Shlonak or Sh'7alak?

During my time in the Emirates last month, many of my students would ask me, "Mr. Richard, Where is better? The UAE or Kuwait?" Somehow I became the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the Youth of the UAE in Abu Dhabi. In all actuality, I am totally American born and raised, and learned Arabic at an older age, around the end of my teenage years. Although the Arabic dialect I speak is unmistakeably Kuwaiti, and that from an older generation. Henceforth this correlation. . .
I would always respond to them as follows. Kuwaitis as a people are by far the most open-minded in the Gulf, while the government is stagnant. The UAE, on the other hand, has a very active and progressive government trying to push the country into the big leagues, while the people are probably the most conservative (in line with Qatar but certainly way more conservative then Saudis.)

In truth there is no such thing as one being better than the other, there are various characteristics that distinguish them from one another, and most importantly have lead to these conflicting outcomings both socially and politically. First off, Kuwait's history is much older than that of the Emirates. Kuwait was able to develop sooner and at a faster pace. Kuwait had its heyday as the Gulf poster child for success from the '60s until the Iraqi invasion in 1990. (Most people would agree that after that Kuwait just continued to go downhill.) Regardless of the development, however, Kuwait's history is just totally different from that of the Emirates or even Qatar and the rest of the Gulf countries.

Kuwait has a democratic past.

When Kuwait was established as a state, the mercantile elite voted for the Sabah family to become the rulers. This was due to their status as the poorest family amongst the merchant elite. This was the decision of the merchants that they become the rulers, initially only overseeing the security of the city. The real power, politically, socially and economically was in the hands of the merchants. Once the British arrived this changed. The Brits did not understand the complexities of such a complex society. They went directly to the "rulers" to exploit the region's oil. Furthermore, they would pay large sums to the ruling family to have control over the lucrative oil fields, should they be found. (Don't forget in the early 20’s it was still just speculation.) This is when the Sabah family started to prosper and gain power. This is where the power shift takes place between the merchants and the royal family.

The merchants had to be essentially "bought out" of politics and then bribed for financial stability and personal gain. This is one of the reasons why today we see merchant families like al-Shaya owning monopolies in many industries throughout the Gulf. These are some of those original buyouts for power. Kuwait was established as a trading post between Iraq and India, similar to the other Gulf states. In Kuwait's case, the Bedouins quickly gave up their nomadic ways and quickly "settled" as they are called in Arabic today, the Hathar or literally civilized, in juxtaposition to the nomads or Bedouin (Bedou in Arabic) that lived outside the boundaries of the city-state. Kuwait is a mix of three various heritages, the Nomadic Bedouin mainly from the heartland of modern-day Saudi Arabia, known as the Najd, Iran, and Iraq. The Emirates is also made up of three various heritages; those same originally Nomadic Bedouin, Iranians, Yemeni's and even Omani's. Another major difference between Kuwait and the UAE is that Kuwait is one nation-state with one history, albeit a variety of internal cultures. The Emirates, on the other hand, is several different city-states that decided in the '70s to become a federation.

Originally known to the British as the Trucial States; Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khayma, Sharjah, and Umm al Quwain all became one united state in 1971. Whereas Kuwait was established democratically through a general consensus of the ruling merchant elites, with the current royal family only receiving real power with the coming of oil and the British, the UAE rulers came to power in a totally different way. Opposed to Kuwait that was already a complete city in and of itself, almost the entirety of the UAE was a rural desert. While it differed from emirate to emirate, the vast majority were either fully or semi-nomadic. One notable distinction would be Dubai that the vast majority were Iranian and to a lesser extent Indian merchants that the ruling family of Dubai, the Al Maktoum's, coerced to cross the Gulf and do their business from Dubai rather than the southern coast of Iran.

So while Kuwaitis were settled almost from their inception, the Emiratis were not and they required a powerful ruler, cue Sheikh Zayed, who had the vision to take his compatriots, literally out of the desert and onto the world stage. This was a possibility for a single man to do, and now for his descendants to carry on, because there is no tradition of democracy, and autocracy is not abnormal or frowned upon. On the contrary, a benevolent autocrat in this case not only became a very rich businessman himself but was furthermore able to fill the pockets of his subjects and citizens. Sheikh Zayed was a very progressive leader that was able to revolutionize his country through not only oil wealth. It is the investments of those petrodollar profits that has seen the great success of the 'Emirati corporation.'

In conclusion and direct response to the initial question raised above, I would say that Kuwaiti's are the most open-minded national group in the Gulf due to their modernization and entry onto the world stage at an earlier time, their democratic heritage both in regards to the voting of the Sabah family into power by the merchant elites but also the neighborhood Diwaniya which is the root of the Kuwaiti consensual political system and most importantly Kuwaiti's cosmopolitan past and tradition.

Dubai is considered today to be the most cosmopolitan city in the world with 83% foreign-born residents. Mirroring Farah Nakib's sentiment in her book, Kuwait Transformed, Cosmopolitanism should not be understood as a sophisticated city, but rather a hybrid city fusing together different groups of people. In Kuwait's case, this was Arabs from modern-day Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, India and East Africa, all living and working together and ultimately identifying themselves with the then tiny city-state of Kuwait-town. While the Emirati government has done everything possible to modernized the nation and bring them onto the world stage, the one million citizens are still finding their way between tradition and modernity.

Around the Arab World in 4 Minutes.

In late October 2016, the pan-Gulf superstar, Balqees Fathi, released a video clip for the song “Wyak Khidhni", combining several countries’ popular and traditional cultures in one clip, representing the current state of cultural pan-Arabism. In this clip, the Emirati-born, Yemeni-origin, Saudi-married Balqees, presents six scenes representing the most important Arab sub-cultural stereotypes. The clip begins as her husband leaves her for the weekend and leaves her stuck at home with their two sons. Before she can turn around, the kids are missing from the couch and “kidnap” her into a dream. The first stop in this dream is in Egypt, where Balqees works as the sassy “Bint al-Beled” (Daughter of the Country) in a neighborhood cafe. In the next scene, she is whisked off to the Maghreb, in full Moroccan style dress and decor. Before we know it she is in the Gulf, wearing a Kuwaiti-style Burga’ for a split second, at a Kuwaiti-style Majlis preparing tea for her “men”, in the traditional way over a coal fire, before they break into a short eight-count of Khaleeji style footwork and hair flips. 

Between short interludes of Khaleeji style and Egyptian Stick or ‘Assaya dancing by the boys, we get to a Shaami-style BBQ, complete with a French-style chef and roasted rubber duckies. We are then taken to the land of the song’s dialect, Iraq, to a Baghdadi cafe. Balqees dresses in drag as a young Iraqi boy from yesteryear sipping on tea and cheering on a sports match. Finally, in an homage to her father of Yemeni descent, the last Arab cultural scene is a traditional Yemeni wedding, complete with Yemeni dress, jewelry and dagger dance. In a final, somewhat random scene before being brought back to reality from the dream, is a modern dance party complete with electric guitar and a rave audience. 

Balqees represents a new style of the young Arab pop star. In this clip, she is not provocatively dressed, she has no musclebound Turkish or Lebanese model love interest and is in keeping very much in line to the social and culturally created norms of society while still being innovative, artistic and fun. While the lyrics are simple and catchy, they are not foolish. Balqees knows her audience on several levels. As one of the most prominent wedding singers in the Gulf, Balqees’s immediate audience is young Gulf youth, especially girls. While the boys go to her public concerts all over the Gulf for national festivals and concerts, it is the girls who hire her to perform at their weddings. On the grander scale of the audience is the pan-Arab connection. 

This relatively short clip represents the current state of cultural pan-Arabism and cross-cultural exchange on a pop culture stage. Here is the link to the video: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0Srp-n6C888

Baghdad: The City of Peace and of Blood. A Quick History.

As I gear up for a graduate student conference next month at UCLA, I am reading anything and everything I can sink my teeth into on Arab capital cities. This week I finally finished Justin Maroozi's hefty chronicle on Baghdad. City of Peace, City of Blood- A history in Thirteen Centuries. I have always been fascinated by Iraq and due to the city's importance as one of the historic capitals of the Arab world, along with Cairo and Damascus, I took to reading it. Just as the title claims, the author begins with a clear historical background to the establishment of the city under the Abbasid caliphate and why Baghdad was chosen as the capital city.

