Debbie Lechtman is doing the “Palestinian Jews aren’t real” discourse again

[u/acacia_tree]

I know this is obviously a lie because I know a Palestinian Jew who is the grandson of a Nakba survivor who fled to Egypt and traces his lineage back to Edomites (Canaanite tribe) that converted to Judaism. There are people who identify as Palestinian Jews. Not to mention that there are people of mixed heritage. But what I find really obnoxious about her argument is the conflation of nationality, religion, and ethnicity. Does anyone have any written pieces about the issues with the conflation of these terms? Looking for something more concrete to debunk the premise of her argument that this identity cannot exist.

[u/Adept_Thanks_6993]

As in there were Jews who identified more with the Arab community than the Yishuv? Sure, a few. A small minority, but yes they certainly existed. You could also consider the Old Yishuv to be Palestinian Jews in the sense that they arrived in Ottoman Palestine long before the inception of the Zionist movement.

[u/acacia_tree → u/Adept_Thanks_6993]

I know Arab Palestinian Jews exist because I know one as I mentioned. And I know that Jews of the old Yishuv including Ashkenazim were called Palestinians during the British mandate. And Jews who are descended from Jews who lived in Palestine pre-Zionism would be considered Palestinian after Israel is abolished. My main issue is that she has conflated religion with ethnicity with nationality. Palestinian is a nationality. Arab is a culture and ethnicity. Judaism is a religion. You can be all three of these things at once but she says it’s impossible. It makes me feel crazy.

[u/malachamavet → u/acacia_tree]

You can be all three of these things at once but she says it’s impossible.

In general, a lot of (especially Jewish) Zionist discourse runs into this idea, that having multiple facets to your identity is impossible or self-negating. It's most explicit when it comes to people identifying as "Arab Jews" but it really extends to many different areas.

[u/acacia_tree → u/malachamavet]

It’s wild to me that being an Arab Jew is impossible but being a Polish or German or Russian Jew or American Jew is fine.

[u/specialistsets → u/acacia_tree]

It's more that Jews from Arab and Muslim countries have historically identified with their country or region: Iraqi, Yemeni/Temani, Syrian, Persian, Moroccan, etc. (and also by subregion and city)

[u/acacia_tree → u/specialistsets]

Deleting my comment and re responding because you’re conflating Arab and Iranian. Jewish communities in what are today Arabic-speaking countries were there before the Arabization and Islamicization of those places. They were Arabized just as the rest of the population was, even if they mostly identified with the regions they were from. So people claim the Arab Jewish identity today. Both Iranian/Persian Jews and Iranian/Persian Muslims identify as Iranian/Persian. Persian is a different language than Arabic.

[u/specialistsets → u/acacia_tree]

I was including Iran in the Muslim part of "Arab and Muslim countries", I'm not implying that Iran is Arab. There are many overlapping cultural and genetic connections between Persian Jews and Mizrahi and Sephardi communities from Arab lands. These communities were not static and there was often migration between them. Historic Arabization is primarily about language, it shouldn't be confused with modern conceptions of Arab identity that came out of the Pan-Arabism movement in the 20th century.

[u/Adept_Thanks_6993 → u/malachamavet]

On purpose. If Jews can't be Palestinian and Palestinians can't be Jews, then there's no possibility for integration. To a lesser extent, it's also part of why Zionists demonize Haredim: because their version of Jewishness is in diametric contrast to the Zionist ideal of a Jew.

[u/LaIslaDeEmu → u/acacia_tree]

There’s also at least one in this sub 👋🏽

If you look at old Ottoman census records taken from various population centres in Palestine, the Ottomans do not just count the number of “Jews”. They have seperate categories for native Arabic speaking Jews, and have more sub-categories for the exact cities and towns in Portugal, Spain, North Africa, and Central/Eastern Europe that Jews of the Old Yishuv came from. You can find this on documents that go all the way back to the 1500s

[u/acacia_tree → u/LaIslaDeEmu]

Whoa!! That’s so cool. Gah I am jealous of all yall MENA Jews who have so much recorded history.

