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

March 24 2017

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

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023