Jews are Arabs too

The world is a patchwork and the Middle East a mosaic, in the words of the historian Bernard Lewis. As the cradle of civilization and birthplace of the three great monotheisms, the Middle East has seen a variety of tribes, nations, peoples and histories intermingle.

Today we call people from Arab League countries (within and without the Middle Eastern region) Arabs, but we all know that there is a whole mosaic of different Arabs.

An Arab from Iraq is an Iraqi, whether he is Muslim, Jewish or Christian. Most people, indeed, have multiple identities: they can be Iraqi and Christian and Arab and Assyrian at the same time, but their belonging today is first to the country they were born and have lived in, allowing them the same rights and duties as fellow citizens.

America, strangely, was named after the explorer who supposedly discovered it, one Amerigo Vespucci. The Europeans who made America their home became Americans, while the native people of America were referred to as Red Indians, although they were not by any means from India and actually constituted many different tribes and groupings quite distinct from each other.

Today, anyone who has been living in America for some time is simply an American, whether his origins lie in Mexico, Idaho, Afghanistan or among a Native American tribe. It is the same for the vast majority of countries in the Middle East and Europe, where your passport defines who you are, not your religion.

We do not refer to any particular country as a Christian country, not even in Europe, and the only countries referring to themselves as Islamic by name have done so rather outrageously from shallow political design. When it comes to Israel, however, identities are wretchedly reduced to one’s religion.

Before the establishment of the State of Israel, Jews were Arabs, they were Iraqis and Egyptians, Moroccans and Yemenis. For contrary to Europe — where Jews had been discriminated against and persecuted for centuries — Jews in the Middle East and the broader Arab world were well-regarded members of society, contributing greatly to Arab culture.

In Iraq, one can trace back 26 centuries of Jewish presence and culture. From Musa bin Maymun or Maimonides in Al-Andalus to Sir Sassoon Eskell, a Jewish founder of the modern state of Iraq, from Leila Murad, the incredibly popular Egyptian Jewish singer, to Nessim Joseph Dawood, who penned the most popular modern English translation of the Holy Qur’an, Jews were an integral and fundamental part of Arab culture, of Iraqi, Egyptian, Moroccan or Yemeni society.

Unfortunately, the very creation of the State of Israel established a concept of religious identity superseding national identity, whereby Arab Muslims and Christians remain until today treated as second-class citizens of Israel, as was true of the Jews in much of Europe for centuries. This extremely narrow new form of belonging sadly made most Arab Jews, who had lived across the Arab world for centuries in peace, flee to Israel, fearing Arab reciprocation.

Although there are Arabs in Israel today who are Muslim and who hold Israeli citizenship, they remain second-class citizens. As a Palestinian, the term second-class citizen does not even apply, for they are citizens in no sense and suffer a violent system of apartheid. Primo Levi, the writer and Auschwitz survivor, put it very poignantly when he pointed out that “Everyone has their Jews. For the Israelis they are the Palestinians.”

As the cradle of civilization, the Middle East has seen a variety of tribes, nations, peoples and histories intermingle.

The West today expresses strong opposition to anti-Semitism, as well we all should. Indeed, all Arabs are Semites, be they Jewish, Muslim or Christian. What we share increasingly with the West, as well as with many Jewish people, must be described as anti-Zionism, for we are all opposed to the system of violence and discrimination that Zionism has imposed on Palestinians and non-Jewish Israelis.

Henry Siegman, rabbi and director of the US/Middle East Project, said that “Israel has crossed the threshold from ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ to the only apartheid regime in the Western world,” while Sigmund Freud conceded “with sorrow that the baseless fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust.”

Zionism in Israel today is almost exclusively of the exclusionary right-wing kind linked to Irgun militias, while the idealist and inclusive left-wing Zionism of old is mostly a relic of the past. It was Albert Einstein who, upon the partition of Palestine, warned that it would only damage Jewish spiritualism and lead to narrow nationalism.

My goal here is not to dwell on painful history but rather to gaze ahead and to try to ensure that, despite all the difficulties, we all work together toward a Middle East appreciative of the beauty of its mosaic and accepting of each other’s identities as not antithetical. There are a great many of us in the Middle East who want Jews, Christians and Muslims once again to live in the same countries and to express first and foremost national identities of shared values and concerns.

Saudi Arabia opened an important path by establishing the Interfaith Dialogue under the United Nations, bringing together people of all religions to emphasize our shared values and goal of a harmonious society.

Tolerance, compassion, empathy and mutual respect lie at the heart of all these religions. In these times of conflict, we must amplify and reaffirm them even more.

Our ethnic origins and how we choose to worship our Creator are a part of who we are, but they must not singularly define how we relate to others. A harmonious and constructive society must be based on our shared values and abilities, not on our beliefs or origins.

Through compassion and compromise we must seek an end to today’s raging conflicts and with empathy we must build new ways of relating to each other as human beings with equal rights and the same desire for peaceful and stable lives. The science fiction write Isaac Asimov — who, although not at all observant, considered himself distinctly Jewish — wrote thus of his long-awaited vision for humanity:

“I find myself in the odd position of not being a Zionist … I think it is wrong for anyone to feel that there is anything special about any one heritage of whatever kind. It is delightful to have the human heritage exist in a thousand varieties, for it makes for greater interest, but as soon as one variety is thought to be more important than another, the groundwork is laid for destroying them all.”

• Hassan bin Youssef Yassin worked closely with Saudi Arabia’s petroleum ministers, Abdullah Tariki and Ahmed Zaki Yamani, from 1959-67. He led the Saudi Information Office in Washington from 1972-81 and served with the Arab League’s observer delegation to the UN from 1981-83.