To make a very long and gruesome story short, the descendants of the Prophet's uncle Abbas gained traction against the descendants of Muwawia, the Prophet's brother-in-law and governor of Syria who established the Umayyad caliphate in Damascus. The supporters of Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law and cousin, were numerous in the province of Iraq and were unhappy with the tribal inclinations the Umayyads had showed towards the initial Arab converts to Islam. The Abbasids promised a revival of Islam where Arabs and non-Arabs would be equal and united regardless of their origins and the like. The Abbasids spread their message of revolution to the supporters of Ali and his descendants, the Shia, of Kufa in southern Iraq and Khorasan on the eastern ends of Iran and gained military traction to raise a rebellion against the Umayyads. In 750, Damascus fell. In 754, Abu Al Abbas, great-great-grandson of Abbas, the Prophet's uncle, died to smallpox. His brother, Abu Jafar, who took the name Al Mansour (The Victorious) was proclaimed the first caliph of the world-changing Abbasid dynasty which would last for 500 years with its extraordinary achievements, celebrated to this day.

In order to displace the residual loyalty of the Umayyads in Damascus and to preserve his independence from Basra and Kufa in southern Iraq, the two Arab cities that had been founded as military garrisons in the first centuries of the Arab conquests, he established Baghdad in 762 as his capital. Twenty miles to the south of his new capital, lay the ruins of Ctesiphon, the once glorious imperial capital of the Persian Parthian and later Sassanid Empires. Ctesiphon was founded across the river from the even more ancient capital of Seleucia, one of the great cities of the Hellenistic and later Roman eras. The name Baghdad is Persian in origin with several legends attributed to its derivative. A thirteenth-century Syrian author attributed it to Bagh, meaning garden, and Dad, the name of the man who owned it. The twentieth-century Orientalist Guy Le Strange, "laid the matter to rest" that the etymology of the word was indeed Persian, however meaning "Founded by God," Bagh meaning God and Dadh meaning founded or foundation. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of the city, who flocked there in droves, representing one of the most astonishing and rapid urbanizations in history, preferred the name Madinat al Salam, the City of Peace.

It was under the patronage of Haroun al-Rashid of Arabian Nights fame that Baghdad and the Abbasids were at their peak. He had started a club for scientific and medical discovery. The great works of classical Greek, Hindu and Persian were translated into Arabic and disseminated throughout the Empire under official royal and wealthy private patrons. Knowledge was transmitted from East and West to the central capital of Baghdad, which would later be translated back to the West for Europe's birth (not rebirth) during the Renaissance. Science, scholarship, bloodshed, conquest, palatial building in Baghdad and Imperial expenditure was expended in ways never to be repeated in history. On his death in 809, it is said by the Islamic chronicler Tabari that 900 million dirham were left in the treasury. Lest we forget Haroun's staring role in the Arabian Nights both for his scholarly and sexual successes. While it's not the most accurate historical account of Baghdad during this period, it nevertheless provides a vibrant picture of what once was one of the most extravagant, civilized and grand cities in history.

After 500 years of Abbasid rule and severe internal strife that finally took its toll on the fledgling empire, the Mongols invaded and leveled the city to near apocalyptic destruction in 1258. As if Hulagu's devastation in 1258 was not enough, another Mongol leader, Tamerlane, swept in only 150 years later to again annihilate the city to ruin. With the exception of a few Persian conquests of Baghdad under the Safavids in the early to mid-sixteenth century, Baghdad and modern-day Iraq were ultimately under the control of Ottoman Pashas until the dawn of the British in 1917. The early twentieth century was a time of great excitement and rebirth in modern Iraq under the British-backed Hashemite Kings. The Jews, who constituted one-third of the city's inhabitants, especially thrived and helped to raise Iraq's status from a forgotten backwater to a flourishing center of Arabic culture and economic growth. Baghdadis returned to their great heritage of literature that had not been seen since the destruction of the Dar al-Hikma or House of Wisdom under the Abbasids at the hands of the Mongols, where the Tigris was said to bleed black from the ink of all the books tossed into it.

This is where the immortal Arabic quip on literature finds its place: Cairo writes, Beirut publishes and Baghdad reads. This statement will be dissected further in coming articles.

The Orientalization of Oriental Dance

Oriental Dance has, unfairly, garnered a reputation as a dance of total seduction, eroticism and fantasy. The "Orientalization" of this art form has become so entrenched in its universal appeal that most audience members and, dancers themselves, either lose track or are simply unaware of its actual roots and origins. Many mistake it as PG erotica, others in the new age wave see it as a dance of fertility and while no one can be certain of its ancient origins, it was and is the stage version of the many social dances found throughout the Middle East and North Africa, mainly Egypt. Even the name "belly dance" has its origins in 19th century America. At the 1893 Worlds Fair in Chicago, a man named Sal Bloom coined the term because no one was coming to see the ethnic dances. In order to attract more attention to the "Street of Cairo" attraction he called the form of dancing that "Little Egypt" was presenting as Belly. 1890's America was still very conservative and didn't even dare say arm or leg, they would say limb, so even saying belly was extremely scandalous, and so the bastardization and Orientalization of our art began. 

The "Orientalization" of this art have become so deep rooted that even Middle Easterners themselves have lost sight of its origins as a social dance. Prior to the huge influx of Orientalist materials, such as travel accounts, paintings and other forms of art in the West, the dance was simply known as Raqs Beledi in Egypt. Peasants that made their way from all over Egypt and settled in Cairo brought their dances with them and when mixed together created Raqs Beledi. Raqs Sharqi, is no more then the stage version of this dance that made its debut in the early twentieth century in nightclubs throughout Cairo, Beirut and Istanbul, flooded with European soldiers and bourgeoise Effendi administrators. The creation of Hollywood brought a new dimension to the Orientalization of Oriental Dance in the East itself. These films that were then seen in the East influenced the dancers that danced in Egyptian films. Ballet, Jazz and Latin dances were then fused with authentic Oriental movements that came to glamorize Oriental Dance on the silver screen.

While some hard core anti-colonialists would call this a form of western colonial appropriation, culture and fusion was much more fluid back then and used in a more progressive and creative way. While Western aesthetics were infused into the dance, they were also infused into music. Mohammed Abdel Wahab, one of the most pivotal composers of Arabic music in the twentieth century was a total non-conformist and even fused a western style hoedown into Um Kulthum's epic "Amal Hayati."  It would only make sense for Oriental Dance and its pioneers like Samia Gamal, Tahia Carioka and Naima Akef to do the same. However, they never lost the earth essence of Raqs Beledi when it was put onto the stage as Raqs Sharqi. Although various Western stage aesthetics like staging, traveling steps and more elaborate costuming were engaged in the transition of the dance from the street to the screen, the essentials never wavered. Same as Abdel-Wahab's compositions, they might have had a western inspirational flare, but the execution was completely Oriental. 

Fast forward to the 21st century and as soon as a westerner sees someone do anything remotely close to "belly dance," they automatically compare you to Shakira as if she is the authority to be compared to on the matter. This is totally wrong. Even if she is half Lebanese, she should not be the face of Oriental Dance in any capacity. While her renditions have brought more attention to the dance as a whole, and certainly fueled more class sign ups in the early days of her performances, but she is by no means authentic. Worst of all, besides that push for more participants, I think she has actually done a disservice and has Orientalized the dance even more. It has just continued to be enforced as an erotic, sweaty, hip shaking, ripped leggings form of twerking with no connection to its authentic self. I wouldn't have a problem if it was called something else and not associated with the Middle East and Middle Eastern dance. But sadly it is, and that is a problem to me. Its time that things are understood correctly and in the appropriate contexts. 

Divas; The Big 3 and How They Define (22) Nations.

It is well known how much I love Arabic music and cultural icons and how they effect and impact culture and identity. On that note I wish to publish a piece of my Masters thesis from the University Chicago on some of these issues.

The Golden Era of Arab song turned singers into actors, celebrities and above all legendary cultural icons.  Although male celebrities were also important and well-loved, I argue that the female icon has always been more important as a cultural icon primarily due to her gendered nationalist and pan-Arabist status (especially in the period of the mid-twentieth century), which lasts to this day. While Umm Kulthum and Fairouz are the overarching cultural super icons, each decade since the 1920s has had its shining star, typically in parallel with Umm Kulthum. The 1910s and 20s saw Munira Mahdiya and Fathiyya Ahmad, the 1930s and 40s had Layla Murad and Asmahan. Whereas the 1950s and 60s saw the debut of Fairouz and Sabah, the 1970s and 80s were the prime for Warda Al-Jaza’iria and the end of the critically agreed upon Golden Era of Arabic song. The end of the Golden Era is often associated with the discrediting of Nasser-style Arab nationalism, after the defeat of the Egyptian army in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and subsequently with the passing of the two greatest symbols of high culture, Um Kulthum and Abdel Halim Hafez. 

