Today on KPFA Radio’s Women’s Magazine Lisa Dettmer and Kate Raphael talk to two Israeli spiritually informed Jewish activists and scholars about what the role and effects are of trauma are in living and growing up in the apartheid state of Israel on both their own lives, and the lives of others in Israel/Palestine and how that trauma and the exploitation of that trauma has supported the militaristic and colonialist Zionist state of Israel. And we discuss how racism and white supremacy are intrinsically part of the colonialist Zionist project in Israel from its founding and how healing from trauma is one of the important steps to peace.
We talk to Meital Yaniv who was born in Israel, and is learning how to be in a human form. they do things with words, with moving and still images, with threads, with bodies in front of bodies, with the Earth. they are a death laborer tending to a prayer for the liberation of the land of Palestine and the lands of our bodies. they keep Fires and submerge themselves in Ocean and Sea Water often. yaniv is learning to listen to the Waters, birdsongs, caretakers, and ancestors as they walk as a guest on the home and gathering place of the Cahuilla-ʔívil̃uwenetem Meytémak, Tongva-Kizh Nation, Luiseño-Payómkawichum, and Serrano-Yuhaaviatam/Maarenga’yam.yaniv is the author of bloodlines. They make offerings through true name collective.
And we talk to Hadar Cohen who is an Arab Jewish scholar, mystic and artist. She is the founder of Malchut, a spiritual skill building school teaching Jewish mysticism and direct experience of God. She cultivated her own curriculum on the cosmology of creation and teaches it through her training God Fellowship. Malchut is also home for her Jewish Mystical School that includes a library of her classes and a community platform for connection. She is a 10th-generation Jerusalemite with lineage roots also in Syria, Kurdistan, Iraq and Iran. Hadar consults and teaches on Judaism, multi-faith solidarity, spiritual and political activism and more.
Her podcast, Hadar’s Web, features community conversations on spirituality, healing, justice, and art. Hadar coaches and mentors people 1:1 as well as leads and facilitates groups and community gatherings. Hadar weaves the spiritual with the political through performance art, writing, music and ritual. Hadar can be heard at her substack where she share writings, events and talks for people who want to stay connected https://hadarcohen.substack.com
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Women’s Magazine on KPFA Radio. I’m Lisa Dettmer and I’m your host today along with my co host, Kate Raphael. Today we talk to two Israeli Jewish activist spiritualist scholars who are struggling with how Israel has built its militaristic and genocidal country on trauma and how trauma has informed Jewish identity and prevented us people from moving beyond Zionism. We talked to Hadar Cohen, who is an Arab Jewish scholar, mystic and artist and the founder of Malchut, a spiritual skill-building school teaching Jewish mysticism and combines that with political activism, and we talked to Meital Yaniv, who is an Israeli survivor of the trauma of Israel and the Israeli army and is learning to heal from the trauma of Israeli apartheid and militarism, which he writes about in her inspiring new book bloodlines. Welcome Meital and Hadar to Women’s Magazine. I wanted to talk to you together, along with Kate Raphael, who is cohosting with me because you both share an interest in discussing and healing trauma in relationship to oppression and specifically in Israel, Palestine and Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. So I want to start with Meital. Meital can you tell us about your book Bloodlines?And why you wrote it, I read it and it was very moving. And I’m guessing you wanted to move other people. But maybe you could tell us why you wrote it and what you were hoping to get to accomplish with that.
Meital Yaniv 1:59
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me on the show. Bloodlines, in one sentence, is a prayer for Palestine. And in deeper meaning making, it’s also a prayer to bring the Israeli identity and Israeli state to a loving and caring death. I wrote it because I had to, there were voices that needed to speak through me. And there was a direct connection between the history and the trauma of my lineages with a specific way that I was raised in a Zionist, right wing, household and family and was raised to continue that line. And then my own understanding and the undoing that I had to do for my own liberation and liberation of my heart. And then from that place, really to define those connective tissues between how trauma can really monstrously grow. And it grows in the crevices of belonging and love, and supposedly safety or what do you think safety is because you don’t know otherwise, or what you think belonging is because you
don’t know otherwise. So I really say that my indoctrination into that identity really started in the womb, and it’s in that breath milk that those threads were passed to me. And from that place of undoing within my own healing and giving the atrocities that this identity has been committing on the land of Palestine, towards Palestinian people, and culture and land and beliefs. For generations, for decades, for lifetimes. It felt inevitable for me to write this prayer and to write it from a place of really a belief that we must bring this identity to its death. I also work as a death doula. And there’s a connection there as well of what does it mean to let something die without knowing what next is? And I think that is just as important part, we cannot really imagine what’s next. We don’t get to do that part. So how do we bring something to its death from a place of love? Knowing that that’s our offering?
Lisa Dettmer 4:09
Right. And there’s a lot of love in the book, also a lot of grief and suffering. And you talk about your great grandmother’s family and they were survivors from Poland, the Holocaust of World War Two and you survived the Holocaust. Could you tell us about their story and how it affected them and you and Israel by extension, because it really seemed like they I think you really were able to talk about their trauma and how it created the mindset in Israel that I don’t think people over here understand.
Meital Yaniv 4:42
Yeah, I mean, I also just wanna name that Israeli identity has been created from so many different traumas, and one of them is the Holocaust. My paternal grandparents, my Ashkenazi Jews were living in Krakow in Poland and my great grandma Hyah. She is writing the first cycle of the book of bloodlines. The story is written through her voice. She had a dream about the Holocaust a week or 10 days before the Holocaust happened, and took her two kids and moved as close as she could to the Russian border. Where we know of today is the Russian border.
And her husband, Avraham joined them a little bit later. And because they moved there, they were sent to a Russian working camp that was horrific, and it’s conditions, but it wasn’t a death camp. So by miracle and grace of God, and grace of the earth, they survived the atrocities that happened there. And eventually, through many other atrocities through co hosts and needing to do labor to survive, and different pandemics, arrived back to Poland. And in that moment, my grandma met my grandfather, who is the only survivor of his line. His entire family was murdered mainly in Treblinka, and then in the village that we’re living in, and he survived because he was working for the Russian government. And they met and got married and had my father, my grandfather was already very much indoctrinated into the Zionist identity. And my grandma at that point, I think, from how I’m experiencing that they wanted to leave, they didn’t feel welcome, they didn’t feel safe. And this notion of a land that awaits for them was offered, and they went for it, the Zionist ideology was already in their veins. And the ship arrived to the shores of what we now call Israel, that was post 48. They were also Ashkenazi Jews, and were treated as like, which means that they received a lot of privileges in the way that they were accepted into the land and the resources that they were offered. And then a process of indoctrination that began with assimilation into colonialism, of really not tending to anything that happened, not feeling proud to speak the languages that you speak, feeling shamed of that, feeling shamed of your survival, feeling shamed of your religion, feeling shamed of anything that could have supported
a process of healing, and a complete dissociation from that and a complete merging with what we call it sabra Zionist identity that produced my father and his brother into soldiers. My uncle died in the war, and my father was an Air Force Commander. And that line, you know, generated that kind of ideology and that kind of erasure of a trauma. That was then again, as I said, in that breath milk, that trauma was also given to me. And I hold the privilege of really being able to tend to that backward in time to find those threads. And to find those generational wounds and go back to those days in the cohosts in those days in the Russian camp, and to meet the ancestors that died in Treblinka and go back to those atrocities because we must feel it to heal it. So I have the privilege of taking that on and offering it to my lineages, so that we can understand what we did instead of heal. And what we did is create this Israeli identity that has been murdering and creating a genocide that did not start in October, that has been meticulously growing for over 75 years.
Lisa Dettmer 8:42
Matala, thank you, and we’ll get to you Hadar. I know you’re also focusing on the healing. But many uninformed Jews, especially here, but also in Israel have an unrealistic view of Israel as a lovely socialist or collective kibbutz, and a place of democracy. And I think many of us in the US can understand how Israel can be so genocidal and oppressive to Palestinians. But you’ve presented a very different picture than the lovely peace loving kibbutz. And you describe how dysfunctional and militarized Israel is. And it seems, the oppression of the Palestinians, you say, is beyond the desire for land. Instead, you portray in Israel that is filled with unhealed trauma survivors who have created a society based on repression, denial and fear, and a hyper militarized, dysfunctional society that is indoctrinated from day one, as you just mentioned, it’s almost like a psychotic society. And I’m just wondering if you could really explain to people, what is that like? I don’t think people really get the trauma and psychosis that exists in Israel.
Meital Yaniv 9:51
Yeah, so I want to start by saying the book Bloodlines ends with a love letter to the Israeli heart but I like crossed the Israeli out. So a love letter to our hearts, and a death prayer to the Israeli identity. And there’s also parts of that psychosis, as you say, or that dysfunctional, that are also gorgeous and beautiful. And there are parts of that place that nourish me in ways that no other place can. And it’s all connected, right? Like, there’s no binaries here. It’s not awful or wonderful, it’s not abusive or nourishing. It’s all of it in once. And all of it in once is the trouble is the way that we love and the way that we hate comes from the same fire. And that fire has grown beyond our control. And it is consuming us. And you know, I say this as someone who tends to fire. Fire is medicine. is healing. And fire is also a destroyer. And growing up. Yeah, when I look back in my childhood, and I look back, I think a perfect example is this past summer, I spent some time with my nephew, who’s six years old now. And he saw a flock of birds landing, and he called them an army unit. And he decided who the commander was, from that flock of birds. And that’s play. But that play is actually not allowing him to connect with the bird fully. And I think that is where I look back in my childhood, everything was kind of like, all the parts are there, because the love is so intense, because the love of a survivor is so intense. So all the parts are there. But yet the connection to the land is gone, because there is no connection to our heart.
So there’s also like an overcompensating right, like I grew up in Tel Aviv, the way that we party
in Tel Aviv is really fun. And also, it comes from that place that is really ill, and unhealthy in ourselves, because we have to escape and we have to dissociate, and we have to get away. So a rave sounds great at that moment, which makes the rave really fun if you’re not just trying to like sustain, maintain all of this dysfunction in your body. So there’s a lot of both. And here, there’s a lot of ways in which the parts that need to die are also the parts that will make us heal, and actually be in that connection. And in that love the way that we take care of one another, the way that we feed one another, the way that we host one another, like there’s so much beauty here that is in our roots and your inner lineages, especially if I, you know, go back to the, my Sephardic cultures are of Jewish cultures, there’s ways in which all of that has really been assimilated into something that is whiteness, and is disconnected in his superior. And to maintain those identities, we actually miss the ways we get to actually live. So I think how it was terrible, and beautiful and continues to be, which is why I’m not just I’m just going to leave this place. Which is why I’m like I can’t leave this place, I will live that like physically, if I need to live the land of Palestine. For the return of Palestinians, I will do that, with so much love in my heart, but there’s no letting go within my body and my emotion of that land. That land is a part of me.
And from that place, I’m not just leaving, I’m going back. And I’m like, this is how this was created in me. And this is how this was created in me. And this is that seed that was planted and never nourished and let’s nourish it. But let’s uproot this terrible seed that became a tree of monsters that are like eating my soul. So really finding those different ways of being with the land and really returning to like, what does it mean to pray in those waters on those lands for something that is more than just was allowed to me or given to me or was told to me that was mine?
Lisa Dettmer 14:03
Yeah, that’s beautiful. I just wanted to get back to before you were healed, though. Or on this journey of healing. You were in the military, and it actually made you sick.
Meital Yaniv 14:14
Yeah, that was the moment of my first breaking open, where as I said earlier, I was raised in a Zionist household family. I have war heroes, Mossad agents, fallen soldiers, Lefty recorders, which again, like every one of those identities carries Zionism in an extreme way. And when I joined the army when I was 18, it was mandatory. I was in the Air Force because it was I was like, second generation after my dad. And after six months, I was asked to send planes to fuel planes that were going to bomb Gaza. And after that mission, we went back to the base. I was puking on the way back and the next day I was supposed to come in shift. And I couldn’t enter the base, I had a panic attack for the first time in my life. I was in the car of my father. And I was kicking and screaming and breaking the windows and breaking my bones and just uncontrollably. And that started a process that is really a moment where my body said, No, I had no idea what’s happening, why, why can’t I do it, I was punished. And I was in the base for three weeks after that, and really wanted to take my life because I didn’t understand how I can survive this and not survive the staying, survive the leaving, I understood that I have to leave the army. And that understanding made me want to take my life because I didn’t know what else is there really, like this is the one thing I was groomed to do my entire life. Again, that was over 20 years ago. And that started a process that I will be in for the rest of my life, which is the undoing of this
indoctrination and really the liberation of my body, my heart, my spirit, my prayer, my relationship with God, my relationship with the earth, that then again, weaves me into a deeper alignment with what does it mean to stand for free Palestine? What does it mean to fight for, for Palestinian Liberation, self determination, return all those things? Yeah.
Lisa Dettmer 16:19
Well, and as you pointed out in your book, it’s very common for soldiers to commit suicide in Israel and also so but Hadar Cohen, I want to bring you in. Your Mizrahi Jewish family has been living in the Middle East, in Syria and in Jerusalem since way before the creation of the State of Israel. Can you talk about that history? And also, how was it for your family to live among other Arabs for generations in the Middle East?
Hadar Cohen 16:45
Yeah, thank you. Well, first, thank you so much, Meital for sharing all that. Yeah, really moving on, and resonate with a lot of what you shared in my own ways. And thank you so much, Lisa, for having us on. And yeah, I was born in Jerusalem, identifies as Arab Jew, my family has been in Jerusalem for 10 generations. We also have roots in Aleppo, also in Baghdad, and actually also in Kurdistan as well. So I’m kind of a mix of a lot of different cities in the region. You know, there’s so much to say about that. Because, you know, it’s very clear that there’s a lot of racism within the Israeli state. And that was something that was very clear to my family. And I grew up with that level of clarity because there was so much racism and discrimination against Mizrahim and I come from a particular Ashkenazim community, there’s kind of two different within Israeli society. There’s two different categories. There’s the ones who either assimilated into more Ashkenazi ways, usually through intermarriage, right or so, like living amongst Ashkenazim, and inter-marrying. And then there’s a Mizrahim who kind of refused any level of relational building at all. And, you know, sadly, kind of what was found is that the Mizrahim, who were kind of self segregating, were actually the ones who kept the traditions and the Mizrahim, who intermarried were Mizrahim who usually lost a lot of Misaki tradition. So I was raised in a very kind of Mizrahim family that was very much against intermarrying with Ashkenazim, like it was like no one in my family did that. That was like not even on the table, I grew up with a lot of just like stories of racism from my grandparents and their levels of anger and grief around it. My dad, you know, he had still all these stories of Aleppo that still live in with him till today, when my grandma, who was a Jerusalem line, she passed on to me all these memories as well. My activism about Palestine started in a public way, at least really, when my grandma died, because when she died, is when I realized that it’s not that I just lost her. But it’s also that I lost the world that she knew, and I lost, being Jewish and an Arab and belonging to the region, just because you belong, not because you came here to steal Palestinian land or, but just because you’re from there, and you just happen to also be Jewish. And that’s just part of the story. So there was a lot of grief in that. And that’s when I was like, I cannot really afford to let my grandma’s memory die with her. And I need to live that and you know, she had many Palestinian friends till the day she died because they were her people. And, for me, I feel that doing Palestinian solidarity work is an ancestral repair. Because, you know, I think especially with Arab Jewish identity, you know, there’s this constant question of where do we belong? Who are we, you know, we’re in a massive existential crisis that’s we almost don’t have any roots left because we
can’t go back to the past. Most of us can’t really get into the West and a way that makes sense. And you know, remaining in Israel has its own implication. So it’s a very disorienting state to be in. But for me, I feel like the solidarity to build with Palestinians and with Arabs is that recovery of that massive loss.
