Arabic Literature’s Renewed Interest in Jews, after Decades of Erasure

Over the past decade, the Arab world has started to show increasing interest in the stories of the Jews who once lived in their lands, as expressed in television series, a few translated memoirs, and a rash of novels. This new awareness of the Middle Eastern Jewish past stands in stark contrast to the second half of the 20th century, during which Arab societies deliberately erased “their” Jews from collective memory. Reviewing two recent novels, by Muslim authors, with Jewish main characters, Samuel Tadros presents a brief history of this new genre and draws some conclusions:

Perhaps the most profound issue at stake is the Arabic-speaking world’s inability to imagine coexistence between Zionism and the rest of the region. Jews may be humanized for the first time in Arabic novels and movies, but it is only one type of Jew: an anti-Zionist Jew or, in the case of Khawla Hamdi’s [novel In My Heart Is a Hebrew Woman], one who converts to Islam. . . . History, of course, was more complex. Some Arabic speakers, even after the Balfour Declaration (in which the British government endorsed the creation of a Jewish national homeland) did not see a necessary conflict between their national aspirations and Zionism. . . . Contemporary Arabic-speakers may be shocked to discover that a leading member of the Egyptian intelligentsia declared in the 1920s, “The victory of the Zionist ideal is also the victory of my ideal.”

Most importantly, the Jews of the Arabic-speaking world who are now being remembered and imagined are not ghosts of a lost past, as they are portrayed by contemporary Arabic-speaking authors. Many of them may be dead, and they certainly are no longer living in Arabic-speaking countries. That part is lost forever. . . . But Jews with roots in that world have not disappeared from the planet. They and their descendants live close by in Israel, where they now represent nearly a majority of the country’s Jewish population. If the Arabic-speaking peoples really want to remember and get to know them, all they need to do is to cross the border and visit them. They may be surprised by what they find.

Read more at Hoover

More about: Anti-Zionism, Arabic literature, Arts & Culture, Jews in literature, Mizrahi Jewry

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF