Haaretz Article
As I have been dragged into the fray (accused by The Guardian of being pro-war, no less) in their reporting on my husband Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead as he defends his decision to continue to perform with Israeli musician, Dudu Tassa, I've decided to write about my experience.
To begin with, in order to remove any doubt: I am pro-peace. That should not need saying, yet here we are.
I'm the daughter of Egyptian and Iraqi Jews, granddaughter of a Jew born in Jaffa, in 1912, a time when many Jews lived in Jaffa alongside Muslims and Christians.
It has been 243 days since I awoke to the shocking news that many hundreds of Jews had been slaughtered in their homes, raped or killed at a music festival - and hundreds kidnapped into Gaza by Hamas. I learned that it went on for hours without stopping. Without mercy. Old people, women, children, babies, shot, some even burnt alive by gleeful attackers.
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Exactly 83 years ago this week, in Baghdad, anti-Jewish rioting swelled into the largest pogrom in 20th century Iraqi history. Over two days, the Jewish quarter was systematically attacked. The assault was called the Farhud. Again, hundreds were killed or raped: no ages or genders spared.
My father lived through this. He was eight-years-old at the time, one of the 120,000 strong Jewish community that had been part of Iraqi culture for at least 2,000 years. Some 90,000 Jews were living in Baghdad, then a third of the city's population. Today, 77 years later, there are, reportedly just a handful of Jews left living in all of Iraq. In Israel today, by contrast, there are 600,000 Jews of Iraqi descent.
The Farhud pogrom in Baghdad of 1941. Credit: Beit Hatfutsot, the Oster Visual Documentation Center, courtesy of The Otniel Margalit Collection, Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi Archive
Anti-Jewish riots also took place around the same time in other parts of the Middle East, including Yemen and Egypt.
And indeed we saw one carried out on October 7 in present day Israel.
In the flood of words that have followed that dark day, I have read that I, and my people, are "white." The majority of Israelis are not white.
We are also being called colonists. We are not. We are the refugees from colonialism, from endless pogroms, and anti-Jewish hatred in both Europe and the Middle East. This hatred doesn't stop. This tragic history of the Farhud is now a painful reality yet again. My heart breaks for my people.
October 7 has led to a war against Hamas in Gaza including a soaring death toll that continues to cause an emotional reaction around the world. The war has also prompted new levels of criticism of Israel and a rise in antisemitic attacks on Jews abroad.
I cannot condone the killing of any civilians in this war. My heart goes out to every innocent victim in this long-running conflict.
My heart also breaks at the daily reminders that women, children, men, and even a Farhud survivor are still being held captive by Hamas in Gaza.
I'm also devastated knowing young Israeli women are being held and likely being raped while being held hostage. Though I recognize everyone has a right to an opinion, I cannot accept the blanket, all-encompassing hatred so many have for Israel and its Jewish citizens.
Centuries of anti-Jewish fury
My father was born a dhimmi (a second-class citizen) in Iraq because of his faith and I was born a native Israeli: so, regardless of whatever criticism I hold for how Israel acts as a state, nothing can change the fact that its existence has guaranteed me a right to be both Jewish and free.
My parents' childhoods were very different. When my father escaped Iraq, he walked alone, possession-less, just 14, across the desert and into Israel, with nothing but a hope for freedom from persecution.
He was escaping a life where passports were forbidden for Jews, curfews imposed, their homes and belongings seized and a Jew was even hung in a city square.
We can talk about the conflict between Jews and Arabs since (and long before) Israel's founding in 1948, but we cannot recycle the same hatred and lies that have justified centuries of anti-Jewish fury.
Today we have to find new ways to engage in conversations with each other. I do not see a genuine effort made by movements like the one advocating BDS to positively engage with Israelis. Instead, I only see demonization of all things Israeli and Jewish. A silencing. A simplification of the issues, for the sake of winning a propaganda war.
I see a disgusting campaign to force all Jews outside Israel to proclaim themselves anti-Israel if they wish to remain acceptable in the public eye - to apologize for where they were born, much as my father had to apologize for being Jewish in Baghdad, or my mother for being Jewish in Alexandria. It's a political purity test that demands I renounce this tiny country, smaller than Wales, that saved us.
I cannot see how this approach will bring any attempt at harmony. I do want to say that this conflict is not something that exists in online discourse alone for me, but in my very real life. I don't think many of those so quick to pass judgement understand the complexity of the conflict's history.
Protesters at a pro-Palestinian rally in London in October.Credit: Henry Nicholls/AFP
I was raised in northern Israel, on the border with Lebanon, from where rocket attacks were - and still are - a regular event. In the last month Hezbollah attacks have intensified. Last week their arsenal, which now includes drones, reached as far south as Acre.
My childhood was one of permanent fear of these enormous, ground-shaking explosions. They hit houses on the street where I lived, and killed many people. Yet these attacks on Israeli civilians were, and continued to be, considered somehow justifiable by some, whether they come from Lebanon, Syria, Yemen or Gaza. Likewise, the slaughter and rapes of last October.
I see it as all a part of an endless desire, from long before Israel was founded, to eliminate the Jews from where they live - a hunger that's always existed in the Middle East as much as it has in Europe. In post-Holocaust Europe is has been quieted, but even there antisemitism is starting another upward surge.
The hatred in London, where I live, is palpable. Even threats of rape were shouted out last month in a Jewish neighborhood. It's a hatred that has been going on for a millennia and won't stop unless everyone acts – or the Jews are gone.
That this hatred is growing among our student populations is especially worrying on campuses where facts have been replaced by ignorance that seems to unite and give purpose. But we must be on guard for where distorted purpose and hatred can lead.
The world's Jewish population has still not recovered from the Holocaust in Europe. There are 1.4 million less Jews in the world today than there were in the 1930s.
Instead of their descendants, we have nameless ghosts of potential families, wiped from existence by the Nazis. No one speaks for them. Some 1.2 million Jewish children were murdered.
In writing this, I'm not looking to justify anything. We all long for peace. I just wanted to highlight one small area of the story, centered on my own family's story, that most people don't know about - even though that story affects so many of us, and explains, I hope, why I should be able to identify as an Israeli Jew without the shame so many want me to feel.
Sharona Katan is an Israeli artist living in the UK and the executive producer of the Jarak Qaribak project with Dudu Tassa. Twitter: @KatanSharona