Kate Raphael 20:23
This is Kate, I really appreciate what you were saying Hadar. And I think it’s something that doesn’t get enough attention internationally as people talk about Israel and Palestine and Israel as a European settler, colonialist country or as a racist state. One of the issues that currently divides a lot of Jews in this country as we grapple with Israel’s current campaign of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians. And with its history is this issue of racism, and race and racism in Israel looks really different than in the United States and most of Europe. And some Jews want to say, Well, you can’t call Israel racist, or settler colonialist, because the majority of Israeli Jews aren’t of European ancestry, a majority at this point are from Arab or African countries where their ancestry is in those countries. So I want to ask you both to kind of weigh in on that. Is racism a correct lens? Is that a useful lens for looking at the conflict? Or do we need a different language, but or maybe you would like to start following up on what you were just saying, you and your family have experienced the racism of Ashkenazi Jews to Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews in Israel, but you also point out that Mizrahi Jews can also be very racist against Palestinians. So how do you see race in the context of Israel? Or should we even be talking about race and racism at all?
Hadar Cohen 22:13
Well, one thing I’ll just start off by saying, especially around Mizrahi Jews, and where we fit in and you know, kind of, you acknowledged how there’s little space for that, oftentimes, and the American or Western discourse. And then there’s a lot of assumptions or portrayals. And one of the things that for me is frustrating is that, well, why don’t we have a seat at the table? Why can’t our community actually speak and I don’t mean, the Mizrahim, who are like paid by the state of Israel to go do tours in the US, I actually mean, like, the Islamic community who is still suffering a lot of racism and discrimination on the ground. Like, I actually also think that they need a mic as well, because I think that there’s a lot of things that are missed. And I think part of what is missed and the way that the narrative is constructed, is that sometimes it’s Jews versus Arabs. Or you can say, even Jews versus Palestinians, or sometimes even Jews versus Muslims. And the West loves to spin this narrative, right? Because the most often question I receive when I speak about Palestine, in the West, from people, you know, who are just in the crowd, and, you know, the general kind of average white Westerner, they asked like, Well, why can’t Jews and Muslims get along? Like, what’s the issue? And it’s really frustrating, because that is so far off from the issue itself. And actually, there’s been a very intentional colonial intervention, to divide Jews and Muslim and to uproot Jews from Muslim societies. I mean, we are living in the first time in history where Jews are this disconnected from living in Muslim world and Muslim societies like that’s a tragedy within itself. And all of that was actually racist. All of that, right. And I think this is part of the dynamic that is sometimes lost in the US because our conceptions of race are very US based. So to expand our understanding of race to talk about global issues is sometimes a stretch. And I think, especially in the last few months, I mean, I’ve seen this with so
many different organizations, it’s like there’s a gap in the American knowledge of Islamophobia, and anti semitism, and they’ll add also anti Arab racism and the Palestinian racism and how they all function into a system of global racial discrimination. So those have been missing from the conversation for a really long time. Right? So when people are trying to look at what’s happening in Palestine and Israel and you know, trying to apply the American lens it’s not that it’s necessarily wrong, right, because there’s certain things that are I mean, definitely right the US Israel, both settler colonial states, similar patterns around conquest of land and land theft that for sure. What gets distorted in the narrative is the way that Jews and Muslims are used by Christian empire and the way that different things have been staged. And I think that particular Arab Jewish identity highlights that in that context. But I think what I would like more from the West is a deeper racial understanding of Islamophobia and anti semitism, and how they actually factor in to the modern construction of the Israeli state.
Kate Raphael 25:31
Meital, what would you add to that you have talked some in your book bloodlines about the history of Mizrahim in Israel, and especially in the 1950s, as people started to emigrate from especially North African countries like Morocco, how those immigrants were directly used by the Israeli government to take over more land, a way that we also saw with Soviet immigrants or immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the 90s to expand settlements. So how do you see racism operating in Israel in Palestine?
Meital Yaniv 26:17
Yeah, thank you Hedar for earlier wisdom, I would add, first of all, that, for me, racism is racism. And it has so many facets, and so many strains, and so many faces, and so many titles. I personally do understand those systems we call racism we call like, that those big titles and big names, I usually try to break it down within the personal story. And when I think about my maternal grandfather, who was born in Palestine, his family also is from Jerusalem, many, many generations back. And he also was really became a Zionist, and again, my grandparents met, they were recorders for the Lifely, which is a known Jewish terrorist organization. So I look at him and he is undivided, no matter what, supportive to the Likud party, he’s not alive anymore. But I’m sure that if it was alive today, he would still be for Bibi Netanyahu and the Likud party.
And when I try to ask myself why, like my grandfather, I love him, he loves me, he has such a beautiful heart, like how can he hate Palestinians so deeply? What is this about what is actually in the undercurrent of that need to separate and disconnect and hate and destroy, and kill and murder and all of those things. And as you say, in the book, I go back to that time, not through his lens, he was basically, you know, once the State of Israel became the State of Israel, no one cared about him anymore, because it was Sephardic. So when it was time to like, Okay, we’ve made all these fights, we fought the British off, fought the Palestinian, there were massacres. All of this happens now, like we get to do the thing you trained me to do, and no one wants him at the table until the Likud party came. And it was the first time that people went over and was like, Hey, we care about you. Right, and there was something about that connection that has stayed with him for the rest of my life, regardless of his values, like he had to go against his own like moral and values to stay in this channel. And not to mention the simulation of the loss of the Sephardic traditions between him and my grandmother at the loss of the language, all of that.