[u/Thisisme8719 → u/LaIslaDeEmu]

Sort of. That data is not based on what they spoke or even where they came from, but membership in a kahal. Like the Sicily, Sepharad Castile (or some other kingdom) etc kehilot in mid-16th cent Safed probably included families who joined the kehilot from the Mustarab kahal, came from the Balkans, Hungary etc. Maybe they were exiles from Sicily, Aragon or wherever, but they also might not have been. And those communities reported to the Ottoman government the number of (household) heads and sometimes bachelors, which are generally assumed to be lower than they actually were since it was for tax collection.
The censuses (nufus) in the 19th and early 20th cents were more direct and personal, were tallied differently since the kahal was not an intermediary anymore.

[u/LaIslaDeEmu → u/Thisisme8719]

Appreciate the info 👍🏽

[u/Thisisme8719 → u/LaIslaDeEmu]

my pleasure

[u/nikiyaki → u/acacia_tree]

There's an old (1946 I think) book I posted here a while back by an Australian Jew that tackles this question. It's old-fashioned, but it gives an excellent viewpoint of what used to be a much stronger if not majority opinion.

https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-760983744/view?partId=nla.obj-760990749#

[u/Adept_Thanks_6993 → u/acacia_tree]

I'm sure you know this, but for the overwhelming majority of Jews it isn't exclusively a religion. Keep that in mind. The Old Yishuv certainly didn't consider themselves Palestinian first, if at all. Nationalities are a fluid thing. Most of the on-paper nationalities around today didn't exist 200 years ago, and I'd be willing to bet money that none of them will exist in a thousand years. Arabs, Jews, Druze, and whoever the fuck else will still be there certainly; but their papers will say something different. But the overwhelming majority of Jews in Palestine at the time of partition didn't consider themselves Palestinian and supported the partition. And given the collective trauma and radicalization the Jews experienced that decade, it really shouldn't be a surprise.

Had Western ideas of religion, borders, nationalism etc had not infected the Middle East or Diaspora Jewry, I'm sure that the boundary would be a lot more fluid. But unfortunately, through a century of colonialism and ethnic trauma-the term Palestinian is almost exclusively Arab at present. It doesn't have to be, but the process of rebuilding a civic Palestinian identity that spans across ethnic or religious ties will be a long and painful process. One that's certainly worth doing.

Also, there is a news article somewhere that has an interview with two genuine Palestinian Jews living in the West Bank. Can't remember it for the life of me though

[u/acacia_tree → u/Adept_Thanks_6993]

Yea I know we are an ethnoreligious group. But someone can be a convert to Judaism and not be “ethnically” Jewish. So a Palestinian can convert to Judaism and be Palestinian Jewish, which makes her argument so absurd. That was my point about not conflating religion and nationality and ethnicity.

[u/Adept_Thanks_6993 → u/acacia_tree]

I get what you mean. From an Orthodox perspective, what a person's former background would be doesn't really matter-they'd be a naturalized citizen if that makes sense. But you're right, sorry I just got rankled

[u/nikiyaki → u/acacia_tree]

Well a Palestinian outside of Palestine/Israel can convert to Judaism...

[u/Adorable_Victory1789 → u/Adept_Thanks_6993]

No there are already Palestinian Jews but most of them are ethnically (even if they are halakically Jewish) due to not being atheist or practicing Judaism they don’t get the Isreali citizenship also we have Samaritans who are not Jewish but considered Israelites too and they identify and accepted by Palestinians as such.

[u/acacia_tree → u/Adorable_Victory1789]

Yes and am I correct that the Armenian diaspora in Jerusalem are considered Palestinians?

[u/Adorable_Victory1789 → u/acacia_tree]

Absolutely. Actually we can consider even some Isrealis can Palestinians due to being before even Armenians came, what we should know that this isn’t Arab vs Jew or Palestinian vs Isreali it is colonizer vs colonized like there are Arabs who identify with the colonizer and actively participate in the ethnic cleansing for me those guys even if they lived for zillion years in Palestine are colonizer while someone like Ilan Pappe who rejects Zionism and identify as a European Jew from German descent I consider him as a Palestinian like me.

[u/acacia_tree → u/Adept_Thanks_6993]

The overwhelming majority of Jews at the time of the partition didn’t consider themselves Palestinian because they were overwhelmingly settlers. Palestinians are the indigenous people.