Umm Kulthum has left the largest cultural impression on subsequent generations of Arab youth. It was in parallel to the struggle for independence and the creation of a national Arab identity that her career developed to such heights. She publicly associated herself with the Arab nationalist regime of Gamal Abdel-Nasser after the 1952 revolution. She had everything to offer Nasser’s nationalism as a cultural symbol. Nasser saw that in order to reinforce his legitimacy and fire up the masses for his development projects, he could do no better than have Um Kulthum on his side. She genuinely believed in him, and after the defeat of 1967 she would rally the Arabs and give concerts for four years to raise money for Nasser’s attempts to rebuild Egypt's destroyed military.

Her legendary star status is used in contemporary musical tropes. A huge hit from the summer of 2011 by Omani singer Saleh Al-Zadjali, ‘Ayaar (Player), mentions that “after you (my pearl) I started to listen to Um Kulthum (min baa‘d ya danah sert asma‘ Umm Kulthum).”This clip has reached about 20 million views since it was posted on YouTube. Iraqi pop sensation, Mohammed Salim also recorded a single in the namesake of the Diva, saying “Sudug low galat Um Kulthum, ahl-al hob mesakeen: It is true what Um Kulthum said, people in love are the needy ones.”

A common saying in the Arab world advises people to “wake up with Fairouz and end your night with Um Kulthum.” This saying has become such a part of popular culture that contemporary singers refer to it in their songs. Majid Al-Mohandis, the Iraqi Pan-Gulf singer mentions this cultural phenomena in the lyrics of this Pan-Arab song in the “White Dialect” (lahja al-bayda) “Sabah Al-Khair”: “Ya Omri, Sabah al-Nour, Yalla AsHa Ghenit Fairouz: My life (sweetie), Good Morning, come on wake up, Fairouz already sang.” Associations between Fairouz, the morning, a cup of Turkish coffee, and (possibly) a cigarette have been ingrained into the Arab psyche over the generations as a set of inseparable factors. Traditionally no radio station would begin its morning broadcast without playing something from Fairouz. Her soothing and strong voice has become inseparable with the morning and this tradition that began with the radio continues today on social media as well. Even Instagram accounts like insta6arab will begin their morning posts with a clip or recording from the legendary diva. 

Like Um Kulthum, Fairouz would also sing in al-‘ammiya, or (Lebanese) dialect, and Classical Arabic, predominately in the poems recounting Arab greatness. Despite being a Lebanese cultural icon, she established herself as a pan-Arab singer and cultural icon that while still symbolizing Lebanon, reached and represented all the Arabs. Fairouz is still loved and can be heard all over the world to the present day. She has been able to successfully cross from the classical era to today and from folklore to contemporary genres. Hammond writes that “No Arab singer has managed to merge the traditional and the modern as Fairouz has.” Fairouz is the epitome of dignified Arab nationalism due to her patriotic songs.  Her image and “mythical” status in Arab culture have placed her on par with Umm Kulthum and given her nicknames like “Ambassador to the Stars,” “Neighbor to the Moon” and “the Jewel of Lebanon.” She is the only one of the original Divas still living.

“Along with Lebanon’s Fairouz and Egypt’s late Um Kulthum, Warda was one of the legendary singers of the Arab world” was the subheading of Al Jazeera’s article on the passing of the legendary singer Warda Al-Jaza’iria in January 2012. No academic work has since been done on the importance of Warda, leaving a gap in the field on her relevant status in the Arab world. For the purposes of this thesis, her importance is a key link between the turath and tarab of Um Kulthum and the work of contemporary artists like Assala (who will both be discussed at length below), to whom Warda had symbolically passed the torch onto before passing away.

Despite her Algerian father, Lebanese mother, Parisian upbringing, and constantly changing address between major Arab cultural capitals like Beirut and Cairo, Warda stated, “I was the first artist from the Arab Maghreb to move to Egypt.” She had no time for borders between the Arab Mashreq and Maghreb, nor between East and West. For her, Lebanon is “in my blood,” Egypt is “my beloved,” and Paris “belongs to my childhood.” But the great passion she inherited from her father is Algeria. Despite her association with Algeria, Warda is arguably the only one of the three grand Arab divas who had less of a symbolic quality as an artistic ambassador from any single nation-state. Umm Kulthum was Egyptian and sang in the Egyptian dialect. Fairouz was Lebanese and sang in the Lebanese dialect. Warda, while having this mixed background, claimed her Algerian roots above all others but predominantly sang and spoken in Egyptian.

