The Mizrahi Thorn in the Side of Israeli Left

[Mosby]

Roy Hasan has been described as the Israeli Eminem. The subversive, indignant, radical 32-year-old Mizrahi poet from a housing project outside Haifa received the prestigious Bernstein Prize and an award of 50,000 NIS from the Israeli Publishers Association this past July.

His provocative poem “ If There’ll Be Peace, All the Arsim Will Come ” sheds light on the complex dynamic in Israel between the white Jewish left and Mizrahim, Jews of Middle Eastern descent. The poem calls out Ashkenazim — Jews of European origins — for “hypocrisy, hegemony, and all around ass-hole-itude,” as it has been described by the radio station TLV1.

“In order to fully understand [the poem] you need to have grown up here or live the reality of Israeli society,” Hasan told me in an email exchange.

The poem focuses on local, everyday Israel through Hasan’s point of view. He criticizes privileged “socialists” who participate in capitalism, and leftist atheists who scorn religious Judaism, but ostensibly respect Islam.

Read more: http://forward.com/culture/320255/the-mizrahi-thorn-in-israels-leftist-side/#ixzz3ktvm4EuD

I just love those
socialists who hate capitalism
so ostentatiously, wear ugly sandals
and torn t-shirts, wrapping themselves in a homeless look
without telling a soul about grandma’s inheritance or dad’s real estate
(they look homeless too)
and criticize the culture of affluence with bombast
as if they were prophets of vengeance with gurgling stomachs.

I just love those
who wish their Arab brothers
Ramadan Kareem
and sign petitions legalizing
the sale of hametz during Passover.

I just love those
who relish in the muazzin’s call
and see the Chabad or Breslav
truck in the neighborhood
as the devil’s wheeled messengers.

I just love those
who call the settlers messianic
and crazy because they believe in this land
by some godly decree
and cry the pain of the Palestinians
for having been expelled from this land
which they believe to be theirs
by some godly decree
(the very same decree from the very same god, by the way).

I just love those,
third generation to the
plunder of lands by the kibbutzim,
who boycott the settlements
because Occupation and stolen land

(I dream one day
to have the privilege
of boycotting cultural events on kibbutzim
as a political act, in the meantime
I suffice with charging them weekend rates
on weekdays).

I just love those
sensitive Jews who demonstrate against the Occupation
and go home to their
Arab house in Yaffo
which they call Yaffa
with a melancholy glance of
shared fate over hummus
at Abu something-or-other
licking their lips with every
wipe of the pita and
murmuring about ending the Occupation,
dreaming of two states for two nations
because – walla –
(they fumble for the Arabic)
Occupation Occupation
(or nakba nakba):
next to them but not with them,
they’re Arabs after all.

An Arab friend said about them once
that they’ll never make peace,
because if there’ll be peace
all the arsim[1] will come.

[guillaumeb]

1. There was a song, back in the long ago, you might know of it:

[Ken Burch]

13. I got that parallel, too. n/t.

[underthematrix]

2. Jesus, a Jewish rabbi "and his feet were like unto burnt brass"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_appearance_of_Jesus

European in America, Europeans in Africa, Europeans in Asia, Europeans in the Middle East, Europeans in Central and South America, Europeans in Australia.

More than 85% of the world's population are people of color. The Middle East is comprised of brown peeps so I'm pretty sure Jesus' feet were not white or pink.

Less (white) cannot produce more (brown/black) so the idea that European Jews can lay claim to an area to which they could never have come from is rich. But that is the nature of Europeans, always claiming other people's lands and resources and then building totally illogical narratives to reinforce their treachery.

I'm not mad. I'm just stating the facts. And social media has become a powerful tool for deconstructing the treachery and exposing it for what it is.

[6chars]

3. Israel is an area European Jews could never have come from?

That's a classic.

[underthematrix]

4. Do you know the history of the Jewish settlement in Palestine?

It was established in Palestine in 1947. My point is Europeans are not native to the Middle East. people in the Middle East do not have PINK SKIN. PINK skin is much more common among Europeans.

[underthematrix]

6. That's one way to end a discussion

[King_David]

7. Yes , but he's correct. nt

[grossproffit]

8. Funny, I didn't see a discussion. I saw a false narrative being stated as fact.

[Mosby]

9. Ashkenazi Jews trace their roots back to the Babylonian exile

Some descended from families in Roman controlled Israel and Judea.

Genetically they are close to Kurds.

[leftynyc]

17. It's an old anti semitic canard

You would have thought the DNA proof would have been enough to put this bullshit to a stop but here it is, on DU - a supposed liberal board.

[6chars]

18. giving the poster the benefit of the doubt

i take it as a person who is uninformed/misinformed.

there are some people with an agenda who put out pseudo papers on this kind of thing, and it then gets passed on through more and more repetition and so people who aren't really paying attention sort of absorb it as part of their worldview. but it is necessary to correct it, including when things get conveyed in places like DU, so that this misinformation doesn't propagate.

[leftynyc]

19. I don't give people

who post on political boards - those with higher than average IQs and education - the benefit of the doubt. He/she is just trying to find a audience receptive to that crap.

[shira]

11. You haven't seen too many European Jews if u think we're all white...

I'm constantly asked where I come from & the guesses range from Spain to Italy to Armenia.

It's really rich you believe European Jews are white. We weren't treated as whites for centuries in Europe, but now we're white?

Unbelievable.

[Israeli]

10. So Mosby you like our Mizrahi poets ?

Here is another for you :

Open Letter to a Small Town Boy

Shlomi Hatuka


Don’t enlist

This is rebellion


In any case

you won’t gain a thing

All of the promises

are reserved for whites

and all of the concessions

are promised to their children

and anyhow no right

is worth your mother’s tears,

or his


What’s the use

of your hands adjusting to the feel of metal

and your eyes seeing friends

through the gun sight

and why should you hear

commanders barking

you’re better off with

professions of love

from a girl

Go to the army shrink

tell him

about your dreams-

he’ll think that you’re mad

Go to the doctor

ask him

why they make sure that you are healthy

just before sending

you to die


Take these three years

give them to your heart:

a good

firing zone

it’s the place

that blurs the boundaries


Or at least

give them to your mind

take three years to think

study

acquire knowledge

for even if you do wish to fight and kill

surely you must first discover

who exactly

your enemy is.

source: https://ilanot.wordpress.com/open-letter-to-a-small-town-boy/

[guillaumeb]

15. What language is the original?

A very beautiful expression, especially the part:

What’s the use

of your hands adjusting to the feel of metal

and your eyes seeing friends

through the gun sight

and why should you hear

commanders barking

you’re better off with

professions of love

"and you eyes seeing friends through the gun sight".

Think of that. Seven words that get to the very heart of the matter. ALL of the inhabitants of historic Palestine share the same genetic heritage, the same Semitic heritage. They may call God by a slightly different name, but they share a common
belief in the one God, a common religious heritage. A path to God that went from Judaism to Christianity to Islam.

It is truly cousin fighting cousin, and like the US civil war, like every civil war in every country, the echoes of this family war will resonate for many years.

Finally,

for even if you do wish to fight and kill

surely you must first discover

who exactly

your enemy is.

The enemy is those who would divide cousin from cousin, worker from worker, in the name of power and profit.


Thank you for the poem, and the link, Israeli.

[Ken Burch]

12. Seems to me he's calling for a consistent left ethos

not saying that the left is evil.

He's wrong to defend the West Bank settlers, but other than that there's a lot of validity in those lyrics.

[Israeli]

14. He is full of anger ....

and hate ....just like Shlomi Hatuka is Ken .

They both have good reason ...

see : http://972mag.com/the-tragedy-of-the-lost-yemenite-children-in-the-footsteps-of-the-adoptees/85930/

the " enemy " they both talk of is the Ashkenazi elite .

[Ken Burch]

16. I've always thought the early Labor Zionists(the originators of the Askenazim elite)

made a cataclysmic social and political blunder in refusing to include the Mizrahim in their "social democratic" vision of the new state. The Mizhahim were and are mainly working-class and poor and would have been receptive to a left program that treated them as equals. The Askenazim, from the 1to940's onward, refused to see this and evidently couldn't imagine the Mizrahim playing any role in the building of Israel other than as low-skilled cheap labor), leaving the Mizrahim open to false "populist" appeals from the right(who took their votes and then pitted the Mizrahim against the Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in the Territories for low-status jobs and lives, just as economic elites in the States pitted and continue to pit working-class whites against African-Americans, Latinos and Native Americans). This is largely why the Mizrahim are more right-of-center than any other voting bloc in Israel and also why they tend to be much more hawkish towards and contemptuous towards Israeli Arabs and Palestinians than other blocs within that country).

Not that you didn't know all of that, of course, Israeli(I would never intentionally subject you to "goysplaining&quot , but some other people checking on the I/P group may not be aware of that background.