So to add to all of this, I would say that, you know, in order for people to hold an occupation and apartheid and genocide for over 75 years, racism has to be like the mother tree. That’s how you do this. Because racism makes you hate, makes you think you’re better, and makes you see the other as an enemy as not a human as not similar to you. So when I am taught that I need to go to the IDF to defend my grandmother. And that’s what I’m taught, I am taught that I need to become a soldier so that my grandma stays alive. In order for that to work, there needs to be an enemy that is threatening her life, otherwise, the story doesn’t fit. And to create that enemy, the way you do that is with racism. And again, it has different strains like in the US compared to Israel. And it’s also the same and the levels of similarity, actually, between Israel and the USA are actually terrifying. So I also want to invite white people who are listening to the call right now. And I’m talking as a fellow white person as well. You know, when I say to bring the Israeli identity to its loving and caring death, what does it mean for the white identity we hold here?
And I think there’s also ways in which land bank practices and repatriation practices that are happening on Turtle Island right now can also be a way for us to understand how we get to return Palestine to Palestine. Yeah. And what does that mean? Like there’s so many practices that, aside from the racism that has been inflicted on communities, there’s also so many practices of resilience that can actually be the way forward too.
Kate Raphael 30:15
I love that. I really wanted to follow up on that. I’m wondering how much have you made this argument to Israeli Jews, about giving up their identity as Israelis, and what has been the response and so far as you have done that.
Meital Yaniv 30:34
You know, the book is my most public way of saying this message. So those conversations are happening publicly right now, in private, I can say that, usually, when I say that, I want to bring these Israeli identities to a loving and caring death, whether I say to someone who is in solidarity with me or not, there’s a moment of silence. And I trust in that moment of silence.
Because I think what I’m saying is a way for us to reorient to identity period. And the ways that identities in all their complexities also separate us from each other, and separate us from the fact that we all live on an earth that is currently cycling through space, and have water and sun and other things that we all depended on. And the more identities we put on ourselves, I think the more we also get separated from that. So I think in wanting to bring this identity to its death, I think there’s a lot of silence around it or like moments of contemplation and a lot of fear, and a lot of worry, and a lot of people don’t want to say that. People don’t want to publish this. People don’t want to be affiliated with that. Because I mean, you’re calling to the murder of Israel from in this like binary place. That is what people hear me say. But in reality, it’s the exact opposite. I’m actually calling for our liberation and freedom and healing and aliveness, this identity to me, like, as long as this identity has been on me, I wasn’t able to be alive. I was here, I was moving through the world, but I was not alive. Every piece of that identity that has left my body has made me more alive. And it’s a personal journey. But I also see it in other beings that have done similar things. So I think in this moment, what I’m saying is, yeah, I’m offering this prayer to all of us. What does it mean to let go of identities and letting them die, and not forget to bring in other things that we want into those empty spaces. And I choose to focus on the Israeli identity,
because my life’s prayer is for the Liberation of Palestine, that land and all the people that live on it. And I might have a different future of what I see that liberation looks like than other people. But it goes back to the roots, I want the roots of the olive tree to know freedom to know liberation all over that land, in the most deepest, deepest, deepest way. And those roots, I also see it as us and for that I truly believe that there’s no future for the land of Palestine with Israeli state or Israeli identity. Those two things will never allow for Palestine to be free.
Lisa Dettmer 33:15
Thank you and Hadar, I want to follow up with you. But I want to just do a brief Id just to let people know who are just tuning in that we’re talking to Hadar Cohen and Meital Yaniv and I’m here with Kate Raphael, my co host I’m Lisa Dettmer. This is Women’s Magazine on KPFA radio, Hadar you talk about how Zionism has created a wall between people especially among Jews and within Jews and between Jews and Arabs, especially for Mizrahi and you talk about having a hyphenated identity. What does the hyphenated identity of being Arab Jewish look like? And how does it shift the narrative of Zionism and Arab nationalism?
Hadar Cohen 33:57
Well, I wanted to start by answering that question by sharing something I read, actually this week in an Edward Said essay on Reflections on Exile. And he talks about the relationship between exile and nationalism. Right. The exile identity is one in which you are displaced, you are disconnected, you are disoriented, you do not know where you belong, and you are searching for something where you belong to. And nationalism feeds off, you know, these group narratives. Here’s where you belong. This is the ideology. This is the narrative. You could argue that so much of the way that Zionism and nationalism formed, right, and this is the more trauma view of Jewish trauma and evolution, right is that, taking that experience of Jewish exile and feeding it nationalism. My exile started with the rise of Zionism. I was born in Jerusalem that was the land that my parents and my I have grandparents and my great grandparents that come from, but because the land itself was actually also an exile, because so many of its people were displaced from it, and also the consciousness of the land shifted, and also my personal identity and history and traditions and rituals, and all of it, were just completely ruptured. It’s almost like the exile in the homeland. And this is, you know, this is something that a lot of Mizrahi thinkers, the Zionist narrative is very much like, oh, there was Jewish exile, there was Jewish trauma.