Warda’s melodic voice provided a strong expression of the aspirations of Arab nationalism and democracy, in her own time and today. Her voice and songs are considered less intimidating or intense then Umm Kulthum. Warda was able to maintain her cultural relevance and cultural symbolism over the many decades of her career. She made strategic musical choices by staying true to her tarab roots while still appealing to youth audiences. Some of her most successful hits were softer dance hits “Batwanes Beek" and “Haramt Ahebak”, in the 1990’s. When a Saudi youth was asked on his favorite Golden Era artist he chose Warda, “because her songs were between a fast beat yet romantic and gave you feelings of warmth, love and balance.” 

The legacies of singers, like Warda, Umm Kulthum, and Fairouz, with their romantic, honorable and yet patriotic lyrics, continues to inspire and unite the Arab people in a way many politicians tried—and failed—to do. They continue to do so even in death (excluding Fairouz). Case in point: the massive outpouring of grief caused by the death of Warda, the Algerian Rose, at the age of 72 on May 17, 2012 in Cairo. During times of political uncertainty it is the voices of these Divas that are still constantly heard. Throughout the Arab Spring, Warda’s voice was constantly heard, not only in Cairo's Tahrir Square, but throughout a resurgent Arab world. This trend extends with the music (and imagery) of all three Divas.

Themed cafes with photos and memorabilia of the Golden Era divas are everywhere. In Kuwait alone, the famed Avenues mall possesses a “Villa Fairouz” restaurant and “al-Sitt" Cafe in honor of Um Kulthum, with another “Villa Fairouz” in AlShaab AlBahri and a separate chain, “Fayrouzeyat” has just sprung up in Al Shaheed Park. In the United Arab Emirates, “Nar,” a Lebanese restaurant with two locations in Dubai and one in Abu Dhabi, decorate with the Golden Era stars of music and film, including Um Kulthum, Fairouz, Asmahan, Omar Sherif and Abdel-Halim Hafez. An infinite number of trinkets like cups, mugs, pillow cases, trays, photo blocks and figurines of these stars has become available all over the Arab world celebrating their status as pop culture icons.

It is apparent that while opinions vary, certain points are more concrete. While being the symbol of the nation is more clear-cut regarding the Golden-Age divas like Um Kulthum and Fairouz, as made clear by Danielson and Stone, the water is made murky when examining Warda and contemporary stars.  While there is no doubt of an artist’s country of origin on the pan-Arab stage, it is less likely for her to symbolize the nation as such Divas had in the twentieth century.

Habibi, you are still my Habibi: Mizrahi Music, Before and After Israel

Mizrahi Jews arrived in Israel with a rich musical history and culture. In Mizrahi neighborhoods and development towns, new artistic innovations formed as Western, Mediterranean, African, and Asian urban and rural musics were reshaped and fused together in concentrated and intensified interaction. Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, and religious holidays became occasions for musical metamorphosis, as well as community celebrations. Renowned Iraqi qanun and oud players performed at Iranian, Libyan, Egyptian, and other Mizrahi community events. Yemenite singers became fluent in Iraqi and Kurdish folk songs. However, prior to this fusing of musical styles and communities, the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa were respected and successful artists in their own lands of origin.

In this article, I will begin with a brief history on the Mizrahi community, the terms meaning both historical and its contemporary use in modern day Israel, and its relation to the Sephardic community. Using Ella Shohat's, the premier scholar on Mizrahi studies, The Invention of the Mizrahim, to frame my understanding of the position Mizrahim found themselves once in Israel. Amy Horowitz’s Israeli Mediterranean Music: Straddling Disputed Territories and Galit Saada-Ophir’s Mizrahi Subaltern Counterpoints: Sderot's Alternative Bands, will be analyzed as to how the hybrid fusion of Mizrahi Music was formed and how it has progressed, in the authors respective case studies. In my own analysis, I will examine current Mizrahi pop super star, Sarit Hadad, her contribution to Mizrahi music and her deep Arabic influences. 

The term Mizrahi is a socio-political concept that describes the Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. Prior to their migration to Israel, the number of these Mizrahi Jews was numbered at approximately one million. The Ashkenazim, or European Jews, in Israel coined the term in the 1950s in response to the large wave of immigrants. The immigrants soon began to use the term to describe themselves as well.“Mizrahi” is distinct from, but often overlaps with, the term, “Sephardi,” and the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. While Sephardim literally means Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, it has expanded to describe Jews from Africa or Asia, or to describe those who follow Sephardic, as opposed to Ashkenazic, religious practice. Following the expulsion from Spain, many Sephardic Jews immigrated to Arab countries, where they blended with the local population, making it difficult to distinguish between Sephardim and native Mizrahim.  Since the expulsion of Iberian Jews in the late 15th century, Sephardim and Jews from Arab lands, were the majority of Jews in the land of Palestine, and Sephardic religious practice dominated Jewish life. 

Beginning in the 1880s, Ashkenazi Jews from Germany, Poland and Russia started to immigrate to Israel in large numbers. The Ashkenazim soon became the Jewish majority in Palestine, and by 1948 they were 80% of the Jewish population. Due to modern Zionist ideologies originating in Europe (and their larger numbers), the Ashkenazim became the leaders of the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine prior to the creation of the state of Israel. Once statehood was declared in 1948, the leaders of the Yishuv continued to be the leaders of the newly established state.  Sephardim and Mizrahim were almost entirely absent in positions of leadership.

Ella Shohat, a premier scholar in Mizrahi studies believes that the the Zionist ideology “urges Arab Jews (or, more generally, Oriental Jews) to see their only real identity as Jewish. The official ideology denies the Arabness of the Arab Jews, positing Arabness and Jewishness as irreconcilable opposites. For Zionism, this Arabness, the product of millennial cohabitation, is merely a diasporic stain to be "cleansed" through assimilation”. While still in the Arab World and prior to this “cleansing”, a very prominent group of Arab Jewish singers and musicians had made a name for themselves in their respective homelands. The most notable of these were Layla Murad of Egypt, Salima Murad of Iraq and the Kuwaity Brothers from Kuwait/Iraq. This was all washed away when these Arab Jews were forced to migrate to Israel. Once there, they became culturally marginalized by the Ashkenazi elites, who ruled the country.

Shohat’s article on The Invention of Mizrahim, discusses how the Mizrahim in Israel were made to feel ashamed of their dark, olive skin, of their guttural language, of the winding quarter tones of their music, even of their traditions of hospitality. Children, desperately tried to conform to an elusive Euro-Israeli sabra norm, and were made to feel ashamed of their parents and their Arab countries of origin. Occasionally they were mistaken for Palestinians and arrested or beaten. Since Arabness led only to rejection, many Mizrahim became self-hating.

The moment the Kuwaity Brothers came to Israel, their artistic careers’ took a turn for the worst. They arrived to a state where the majority of people came from Western backgrounds and Western cultural heritage, who had no interest in Arabic music. Even the Jews who came over from Iraq and other Arab states, did not show a great interest in music, primarily due to issues of work and immigration. From performing for royalty and adoration by millions, to owning a hardware store in the Hatikvah market, a run-down district of Tel Aviv, and playing weddings and bar mitzvahs. Directly quoting Shlomo al-Kuwaity’s speech given at the 100th anniversary celebration of his father Saleh in London, “In those days the Hatikvah neighborhood was similar to little Baghdad. It had shops, bakeries, cafes, and all the things that Baghdad had. The language used was Jewish Arabic, and only Arabic, mainly Egyptian, music was played on the radio.”

When the Arabic extension of Kol Israel, the official radio station of the Israeli broadcasting authority, expanded to include more programming, Saleh and Dawoud received their own weekly program. Nevertheless, outside that “ghetto” they were treated with condescension and were reduced to catering for a niche market of a few hundred thousand in Israel, when they had had seven million listeners in Iraq. But it was not half as painful as the brothers hearing their music played on the radio stations of the Arab world attributed to Muslim musicians, or labelled ‘of folk origin’.

During Saddam Hussein's rule there was a special committee appointed to ‘re-arrange' the Iraqi musical archives. Saleh's name was hard to get rid of, and as it turned out his songs were still being played - only without the mention of his name. Students of music at the time still recall today that mentioning his name was forbidden even when his work was being discussed and taught. Today, this situation has changed dramatically and the issue is being discussed over the internet and in the media. In 2006 the television station, Al-Hurra, broadcast a program about Iraqi music in the 20th century. Saleh was chosen by a panel of experts on the show as the definitive Iraqi composer of the 30's and 40’s. Dawoud died of a heart attack in 1976 and Saleh in 1986. In 2009, a street in Tel Aviv was named after the Brothers. 

