No.16, Spring 2008
|
Journal of
the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center No.16, Spring 2008 |
Prof. Shmuel Moreh*:
ZIONISM, COMMUNISM AND ARABISM IN THE WRITING OF IRAQI IMMIGRANTS IN ISRAEL
To the important memoirs and autobiographical novels written by Jewish writers of Babylonian (Iraqi) origin, can now be added three new documentary books by two veterans of the Israeli intelligence services, which shed light on the vital role which some of their comrades played in the service of the state and the people of Israel.
The first pair of books to have been published, both by Col. (res.) Yaakov Nimrodi, are:
A. My Life’s Journey (Maariv Publications), a large, two-volume work dealing with the author’s service in the “Hagana” under the command of Yitzhak Navon (later the fifth President of the State of Israel), in the “Arab” section of the Palmach and later in the IDF’s Intelligence Corps.
B. The Hope and the Debacle (on the “Irangate” affair, edited by Danny Dor and Ilan Kfir, Maariv Publications). The book describes Nimrodi’s activities as a civilian, one of the most talented people to have come out of the Babylonian exile, and his connections with heads of governments and heads of state throughout the world, which he used to advance the cause of Israel’s military and economic affairs.
Nimrodi’s two books shed light on a dynamic personality, someone who achieved much on behalf of the State of Israel as military attaché in Teheran. His character was shaped by the Zionist education the author received in mandatory Palestine, which fostered in him the Zionist vision of action, commitment, initiative, perseverance and sacrifice, the main characteristics of the Zionist endeavor in the Land of Israel before the War of Independence.
C. The third book, Goodbye, Baghdad: A Diary of Escape to Israel and Service in the Mossad by Avner-Yaakov Yaron, was published somewhat later. The author served abroad under an Arab identity and retired from the Mossad with a rank equivalent to that of lieutenant-colonel. The author, descendant of cabbalistic rabbis, received an education which inculcated in him the messianic vision of orthodox Judaism in Iraq, based on the Hebrew Bible as proof of God’s promise to the People of Israel to give them the Land of Israel so that they may become a light unto the nations in Jerusalem. His grandfather, rabbi Reuben Ftaya, was a founder of the Zionist Association in Baghdad (1920). His parents made their home available for the clandestine activities of the "Hehalutz Underground Movement" when it was founded in 1942. He served as an instructor in the movement until his escape to the Land of Israel.
Both authors are Zionist visionaries who took part in enhancing the security of the State of Israel. They showed themselves willing to make sacrifices on behalf of the Israeli intelligence services, willingly, cognizant of the importance of their mission, despite the dangers it involved.
These three books constitute an antithesis to two other scholarly works which take a critical view of the Zionist attitude towards the Jews of the Arab world in general and those of Iraq in particular. The first was written from a standpoint that “the immigrants from Iraq, who looked like Arabs and spoke Arabic fluently, were exploited by the intelligence services”. The book in question is The Arab Jews, Nationality, Religion and Ethnicity (Ofakim Library, Am Oved Publications) by Prof. Yehuda Shenhav (Shahrabani) of Tel-Aviv University’s Department of Sociology. One of events which motivated Prof. Shenhav to write the book, as can be learned from his Foreword, was his encounter with Mr. Avner-Yaakov Yaron who, so the author says, told him that “he had recruited his father in the 1950s into the intelligence community” (p. 7). His father had been mobilized into the IDF in 1948 and Yaron arrived in Israel at the end of 1949 (Goodbye Baghdad, p. 167).
The second study is The Mask, an Introduction to the Ethnic Strategy of the Regime in the State of Israel [a comparative study] (Kotarot Publications) by Dr. Aaron Yitzhaki (whose feelings of frustration and discrimination prevented him from even trying to obtain a teaching position in any Israeli institutions of higher learning).
The latter two books, in my opinion, exemplify on the local scale the macroscopic cultural and political thesis put forth by Edward Said in his Orientalism, which is based on Michel Foucault’s theory of Western Imperialism and the “discipline of knowledge”. Both works thus take it for granted that the “Ashkenazi establishment” in Israel is the outcome of a racist, arrogant, oppressive colonialist-imperialist approach, which wallows in its technological and scientific superiority over the Arab world and the Jews of that world who had immigrated to Israel.
This is not the place to debate with these two authors or to discuss the rights and wrongs of their approach. But from both a historical and a humanitarian perspective we can certainly ask one important question: Were the fate, the physical survival, the economic situation and the social standing as immigrants in Israel worse or better than those of the Jews of the Arab world who out of choice or necessity remained in the Arab and Islamic world? The question is of particular relevance in light of the wars between the Arab states and Israel. If we take into account the Iraqi Baathist regime’s attitude towards minorities, its aggressive adventure against Iran, its persecution of Shiites and Kurds, and especially the two wars against Kuwait, all actions taken against Muslims, we can certainly guess what the fate of the Jews in Iraq would have been (see Dr. Nissim Kazzaz, The End of a Diaspora, The Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, Or Yehuda, 2002).
The exodus of Iraqi Jews to Israel in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah (1951-1952) involved great daring and much sacrifice on the part of Aliyah representatives from Israel and the Zionist underground activists there, who saved Iraqi Jews from certain annihilation.