And, look, we saved the Jews by creating this nationalistic state and just feeding that militarized nationalistic cycle. But the cost of that even to its Jewish community, right, I mean, of course, the Palestinians, but even if we’re looking in the Jewish community, has been really, really high. And it’s actually not a cost of belonging, it’s a cost of exiling, and I think it’s something that’s really interesting, because sometimes, right, that’s like people think of like the land as like the homeland and the Jewish sphere, right? Oh, Jerusalem. But Damascus is actually not that far off of that same region, and especially if we’re talking about biblical lands, what about Baghdad, Baghdad also has very deep Jewish lineage, Cairo, Alexandria. So all of a sudden, you’re really realizing that this is a regional issue. So you know, for me, it’s like bringing in Arab Jewish identity is also a way of like changing the discourse, like not just Holocaust, and Nakba. Actually, what did this whole region suffer from Western imperialism and colonialism? The British, the French, Germans, the US? And what has been the cost of that? You know, and I think this is
partially what I see sometimes that is missed is that the whole Arab community is showing up for Palestine because people see Palestine as their own struggle, as well. Right, Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemen, like it’s not like a separate issue. It’s their issue, too. And I think that there’s something about right, that Arab identity that unifies that right as kind of this fight against the Western infiltration, which personally through my own lived experiences that I very much resonate with, that was part of my decision to claim myself as an Arab Jew, because, you know, Mizrahi it’s a term that means easterner. And I grew up with that being a derogatory term, you should become Western or you should go to be enlightened, like all the Western people are. But what is the resistance to that? Like, what if I actually like being an easterner? What if actually, I want to stay in the easterness consciousness, even if it’s a one that has been really damaged and destroyed over decades? And I think this is part of the Mizrahi choice sometimes, right? And you see that with so many marginalized communities in so many different racial paradigms, right? Because if you offer a marginalized community some levels of privilege, there’s good reason to take it, like why not climb up the ladder. And I think that’s part of what has happened with the Mizrahi community. It’s like, oh, like, climb up the ladder, and like, the cost of that is oppression of Palestinians. And, you know, you’ll have a little bit more than what we would otherwise give you. But for me, I feel like that’s not an acceptable thing, because it is actually self betrayal and abandonment. Right. And I don’t show up for Palestinians because it’s like, oh, there’s pity or that’s it, we’re even if it’s the right thing to do, like I show up for Palestinians, because I’m also showing up for myself, when I’m doing that, like I actually think the Liberation of Palestine is also right, the liberation, I would say, actually, of Jewish people at large, but specifically Arab Jews, and Arab Jews finding our place back again, in the region. Part of that work is also integrating Jewish people into the Arab region, as we used to be, I mean, Baghdad was almost 40% Jewish in the 1940s and has gone down to pretty much zero. Like that’s a really intense loss of thousands of years, the Iraqi Jews were colonial subjects in that. And then of course the part of the racial paradigm that is, is difficult to entangle. Because it’s not just one thing, it’s both and right, it’s like, on the one hand, suffering, the oppression of that, and on the other hand, right, becoming the oppressor. So, Arab Jewish identity is tied in, in between, right, being an oppressor and being an oppressor and those things are linked. And I think that’s why, you know, there’s so much about us being a sort of bridge identity, right, because there’s the Arab side of us that can resonate with the Arab reality on some level, and then there’s a Jewish side of us that can. So there’s something that’s a bridge there. Of course, it’s also right, it’s kind of a two edged sword, right, because it can be a bridge and its potential, but it could also be you know, and I definitely feel this emotionally sometimes where it’s just like, actually, you just face difficulties and challenges from both communities, right? Because you’re not really accepted in the Jewish community, you’re not really accepted in the Arab community. So you constantly have to negotiate that.
Lisa Dettmer 40:11
Before we get into more about healing the trauma, I just wanted to maybe get a little bit more about your history. And because a lot of American Jews who are not that informed about Israel would say that Mizrahi or Arab Jews had to leave the Middle East because there was anti semitism there, even prior to Israel. So I was wondering if you could talk about that? And then how does that make a difference in the story now because you’re talking about how we are
stuck in these concepts of nationalism and identity? And could you go back a little bit and then come forward with that?
Hadar Cohen 40:52
Yeah, and you know, people who say something like that to me is a reflection of the immense lack of regional understanding because it’s like, just pointing that out without actually understanding well, what has happened in Syria, or what has happened in Iraq, or what has happened in Yemen? And how have the Muslim population itself suffered from the same thing that the Jewish population. There’s, right? It’s a bit like, I get this kind of Jewish exceptional narrative that sometimes happen, where it’s like, oh, well, the Jews are the only ones who are suffering and oppressed. And, you know, that’s just not true. There’s many different identities and many, especially in the region. So to me, you know, when someone says that, it’s like, a bit like, wow, okay, this person does not actually know the context of the region, not just Israel, Palestine, but the region itself, and how it got to where it is. And part of where it got, like, how it got to be where it is, is, through a lot of Western play, a really colonial play, right. And part of that was Nazi Germany. You know, right. There’s different ways in which Nazi Germany was just like, Okay, well, the final solution doesn’t necessarily have to be us killing the Jews, but we can