Baghdad. Do you have any memories of living in Iraq?

I was born in 1945, and my family left Iraq in 1950. I was 5 years old, and hadn’t started going to school so I never learned to read and write Arabic. I have only disjointed memories of life in Iraq. My father was a very wealthy merchant … we lived in a spacious house, and had a very leisurely and pleasant lifestyle. My parents always referred to Iraq as ‘God’s Paradise’, and there was no history of anti-Semitism in Iraq, only isolated incidents. The Jews were generally well integrated and happy.

But after Iraq’s participation in the 1948 war, there was a backlash against the Jews. Life became uncomfortable and in 1950 there was a mass exodus to Israel of about 100,000 of the 130,000 Iraqi Jews. The Iraqi government did not want the Jews to leave as they were a pillar of the Iraqi economy. The Israeli government, desperately short of manpower, pressed for the Jews to come out, even if this meant they had to leave everything behind.

My family and I were part of that exodus to Israel. We were not refugees in the strict sense of the word because we weren’t persecuted or expelled; we made our own decision to leave. So are situation is not comparable to that of the Palestinian refugees, who were displaced by Israel in 1948. But in a real sense to us, we were victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Iraqi born Israeli Rabbi David Rabeeya refers to himself as an Arab-Jew, which is not an expression that the Israeli government recognises. Is this a term with which you would describe yourself?

No, I would not. I would describe myself as an Israeli because I grew up in Israel, served in the Israeli army, and I was even a patriotic Israeli in my youth. It never occurred to me to describe myself as an Arab-Jew. Neither part of this description would fit my identity today. I don’t see myself as an Arab, and although I happen to be a Jew, it is not a major part of my identity because I am an atheist.

I have often thought that if the people of the Middle East were more aware of their common background as Semites, this might go some way to blurring the battle-lines in the Middle East.

I agree with that. Unfortunately the Israeli establishment has never used Jews from the Arab countries as a bridge. The official ideology in the 1950s (during the time of mass immigration to Israel) was that everything Arab was inferior and primitive. The task was to erase the Arab identity, culture, language, habits and folklore of the new immigrants, and give them a new Ashkenazi identity.

There was an element of racism, or at least arrogance on the part of the Ashkenazi elite, in wanting to ‘raise’ the Oriental Jews to their level of civilisation. This prevalent attitude meant that Jews from Arab countries did not dwell on their Arab heritage, but strove to integrate themselves into their new society.

They also internalised the ethos of Israel as a new state that surrounded by implacable enemies with no option but to stand up and fight. This is the reason that many Oriental Jews vote for Right-wing parties that are nationalistic and xenophobic such as Herut and later Likud. Incidentally, it is also true that Israel has never used its Arab population as a bridge to the neighbouring countries.

While the Israeli Arabs accepted the legitimacy of the new state, the Israeli establishment persisted in regarding them with suspicion as a potential Fifth Column. Although the Israeli Arabs wanted to integrate, Israel saw them as a problem rather than an asset and was unwilling or unable to treat them as equal citizens. David Ben Gurion set the tone by projecting Israel as a European country in culture and values which only ‘by accident’ is located in the Middle East.