Could Arab-Jews provide a path for peace between Arabs and Jews? Inside and outside Israel, the phrase “the natural bridge for peace” was mobilized by diverse Sephardi/Arab-Jews/Mizrahi activists; a spirit that was brought to Toledo. Thoroughly believing in co-existence, the participants built on long Sephardi history of leaders, already in Ottoman and Mandate Palestine, seeking to mediate and reach a possible solution. In his independently published 1983 book, entitled Tensions and Ethnic Discrimination in Israel, Nahum Menahem documented the efforts by diverse Sephardi leaders—who embraced Zionism but who also acknowledged the rights of Palestinians—to reach compromise. And in the 1980s, in homage to one such figure, Eliyahu Elyashar, the Elyashar Seminary initiative was launched in conjunction with the Mizrahi leftist cultural space New Direction, in South Tel Aviv, some of whose members also attended Toledo. One of the older generation Toledo participants, Naeim Giladi, who had also believed in the bridging idea, gradually came to the realization that peace was not truly on Israel’s agenda. This realization, which he reached while working as a journalist for the HaOlam HaZe magazine, turned him into an anti-Zionist, a view he delineated in his 1992 self-published Ben Gurion’s Scandals. Although a relatively small milieu, the 1980s leftist Arab-Jewish/Mizrahi scene, whether in Israel, France, or New York, nonetheless featured varied ideological perspectives. The Toledo meeting reflected this diversity as well as the Sephardi/Mizrahi/Arab-Jewish efforts to imagine a future of co-existence.
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 01:50:50 +0000
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