actually get the Arabs to kill the Jews. And that is like, two stones and one bird or whatever the phrase is. So there’s, you know, there was also this agenda, which I think we’re actually seeing very, especially in Europe, I mean, it but also in the US, right, with a level of anti Arab racism that is existing right now. But there was a whole way in which Nazi propaganda got infiltrated into the whole region, and very intentionally, right, and you can look at different contemplate Algerian context as a particular thing, Iraq as a particular thing we can get into the histories of that, but it was just a very conscious and intentional way of wedging, you know, a classic example they talk about, especially in North Africa, right, is that the British and the French right are coming and colonizing. And the people are resisting against that colonization, you know, this was before the time of Instagram, and you know, live streaming everything. So when people were getting their information, but what was happening, you know, it was a bit delayed. So people in the region did not really understand what was happening in Germany and in the Holocaust. So they just knew that Germany is against France and Britain, and people were so anti France and Britain, that it actually made them very vulnerable to the German propaganda that then came in. And that was a huge thing that then started happening all over. And that’s where you, you kind of get the initial call to kind of expel Jewish populations from all over and with the rise of, you know, Arab nationalism, that kind of took off in all different regions. And again, we don’t have to get into the particularities of what happened in different places, because there were also a lot of like, Zionist agents who are coming and trying to convince the Jewish population that it was inherently unsafe in a Muslim society and needed to come. So there’s a lot of just historical layers of what was happening. But I think that it’s pretty clear if you ask any scholar, or any historian, or even any family, because I was, you know, grew up with his family. What was like life like in Aleppo? What was life like in Baghdad? What was life like in Iran, what was life like in Tunisia, they would share very happy memories overall. Now, that’s not to say that there hasn’t been deep trauma. But the trauma is modern, and it’s very recent. It’s not like this ancestral way in which Jews in Europe, right, have been oppressed and persecuted for centuries, sometimes millennia, right? It’s a different paradigm. And it’s not to say that there
hasn’t been discrimination against Jews, right, because discrimination exists, everywhere and all of that, but it was not as institutionalized and this just goes back into also this Western narrative that frustrates me that right, the whole, it’s Jews versus Muslims, and this is an ancient struggle. Our issues are really modern, within the last 150 years, you know, these are not ancient struggles, before the West meddled and colonized and infiltrated. I’m not saying that there weren’t issues because of course, there were. But it was not what it is today, there was a level of harmony, there was a level of literally, by definition, because all of these religions have emanated from that space. And we have so many different tribes, cultures, identities, right? Our whole region was so diverse. And that, to me, is my dream is that we returned to that multiculturalism and multi religiosity, and celebration of all that in the region. That was a long winded answer. I hope that was clear on some level.
Kate Raphael 45:49
No, I think that was really great.
Lisa Dettmer 45:51
That was good.
Kate Raphael 45:52
And I’m really glad that you brought up, for instance, the love that so many Jews from Arab countries, who are now in Israel still have for the countries that they came from, especially the Iraqis. I mean, I’ve also heard this, and I also spent a little time in Baghdad, and the way that people talk about the Jews, I mean, they take you to the Jewish Quarter. And, like, they’re very proud of that, like poets are really revered in Iraq, and a large number of the best known poets were Jewish. And I mean, people still claim him, it’s not like they make a distinction between the Jewish poets and the Muslim poets. I feel like those ties are really not understood. I think you’re really right about that. And, I mean, I also wanted to go to this question of trauma that both of you have spoken to in your work and have spoken about here, and this need for belonging. And this is something that I’m hearing a lot from American Jews these days, people who say, I’m horrified by the atrocities that Israel is committing in Gaza, I want Palestinians to have freedom and self determination, I want an end to the occupation. I want equal rights for Palestinians living in Israel, but I believe in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and we need a place that can be a refuge for us. And we need to protect that in order to be safe. And I think that doesn’t make any sense. You can’t believe in both of those things. Like you can’t believe in a Jewish state and believe in equal rights for people who are not Jewish. That’s just incompatible. But what I hear in that is this legacy of trauma. And also this quest that you spoke of Meital for belonging. You talked about that with your family that this need to feel that they belonged, you know, allowed your family to just live with the contradictions when they came to Israel. And so how do we move past that or through that rather, you know, how do we acknowledge the trauma that people are carrying both personal and intergenerational trauma? I mean, now we’re talking about like, many of the people who are saying this, to me, you’re talking about third generation trauma, but they feel it very deep within themselves, within their bodies, in their psyches. So
how do we like validate that, but at the same time, not allow people to remain stuck in it, in a lot of circles. And in the media here, it’s like Jewish trauma trumps everything. And as soon as you say, Jewish trauma, you can’t say anything else, and you can’t move past it. And I mean, we have to move past and we have to acknowledge that Palestinians also have a lot of trauma, and a lot of it caused, unfortunately, by us at this point. And so how can everybody get to both keep their trauma, explore their trauma, but not simply use it to avoid talking about injustice and moving beyond? I would love for both of you to speak to that.
