Israelis long to reconnect with Arab, Islamic homelands
Many Israeli Jews with Middle Eastern origins remember a painful expulsion from their homelands and want to preserve and celebrate the history of those Jewish communities.
Deputy Jerusalem Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum is working to advance the construction of a museum dedicated to the heritage of Sephardic Jews. She told Al-Monitor, "There are several museums and foundations in Israel dedicated to Jews from the region. For instance, we have the excellent Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in the town of Or Yehuda, dedicated to the heritage of the Iraqi Jewish community. We have the International Center for North African Jewry in Jerusalem. What we lack is a national museum, one run by the State of Israel, which will honor, commemorate and preserve the history and the traditions of Sephardic Jews and Jews from all Arab countries. I have been pushing this idea for some time now, and we have started inspecting plots, either owned by the Jerusalem municipality or state-owned land, that could potentially house such a project."
Hassan-Nahoum is also the co-founder of the UAE-Israel Business Council and very active on advancing trade and other relations between Israel and Gulf countries. She said that Israelis of Mizrahi origins should spearhead efforts to create future partnerships with the Arab world as well as preserve the history of Jewish communities in the Middle East, North Africa and Iran.
For many years, Israel neglected its Sephardic heritage and history. In 2014, the Knesset designated Nov. 30 as a day to commemorate the departure of Jews from Arab countries and from Iran, from which 850,000 Jewish refugees were displaced in the 20th century.
This year, for the first time, Israel’s president hosted the commemoration. Shimon Ohayon, who initiated the memorial day observance seven years ago, joined Social Equality Minister Meirav Cohen, chair of the World Sephardi Federation Haim Cohen, former Defense Minister Itzhak Mordechai and Hassan-Nahoum for what Hassan-Nahoum described as a moving ceremony. She noted that while President Isaac Herzog himself is not from a Sephardic family, his mother and his aunt were born in Egypt, a story he shared at the ceremony. They had to flee the country following the riots against Jews that erupted in many Arab countries after the establishment of the Jewish state.
