A few days ago, in my quest to fight the antisemitism that lifted its head around the world following the massacre of October 7th, I stumbled upon a clip from a UN assembly where the speaker asked a simple question-
Dear Arab world, where are your Jews?
A lot of people think that Israeli roots come from Europe exclusively. But in fact, Jewish people were hunted in all corners of this world. In Europe, of course, but also in Asia, Africa and other places all over the planet.
My grandma is an Iraqi Jew. Iraqi Jewish community is one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, being the direct descendants of the Babylonian exile Jews, so ancient it is an exile mentioned in the Bible.
Recent studies, in which DNA retrieved from canaanite burial lands was compared to current populations in the area of ancient Canaan, has found that Iraqi Jews share the highest similarity to canaanite DNA out of all Jewish communities, more than 50% of the DNA on average.
All the beautiful, peaceful Jewish communities of the Arab world were wiped out in the blink of an eye.
The Arabic world has never treated their Jewish communities as equal citizens, oftentimes robbing them of any rights and performing violent acts of genocide against them (check 'Farhud' on Google).
But their voice was silenced once they fled to Israel.
So I decided to recap my grandma's story in the comments of the clip:
Soon after, many Jewish people with Arabic, or 'Mizrahi' heritage, shared their stories as well:
Jewish people all over the planet were driven out of their homes, ethnically cleansed by their neighbors, rulers, and governments.
We are still not welcome in most of the countries of the Arab world. Unable to see glimpses of our history.
My grandma still wishes she could see the house she grew up in. Holding the memories, but unable to set foot in that land, because she would be executed.
Nevertheless, she's not a refugee. She might've fled to Israel, but in Israel, her family got equal rights as citizens, and she built a house on a land she now calls her home.
Don't erase my grandma's story. Don't erase the Jewish ethnic cleansing that brought her to seek a safe haven in Israel.
Israel is a home for more than half of the Jewish people on this planet. Out of the ~8,000,000 Jews who live in Israel, there are about ~2,500,000 Jews of Mizrahi heritage.
And as Golda Meir once said: "our secret weapon is that we have nowhere else to go."
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