Yehouda Shenhav and the Idea of the Arab Jew in Israel

From the late 1980s through to the present day, some Israeli intellectuals have been rethinking Middle Eastern and North African Jewish history and identity, questioning even the term “Mizrahi.” Figures like Yehuda Shenhav, Sami Shalom Chetrit, Avi Shlaim, Ariella Azoulay, and Ella Shohat—whose 1988 essay “Sephardim in Israel” was groundbreaking—each individually challenged the Zionist divide between Jews and Arabs and reclaimed an “Arab Jewish” identity. In this excerpt from his 2006 book The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity, Shenhav reflects on his Iraqi Jewish family and the contradictions of Arab Jewish identity in Israel.