Meital Yaniv 49:18
I think my first response is just the way to heal is belonging but it has to be true belonging. Safety is in belonging. But it’s not in this makeup belief belonging to a state that is supposed to keep you safe because you’re killing people. Like that’s not true belonging. True belonging is in the fact that the same sun that rises here sets in Palestine, and it’s the same sun that when I go to sleep rises there and it’s the same sun that grows all of our food. That is belonging. We belong to this earth. That is the only way we heal trauma. And that is the only way we feel true belonging because that is the only one true thing we belong to all the identities, all the nationalities, the borders, the homes that we build. All of that. None of it is true belonging. True belonging is understanding that the apple that I just ate came from a tree, and that tree had sun on it and water and it’s the same water that I need to drink to, to survive. Yeah, when we take those nourishments, and we make them into commodities, we disconnect to people who live in the United States, and say those things that you just said, I want to, I want to invite them into a contemplation to really understand that Jewish dependency on Israel is killing us period, and really sit with that, that dependency that you have, to that land to be Israel is killing the people that you want to keep you safe. And from that place, really understand that, that creation, we’re living in it. This is our best, wildest imagination. And we’re here it exists, we created it, we’re actually living in our wildest dreams. It’s right here right now. And it’s one of the most prolific nightmares I’ve ever experienced. And that is our best at imagining belonging, and safety and freedom, and all those things that we say that we believe in. Look at what it’s doing to us and everyone who comes in contact with us. That’s why I come back to this notion of death, we don’t get to imagine the next world, we get to show up for it healed. And that work needs to start right now. And we need to start it right now. No one is going to give us the healing circle we need. We need to find a way to heal those traumas, so that we don’t need to be dependent on a piece of land, then you can’t even like drive there right now, if something happens to you. What is that dependency? And what does that come to? And then find your true connection and belonging, where you’re at? Right? Like what does it mean to be a colonizer on this land right now? What does it mean to live on stolen land? Like let’s start here. And then understand, true belonging is available for you right now, go outside, right now in this moment and feel it. And if you don’t feel it, let’s find the practices, you need to feel it right now. And then from that place, from that place of liberation within yourself, show up for others. But first of all, find it within yourself, show up for yourself, and to do that, if you are carrying an Israeli identity. And I’ll just keep it in that there’s things that need to die. And I would love to support you in bringing them to a really loving death.
Lisa Dettmer 52:35
Hadar, I’d love to hear your answer.
Hadar Cohen 52:38
Yeah, well, first, I just want to start off by saying that if it wasn’t clear before, it should be absolutely clear now that Jewish safety, Jewish belonging, Jewish freedom can only happen if Palestinians are free. And we are actually dependent, right, like there’s a dependence there. I think this is where for me, like so much of the work, is building Jewish Palestinian solidarity over our shared freedom from this apartheid regime, from this fascism, really, I think when October 7th happened, and I actually was in Jerusalem was on that land. And I remember feeling like oh, this will wake people up that apartheid occupation. Keeping Gaza in Siege is actually not going to keep not Israeli safe. I’m not sure if people safe like it actually is not practically doing that you can still again live in that fantasy that it might but it’s not happening. The time to end Zionism is now. It’s not working. Zionism is really built on this understanding that Jews are fundamentally unsafe in the world. They cannot exist in a diasporic community, they cannot just exist in, you know, among the other people, they need a separate state, they need it to be highly militarized. And they need to in some way live in a ghetto. The Israeli state actually runs on Jewish fear, and needs Jewish people to stay in fear in order for its existence as it is to continue. Now that is a really, really sick way of thinking about freedom, that Jewish people have to be eternally in fear. For them to be free, actually do think that it’s possible for Jewish people to feel safe and belonging in the world, and not just in a getaway state that’s, you know, colonizing and displacing and other people to also witness the way that there’s so much emotional manipulation by the Israeli government of Jewish pain and trauma and suffering is just heart wrenching. It’s an unhealthy addiction. You know, I think from a trauma lens, we can really look at it from an addictive lens and we’re actually addicted to the military, with our spending with like, it’s an addiction. So just saying, Oh, stop, this is not going to work. We have to understand the addict. question that is there, and the level of toxicity there. And we have to actually build skill sets to completely like disconnect this addiction cycle. And for me, the way to do that is spirituality and mysticism. There’s no other way because the spiritual teachings teach us that we are not just physical beings. Conceptions of Zionism was very much like, well have Jewish people have a military and they’re physically saved, and they’ll be okay. But that’s actually hasn’t been true. Because emotionally, mentally, spiritually, the Jewish people have never had an opportunity to really reckon with the levels of trauma in their system, the emotional and the mental systems have resulted in the level of psychosis that we see in an Israeli state. And I think that, you know, coming at it from a spiritual trauma informed perspective as to say, hey, a human being is actually not just a physical being, they’re a multi dimensional being, they have an emotional body, they have a mental body, they have an energetic body, they have a spiritual body, you know, sometimes I think it’s easy to look at it and be like, Oh, he’s really society so sick, like, I hope they figure it out, you know, and it’s, well, no, this is the result of the world’s global issues. No one is exempt from this work. Actually, we are all tied to it. And because it’s happening on this level of like, geopolitical stage, and everyone is watching, it doesn’t mean that we’re not all implicated in it, we actually all are. So we need to start understanding the ways that this is hitting our system and from the inside, and finding that language, that articulation, that skillset, that healing, doing it on the inside, doing it with others doing it politically. To me, this is the urgency of our time, like healing is not something that we just do for fun on the side when
we have time when we have enough resources. Healing is a survival skill. Healing is a political protest. Healing is the demands of our time. In order for us to actually make it through.
Outro Ending Song of radio 57:08
They say that freedom is a constant struggle. They say that freedom.
Lisa Dettmer 57:16
You know that was an interview Kate Raphael and I conducted with two Jewish Israelis who are finding teaching healing from Israeli Zionism in genocide. You can find Hadar Cohen on her podcast Hadar’s Web and at her spiritual school Malchut and you can pick up Meital Yaniv’s deeply inspiring new book Bloodlines on surviving and healing from Israel psychosis online at meitalyaniv.com or find links for both on our page on KPFA website. I am Lisa Dettmer joined with Kate Raphael, and we have been your host today on Women’s Magazine. Now may we all find healing in these times.
Outro Ending Song of radio 57:53
You reach for your ID. They smile. I reach for mine. These shoes.
Outro Ending Announcements 1 58:01
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Outro Ending Announcements 2 59:02
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai