Thursday, May 23, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
Temple University
professor Marc Lamont Hill recently made an astonishing claim when he
declared:
“I literally study Yemeni and Moroccan Jews for a living.”
Perhaps Professor Hill doesn’t earn his living at Temple
University, because the subjects
(media and education) he teaches there seem to have absolutely
nothing to do with the study of Yemeni and Moroccan Jews. I was also
unable to find any scholarly study of the history of Yemeni and
Moroccan Jews authored by Hill.
But while Hill’s
claim looks very much like a pathetic attempt to assert academic
expertise, it’s noteworthy that he was apparently trying to create
an aura of authority for a project he has been working on. As Hill
announced: “I finished a film that devotes 20% to Mizrahis [i.e.
Middle Eastern Jews]. And I talk about them regularly.”
The film Hill
referred to is apparently “Black in the Holy Land”, and you can
watch the trailer on YouTube
– but before you do so, you should read an EoZ post
from last February. Amazingly enough, the trailer for Hill’s
“documentary” starts off with convicted terrorist Ali Jiddah, who
“planted four hand grenades on Strauss Street in downtown Jerusalem
in 1968. The blasts injured nine Israelis.”
Jiddah served 17
years in prison and was released in a prisoner swap. Since then, he
has devoted himself to demonizing Israel, and as he told
the Times of Israel a few years ago: “I am satisfied, and I
am convinced that the work I am doing today is more effective than
the bomb I planted in 1968.”
While the film is
apparently not yet released, it’s clear what to expect: if your
trailer prominently features a convicted terrorist who hopes to
achieve with words what he previously tried to achieve with bombs,
you really give your game away.
So it was hardly
surprising that Marc Lamont Hill wasn’t pleased when well-known
Israeli activist and writer Hen Mazzig recently wrote an excellent
article
that was published in the Los Angeles Times under the title
“No, Israel isn’t a country of privileged and powerful white
Europeans.”
If you missed the
heated exchange that developed between Hen and Hill on social media,
you can catch up by reading a Jerusalem Post report
about it. Hill’s criticism of Hen’s widely read article included
the preposterous claim that “the 20th century identity category of
‘Mizrahi’ [i.e. Middle Eastern Jews]” was created “as a means
of detaching them from Palestinian identity.” According to Marc
Lamont Hill, those who are now considered Mizrahi should apparently
be called “Palestinian Jews” and we should all remember that they
“lived peacefully with other Palestinians.”
Well, if Professor Hill studies “Yemeni and Moroccan Jews for a
living,” he presumably knows that they cannot really be described
as “Palestinian Jews.” Those Jews who lived among “other
Palestinians” – meaning presumably the non-Jews in the area that
the Romans designated as “Palestine” – had to endure the fate
of an oppressed minority ruled by their conquerors. And if we want to
consider the barely century-old history since the local Arabs
actually started to consider themselves as Palestinians, we find that
the Palestinian leader of the time was the man who started his career
by instigating murderous pogroms, and who later became notorious as
“Hitler’s mufti.” Incidentally, the mufti was an early
proponent of boycotts and would arguably deserve to be honored as the
father
of BDS. Under his leadership, “‘Filasteen Arduna wa’al
yahud Kilabuna’ (Palestine is our land and the Jews are our dogs)”
and “‘Itbach al Yahud’ (slaughter the Jews)” were the first
rallying cries of Palestinian
nationalism in 1920.
For the narrative
that undergirds Marc Lamont Hill’s vile
anti-Israel activism, this history has to be ignored. It’s no
less obscene than Rashida Tlaib’s recent attempt
to rewrite history by claiming that the Palestinians somehow provided
a “a safe haven” to Jews. But at least Tlaib doesn’t claim to
be “one of the leading intellectual voices” in the US, and
she doesn’t claim to “literally study Yemeni and Moroccan Jews
for a living.” As it happens, my dearest friends include both a
Yemeni and a Moroccan Jew, and if Marc Lamont Hill ‘studied’
them, he could learn a lot.
But as it is, we can
anticipate that Hill’s forthcoming “documentary” will document
first and foremost why Hill has fans both among supposedly
“progressive” anti-Israel activists and virulent Jew-haters like
Farrakhan’s Nation
of Islam and David
Duke.
________________________________
[EoZ]: This article inspired me to look at some previous posts of mine about the history of how Jews lived in Morocco and Yemen. I tweeted this today:
Absurdly, @MarcLamontHill says "I literally study Yemeni and Moroccan Jews for a living" and he says they lived peacefully among Muslims.
Ali Bey al Abbasi was the pen name of a traveler who described the lives of Jews in Morocco in 1805 quite differently.
Ali Bey al Abbasi was the pen name of a traveler who described the lives of Jews in Morocco in 1805 quite differently.
There are plenty of examples of contemporaneous studies of Jews in Morocco describing how they were humiliated, daily, by Muslims there.
And Morocco was one of the best places for Jews to live!
And Morocco was one of the best places for Jews to live!
Here you can see several attacks against Jews in Yemen between 1908 and 1913.
Marc Lamont Hill is not a scholar. He wants to whitewash history, ,not describe it.
This shows that his antipathy isn't against Zionists - but Jews.
Marc Lamont Hill is not a scholar. He wants to whitewash history, ,not describe it.
This shows that his antipathy isn't against Zionists - but Jews.
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