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No, Israel isn’t a country of privileged and powerful white Europeans
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-mazzig-mizrahi-jews-israel-20190520-story.html ^ | May 20, 2019 | Hen Mazzig

Posted on 05/23/2019 6:04:21 AM PDT by SJackson

Along with resurgent identity politics in the United States and Europe, there is a growing inclination to frame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of race. According to this narrative, Israel was established as a refuge for oppressed white European Jews who in turn became oppressors of people of color, the Palestinians.

As an Israeli, and the son of an Iraqi Jewish mother and North African Jewish father, it’s gut-wrenching to witness this shift.

I am Mizrahi, as are the majority of Jews in Israel today. We are of Middle Eastern and North African descent. Only about 30% of Israeli Jews are Ashkenazi, or the descendants of European Jews. I am baffled as to why mainstream media and politicians around the world ignore or misrepresent these facts and the Mizrahi story. Perhaps it’s because our history shatters a stereotype about the identity of my country and my people.

Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, was not established for just one type of Jew but for all Jews, from every part of the world — the Middle East, North Africa, Ethiopia, Asia and, yes, Europe. No matter where Jews physically reside, they maintain a connection to the land of Israel, where our story started and where today we continue to craft it.

The likes of Women’s March activist Tamika Mallory, Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill and, more recently, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) falsify reality in their discussions of Palestinians’ “intersectional” struggle, their use of the term “apartheid” to characterize Israeli policy, and their tendency to define Israelis as Ashkenazi Jews alone.

I believe their misrepresentations are part of a strategic campaign to taint Israel as an extension of privileged and powerful white Europe, thereby justifying any and all attacks on it.

(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Israel
KEYWORDS: denial; jerusalem; mizrahi
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1 posted on 05/23/2019 6:04:21 AM PDT by SJackson
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To: SJackson

30% Ashkenazi is probably a very low estimate today, given the many Russian immigrants to Israel. About 15% of Israelis are Russian, though many of them aren’t categorized as Jewish.


2 posted on 05/23/2019 6:08:04 AM PDT by SJackson (Pilgrims, doing the jobs Americans won't do)
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To: dennisw; Cachelot; Nix 2; veronica; Catspaw; knighthawk; Alouette; Optimist; weikel; Lent; GregB; ..
Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

..................

30% Ashkenazi is probably a very low estimate today, given the many Russian immigrants to Israel. About 15% of Israelis are Russian, though many of them aren’t categorized as Jewish.

3 posted on 05/23/2019 6:08:42 AM PDT by SJackson (Pilgrims, doing the jobs Americans won't do)
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To: dennisw; Cachelot; Nix 2; veronica; Catspaw; knighthawk; Alouette; Optimist; weikel; Lent; GregB; ..
Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

..................

30% Ashkenazi is probably a very low estimate today, given the many Russian immigrants to Israel. About 15% of Israelis are Russian, though many of them aren’t categorized as Jewish.

4 posted on 05/23/2019 6:10:48 AM PDT by SJackson (If youÂ’re wondering whatÂ’s wrong with capitalism, itÂ’s made in Hong Kong, B. Sanders, when in Rus)
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To: SJackson

What I find nasty and disgusting is these white jewish Democrats who owned slaves in America and supported Roosevelt incarcerating the Japanese putting antisemitism on the back of their brothers in Israel.

This is a most disgusting form of antisemitism coming from democrat jew ideologues, a buck passing blackmail.

There will be consequences to this in end times


5 posted on 05/23/2019 6:16:42 AM PDT by JudgemAll (Democrats Fed. job-security in hatse:hypocrites must be gay like us or be tested/crucified)
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To: SJackson
...privileged and powerful white Europeans ...

Such people would remain in Europe wouldn't they? There are sabras and those of the diaspora, Ashkenazim and Sepphardim. Privileged white people? Ha.

6 posted on 05/23/2019 6:26:46 AM PDT by Rummyfan (In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel.)
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To: SJackson

No need for Israelis to be defensive about their country. If Israel were more white than it is, why should it matter? We don’t complain about Africa being mostly black, India being mostly Hindu, etc.


7 posted on 05/23/2019 6:30:43 AM PDT by Socon-Econ (adical Islam,)
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To: SJackson

20% of Israeli citizens are Arabs. The balance between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi is about 50/50, with a slight percentage more of Mizrahim. That’s because after 1948, many Arab countries either drove out with persecution, or outright evicted their Jewish populations, and where else would they go.


8 posted on 05/23/2019 7:07:16 AM PDT by Eleutheria5 (If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.)
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To: SJackson
Surprise: Ashkenazi Jews Are Genetically European

https://www.livescience.com/40247-ashkenazi-jews-have-european-genes.html

9 posted on 05/23/2019 7:26:59 AM PDT by jimwatx
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To: jimwatx
Always found the name Ashkenazi somewhat ironic.
10 posted on 05/23/2019 7:28:37 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: jimwatx

DNA does not determine Jewishness. Two coverts could marry and have many children, none of whom would have any Jewish DNA, but would be 100% Jewish.

Certainly God intended that Jews make converts from among the righteous of all nations.


11 posted on 05/23/2019 7:37:39 AM PDT by jjotto (Next week, BOOM!, for sure!)
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To: jjotto
DNA does not determine Jewishness.

No argument here, but you might want to take that up with the Israeli government who nowadays uses maternal linage in deciding whether someone is "Jewish enough" to be permitted into Israel as a Jewish citizen.

