Film Prompts Discussion of Arab-Jewish Identity

On Monday, Nov. 26, at 4:30 PM over 25 students, faculty and Middlebury residents gathered to watch the 2002 documentary Forget Baghdad, a film directed and written by Samir.

“I’m glad so many people are here,” said Danny Loehr ’13.5.

"I came because I’ve studied Arabic and I went to a few synagogues in Tunisia this summer and I was interested in Arab Jews and migration,” explained Loehr.

The screening was put on by the Center for Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE). Following the film, Instructor in Arabic Ahmad Almallah led a discussion about the film’s implications in the context of current conflict in the Middle East.

“This is such an important time for us to open a discussion on Israel and Palestine,” said Almallah.

“The movie helps us consider the complexity of Israeli society and its effect on the situation in Gaza and the West Bank,” added Almallah.

The film chronicles the history of Mizrahi Jews — Jews of Iraqi descent — who were encouraged to immigrate to Israel after it gained statehood in 1948.  The film focuses on four older men, friends of the filmmaker’s father, who immigrated to Israel from Iraq in the 1950s. The documentary explores the discrimination that Israel’s Arabic population has been subjected to over the last 60 years.

In the film, the four characters discuss how when they arrived in Israel many of the passengers were sprayed with DDT, an action meant to rid them of any chemicals or diseases they might have brought with them.

“It was as if we had arrived with microbes,” said Michael Sami, who is now a famous author in Israel.

When the Iraqis arrived in Israel the country was so strained by the massive influx of immigrants that there was no work, especially for Mizrahi Jews who were thought to be less intelligent than the Ashkenazi Jews from Europe.

“They thought we were primitive, in need of teaching,” said Sami in the film.

Ella Habiba Shohat, New York University professor of cultural studies, the daughter of two Iraqi Jews who now resides in New York City but grew up in Israel, is featured prominently throughout the film.

Shohat’s book Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (1989) drew a lot of political attention in Israel.

“Cinema has a very important role in the way we imagine certain groups of people,” she said in the film. She points to examples like Disney’s Aladdin (1992) and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944) as movies in which the Arab world is represented from a biased Western point of view.

“You have to deny a part of your identity in the public because it’s the identity of the enemy,” said Shohat, referring to her feeling that she had to hide her Arabic identity growing up in Israel.  She discusses in the film that she felt exiled as an Iraqi living in Israel.

“I understand her desire to live a normal life and move out of a hostile situation,” said Almallah in response to Shohat’s comments in the film. “I’ve had similar reasons for leaving. I also married a Lebanese and cannot go back. These are situations that force people into exile.” He explained that Jews were completely integrated into Iraqi society before moving to Israel.  When Mizrahi Jews immigrated to Israel they became more of a minority than they ever were in Iraq.

“The Arab Jews came to the point of hating their identity,” said Almallah. His views are supported by Shohat’s comments in the film.

“In Israel we’re Arabs — we’re the wrong identity,” said Shohat.

“As a Jew of European origins who is studying Arabic I found this movie very enlightening but also disheartening,” said Luke Schanz-Garbassi ’15 in response to the many comments about the discrimination of Jews of European descent toward Jews of Arabic descent in modern Israel.

“I learned a lot about stereotypes, a lot of new stereotypes,” he added.

While Schanz-Garbassi attended the screening with little prior knowledge of this historical and modern political struggle for Mizrahi Jews, Amitai Ben Abba ’15.5 grew up in Israel and shared a more personal view of the conflict.

The film paints the picture that Mizrahi Jews make up a substantial part of Israel’s population and Ben Abba explained that their political support often rests with ultra-nationalist parties.

“[Self-identified leftist] Arab Jews are rare to the point that they’re not relevant to the political atmosphere,” he added.

Almallah reflected that the creation of a Jewish state put pressure on various Jewish minorities to immigrate to Israel despite the discrimination they might face once there.

“Upon the creation of the state of Israel many Arabic Jews were put in a very difficult situation. They had Arab identity at the center of their existence,” he said.

Loehr presented an alternate perspective. Having spent some time in Tunisia this past summer, he became interested in Tunisian Jews and even had the opportunity to visit some of their synagogues.

“The Tunisian Jews that I spent time with had no desire to go to Israel,” he said.

“The creation of a sanctuary for certain people seems to make the life harder for those who don’t want to go to that sanctuary.”

Almallah recognizes that one of the main problems that Israel faces is that it is a state aligned with the West that is situated in the Middle East.

“Israeli culture was primarily made and designed for Europeans,” he said.

During the discussion after the screening, Amr Thameen ’14 asked why there hasn’t been an Arab Spring in Israel.

“I feel like in the 21st century it has to be hard for people in that situation to live normally,” he said, “why don’t people do anything about it?“

Almallah stressed the need to recognize this conflict and to strive for a peaceful solution.

“It is time to start fighting for a different motto and it should be a motto of coexistence,” he said.

“We need to revisit the history of two people coexisting with each other.”