Introduction by Gilad Atzmon:

In spite of being the majority amongst the Israeli Jewish population, Arab Jews are heavily discriminated in Israel, both culturally and economically. Due to Zio-centric pressure and Euro-centric culture, Arab Jews have been reluctant to openly explore their heritage. Needless to mention that Arab military defeats didn’t help either, for decades Arab Jews in Israel have tended to hide their Arabic past.  For the obvious reasons Arab Jews in Israel have been found at the forefront of every possible political form of negation towards Palestinians and Arabs in general. They clearly wanted to disassociate themselves from their Arab past through blind identification with Zionist ideology and Israeli militancy.

Things, however, may change these days. Following the regional Intifada and the rise of Arab masses, young Arab Jews in Israel are becoming aware of their true origin and their culture. The following is an open letter to Arab peers written by Young Israeli Arab Jews- young people who come to realise who they are, where they come from and what they stand for.

“We Identify with you,” they confess to their Arab young neighbours. They relocate themselves within a new geo-political vision.  “We are a part of the religious, cultural, and linguistic history of the Middle East and North Africa.” They see Israel for what it is, “we, too, live in a regime that in reality—despite its pretensions to being ‘enlightened’ and ‘democratic’—does not represent large sections of its actual population in the Occupied Territories and inside of the Green Line border(s).”

However the young Arab Jews seem to come short of accepting the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian Right of Return. Though they advocate solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, they are yet to support or acknowledge the rights of Palestinian refugees. Like the Israeli ‘Left’, the young Arab Jews are willing to support the Palestinians as long as they stay behind the wall. We support the  “struggle of the Palestinian people living under Israeli military occupation...in their demand to end the occupation and to gain Palestinian national independence.”

This is not a lot but it is certainly more than nothing.

Young Mizrahi Israelis’ open letter to Arab peers

http://972mag.com/young-mizrahi-israelis-open-letter-to-arab-peers/

Translated from Hebrew;  English edited by Chana Morgenstern | Arabic version here

In a letter titled “Ruh Jedida: A New Spirit for 2011,” young Jewish descendants of the Arab and Islamic world living in Israel write to their peers in the Middle East and North Africa

We, as the descendents of the Jewish communities of the Arab and Muslim world, the Middle East and the Maghreb, and as the second and third generation of Mizrahi Jews in Israel, are watching with great excitement and curiosity the major role that the men and women of our generation are playing so courageously in the demonstrations for freedom and change across the Arab world. We identify with you and are extremely hopeful for the future of the revolutions that have already succeeded in Tunisia and Egypt. We are equally pained and worried at the great loss of life in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, and many other places in the region.