Mr. Nimrodi’s books are written in a restrained, objective style, using the same tone as did other leaders of the Iraqi Hehalutz movement who put their memoirs in writing, some of whom attained very senior positions in Israel, its parliament and its government. The most prominent among these are Mr. Shlomo Hillel (East Wind, 1985) and Mr. Mordechai Ben-Porat (To Baghdad and Back, 1996), both winners of the Israel Prize, as well as Mr. Mordechai Bibi (editor of From the Four Corners of Mesopotamia, 1983) and Mrs. Shoshana Arbelli Almozlino (From the Babylonian Underground to the Israeli Cabinet, 1998).
But Mr. Nimrodi, who was born in Baghdad and arrived in Israel with his parents as a baby (My Life’s Journey, p. 31) is the only one among these adherents of Zionism who claims to have experienced ethnic discrimination. He states very explicitly that in Israel “there are those who are equal and those who are more equal” (ibid., vol. 1, pp. 169, 335). This motto was used already in 1974 by the writer Sami Michael, who when still in Baghdad was an active member of the Communist Party and of the “League for War against Zionism”, in his protest novel Equal and More Equal. Mr. Yaron differs from the other Babylonian Zionist writers in that he admits to having had the desire to come to Israel as quickly as possible “in order to remove from my neck the heavy burden of 2600 years of exile” ((p. 14). He does not believe in Nietzsche’s secular approach, and therefore follows the divine commandment to leave for his homeland (Genesis 12:1), given to him by the “Hagana” representative in Baghdad, Rafael Sorani, who ordered him to emigrate to Israel. He knows that the God of Israel promised and will fulfill His promise. He therefore gives thanks in the name of the People of Israel and Jewish History, to the Zionist activists sent to Iraq, to Good Gentiles like Cyrus king of Persia, the Persian Shah Muhammad Riza and the Kurdish leader Mula Mustafa Barazani, whom he depicts as flowers in a field of thorns, whose sympathy and help the People of Israel need (Chapters 44-46). On the other hand he does not forget, in the course of his flight from Iraq to Iran, to make an accounting with the past, the kings of Assyria and Babylonia and others, for their cruel behavior towards the People of Israel (p. 14).
The contrast between Yaron’s approach, which enabled him to take on a hostile cover and operate abroad as “one of our Ishmaelite cousins”, and the attitude taken by Prof. Yehuda Shenhav, is quite fascinating. In Yaron’s case we feel his pride and his total commitment to Zionism despite the dangers this involved. His feelings are very far indeed from the complaint that “Arab Jews” were exploited by the “Ashkenazi” establishment. The same was true also of Eli Cohen, “our man in Damascus” and all the other heroes who risked their lives for the security of Israel, the homeland of their forefathers. Each of them gladly paid the price of serving in this very dangerous front.
As a gesture of gratitude towards the Soviet Union, which in the UN had voted in favor of the establishment of a Jewish State, the just-established State of Israel allowed Jewish Communist refugees from Iraq to come to Israel. These Communist intellectuals, in contrast to the Zionists, believed that a Communist revolution in the Arab world would provide the best and quickest solution to the Arabs’ problems, and especially to the people of Iraq, who were divided into numerous religious, ethnic and national minorities. Communism was “egalitarian” in the same sense as Islam, and promised a paradise on earth instead of the heavenly paradise of Islam. Both ideologies believed in “missionary” work and called for a war against “infidels” until the final victory, under a single all-powerful leader whom everyone had to obey. This explains why Communism proved so popular among secular intellectuals in the Arab and Muslim world.
At first this open-door policy which provided a sanctuary for Jewish Communists from Iraq strengthened the Israeli Communist Party. However, these Communists soon became enamored of Israel’s atmosphere of freedom and were quickly assimilated into the Hebrew literary and cultural life in Israel, which they enriched with their own contributions. Among the more prominent authors and scholars of this type were Sami Michael, Prof. Shimon Ballas and the late Prof. David Semah (who in his youth was a disciple of Avner Yaron in the Zionist Hehalutz movement in Baghdad), and also the writer and journalist Salim Fattal, author of In the Alleys of Baghdad, in which he tells of the hardships he experienced as a Communist in Iraq, “the land of death” and of his escape to Israel, “the land of hope and life”. For Yaron, this represents the victory of Zionism over Communism.
Israel never forbade the use of the Arabic language as a means of spiritual and literary expression. As a result authors considered as Iraqi patriots enriched Arabic literature, among them Attorney Anwar Shaul, Attorney Shalom Darwish, Yitzhak Bar-Moshe, Prof. David Semah, Samir Naqqash and the Haifa poet Abraham Obadia. They all insisted on writing in Arabic, which they used to express their longing for Iraq of their childhood. Their writings were greatly appreciated by Arab intellectuals, and especially by Iraqi émigrés in the West, who considered their literary output a direct continuation of Iraq’s Arabic literature. However, they also claimed that the fact that these writers lived in Israel detached them from the realities of Iraq, which had in the meantime become a lair of bandits, criminals and killers, very different from the beautiful land they remember from their childhood. Iraqi émigrés who fled Saddam Hussein’s regime expressed their wonder at Israel’s democratic character, and the freedom of expression and criticism there. Samir Naqqash from Petach Tikva, who defined himself as an Iraqi Jewish Arab, is considered by the community of Iraqi exiles as the greatest Iraqi author in recent times; the greatest poet of modern times in their view was Abraham Obadia, who write songs of longing for Iraq using traditional rhyme and meter.
It is important to confront the past through scholarly research, for the sake of sociological and anthropological knowledge, and also so that future policy-makers will learn from the past and not make the same serious mistakes with new immigrants that were made in the past. In the meantime, however, we must make every effort to survive, and to make sure that our country lives on and prospers so that scholars can continue to breathe the air of liberty and write in freedom.