The Ashkenazi founders were a group of less than 15-20 Jews, only 4 of whom were Jewish women, the rest being converts. Seeing as how few Jews were the genesis of the Ashkenazi clan, it's highly unlikely any of them went thru any kind of formal conversion process, rather they just called and identified themselves as being Jewish after intermarriage.

12 posted on 05/23/2019 7:58:43 AM PDT by jimwatx
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To: jimwatx

The Israeli government is secular and has its own criteria for citizenship based on political negotiation. Many non-Jews become citizens of Israel.

For personal status such as marriage, Jewishness is determined by the rabbinate, which does require a Jewish mother OR official conversion.


13 posted on 05/23/2019 8:07:44 AM PDT by jjotto (Next week, BOOM!, for sure!)
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To: jimwatx

“Jewishness” is Biblically defined by either conversion or ancestry, much like the criteria for American citizenship.

Regarding DNA, nearly all Jewish populations, from Ashkenazi to Yemenite to North African, are more related to one another than any other ethnic group, with an origin apparently in the Middle East.


14 posted on 05/23/2019 8:17:33 AM PDT by rightwingcrazy (;-)
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To: JudgemAll

“What I find nasty and disgusting is these white jewish Democrats who owned slaves in America....”


Listen, I dislike these Leftist Jews more than you (since I am Jewish and my great grandfather was murdered by Stalin and his scumbag Communist henchmen), but the simple fact is that before the end of slavery in 1865, there were precious few Jews in the US (between 150,000 and 200,000). Not all of them lived in the South (in fact, most lived in the North), and of those few (percentage-wise) in the South, very few owned slaves. Did SOME Jews own slaves in the US? Yes, undoubtedly - but don’t pin that on all of the Leftist Jews of today (and, to be fair and accurate, NONE of them owned slaves, unless you can find some Leftist Jew alive today who was born no later than the early 1840s).

Let’s try not to be like the Leftists (Jewish or not) by being purely emotional. Let’s rely upon facts and rational analysis. Again, I despise these people, because they’d bring the same kind of regime here that my grandfather ran from in Russia in the 1920s. But let’s criticize them for what they actually did and do, nothing more.


15 posted on 05/23/2019 8:33:04 AM PDT by Ancesthntr ("The right to buy weapons is the right to be free." A. E. van Vogt, The Weapons Shops of Isher)
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To: jjotto

“Certainly God intended that Jews make converts from among the righteous of all nations.”


To be more accurate, God intended that Jews ACCEPT genuine converts (i.e. not people doing it for the convenience of getting married to a Jewish person) from those who are willing to go through the very rigorous conversion process (well, rigorous if it is an Orthodox conversion; not so much if it is a Conservative one, and not at all for a Reform one).

But, to be sure, you are correct that DNA doesn’t determine Jewishness (or being an adherent of any other religion). What one chooses to believe is a matter of conscious decisions, not DNA.


16 posted on 05/23/2019 8:37:30 AM PDT by Ancesthntr ("The right to buy weapons is the right to be free." A. E. van Vogt, The Weapons Shops of Isher)
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To: SJackson

Angers me too. I’m not Jewish, but my late wife was (is) Jewish from Morocco. People guessed our kids were Mexican or Indian or Pakistani, even Filipino, but we’re always surprised to find they got their rich color from their Jewish North African DNA. By marriage, I have tons of Israeli relatives.
People are somehow unaware that tons of middle eastern Jews went to Israel after the modern country was formed. Most Americans are utterly ignorant of what “dhimmi” means, or what the “Thursday Tax” was (you could re-purchase your freedom of worship, for 7 days, by paying a tax, every Thursday). .And no one is more ignorant of these things than
Europeans.


17 posted on 05/23/2019 8:53:11 AM PDT by cookcounty (Susan Rice: G Gordon Liddy times 10.)
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To: rightwingcrazy
“Jewishness” is Biblically defined by either conversion or ancestry

How does the Bible define atheist Jews, who make up a sizable (according to survey cited by wikipedia half of American Jews expressed doubt about the existence of God)% of the population? Based on Jewish law's emphasis on matrilineal descent, even religiously conservative Orthodox Jewish authorities would accept an atheist born to a Jewish mother as fully Jewish. Yet 50% to 80% of Ashkenazi dna is of European origin, so how can you consider an athiest "Jew" to be Jewish?

Regarding DNA, nearly all Jewish populations, from Ashkenazi to Yemenite to North African, are more related to one another than any other ethnic group, with an origin apparently in the Middle East.

Yes I agree they are still more closely related to each other than they are to others because of inbreeding, but Ashkenazi Jews have been shown to have mostly European dna with a less than 50% admixture of genes coming from the mideast.

18 posted on 05/23/2019 8:56:13 AM PDT by jimwatx
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To: jimwatx

Where did you get the idea that “the Ashkenaz Clan was formed by 15-20 Jews, only 4 of which were women, the rest (rest of the 15-20 Jews?) being non-Jews”?
Please point me to the scholarship on this, seems completely unlikely.


19 posted on 05/23/2019 9:08:35 AM PDT by cookcounty (Susan Rice: G Gordon Liddy times 10.)
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To: jimwatx

“How does the Bible define atheist Jews, who make up a sizable (according to survey cited by wikipedia half of American Jews expressed doubt about the existence of God)% of the population”

Unfortunately, not a new or uncommon sort of phenomenon. Just read the Book of Kings, for example. Majority idol worship, but still “Children of Israel”.


20 posted on 05/23/2019 9:11:34 AM PDT by rightwingcrazy (;-)
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