In the late 1960s, Mizrahi musicians began creating a hybrid musical genre, blending both Arab and Jewish cultures. Israeli Mediterranean music challenged the dominant form of national music designated to Shirey Erez Israel ("Songs of the Land of Israel”). Israeli Mediterranean musicians confused the cultural terrain in Israeli society by juxtaposing the repertoire of state-sponsored Shirey Erez Israel with vibrant Middle Eastern rhythms. They reconfigured the dominant Euro-Israeli music with marginalized Arabic aesthetics, “straddling the disputed territory of Israel and, to a degree, redrawing its cultural and historical map” . 

While Mizrahi musicians were keen to contribute to the national task of formulating an Israeli musical identity, their lack of Western training was regularly used as the justification to exclude them. Only Middle Eastern Israelis with European training entered the mainstream music establishment. The Mizrahi cultural renaissance and social revolution attempted to redefine the artistic, as well as political boundaries of Israeli society during a period of deep national and international transformations. The 1967 and 1973 wars altered the balance of power in profound ways. As the Mizrahi youth began to challenge hegemonic state policies, the music became more visible. 

These state policies attempted to forge a coherent national identity, by denying diasporic ethnic traditions. Furthermore, Arabic and other Middle Eastern sounds were relegated to limited radio broadcasts and holiday performances by official folklore groups. Following the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the Ashkenazi power grip was shaken by an anti-Labor Party outcry from Israel's Mizrahi underclass. The Mizrahim allied themselves with the right-wing Likud Party, although seemingly contradictory, they were voicing their decades of frustration with the Labor Party's discriminatory policies.

Amy Horowitz’s article, Israeli Mediterranean Music: Straddling Disputed Territories,  applies Bernice Johnson Reagon’s notion of musical straddling to describe the hybrid form of Mizrahi music that would be formed in Israel. Horowitz analysis, by applying Reagon's notion of straddling, states that North African and Asian Israeli musicians struggled against cultural hegemony in Israel by formulating Israeli Mediterranean music. The hybrid music genre that made its commercial cassette debut in the 1970s on cassettes sold ‘among the vegetable and household appliance stalls in Tel Aviv's central bus station marketplace’. This hybrid form of music was labeled as culturally inferior and ‘too Arabic’ by the Ashkenazi elite of the state, whom also ran the radio stations and record companies. Despite this, the Mizrahi musicians continued to produce the music, which sold by the hundreds of thousands in their neighborhoods in the 1980s. By the 1990s, they finally infiltrated mainstream cultural and were present on national airwaves.

The use of language in Israeli Mediterranean music is no less problematic, drawing from Arabic, Hebrew, Mediterranean, Eastern European, and Western sources. Its lyrics combine literary Hebrew with Hebrew and Arabic slang. “The multi vocal combination of archaic Hebrew literary forms and current street language diverges from usage in previous genres such as Shirey Erez Israel or even recent Mizrahi genres”. The fusing of multiple kinds of texts, tunes, and themes on a single record is a distinctive feature of the genre.  Songs in Arabic, Persian, and Kurdish languages evoke nostalgia, touching parents' and grandparents' or in some cases the composer's own memories of daily life in Yemen, Morocco, Kurdistan, or Iran. Greek, Turkish, Spanish, and Italian influences, reference Israel's Mediterranean location. The site for musical straddling, sitting between Europe and the Middle East and mediates Eastern and Western music styles.

Galit Saada-Ophir’s article on Mizrahi Subaltern Counterpoints: Sderot’s Alternative Bands, discusses the construction of Mizrahi identity in Israel, focusing on the Mizrahi balance of power in the city of Sderot through popular music. This process illustrates the spiral structure of accumulation of power characteristic of the vertical dialectical model, by demonstrating the ways in which subalterns' resistance may comprise a partial reconstruction of hegemonic order. She begins by drawing parallels between Rai Music in Algeria and Arabesk music in Turkey. The Moroccan sub-genre of Mizrahi music that developed in the town of Sderot, followed a similar path, blending a variety of musical components selected from different times and places, to create a musical language that reflects the group's current identity. 

Sderot is an urban settlement in the arid Negev region in southern Israel and is mainly populated by Mizrahim, especially from Morocco. This city became a unique site in the Israeli music scene as a result of the intense re-socialization process its Mizrahi residents underwent at the hands of their near by Ashkenazi kibbutzim neighbors. Through various re-socialization programs aiming at erasing the residents' Mizrahi cultures of origin, they tried to detach them from Moroccan Jewish religious culture, abolish their Moroccan accent of Arabic, and expose them to Zionist ideology and culture.

The hegemonic Zionist ideology saw this culture as the culture of the Arab/Muslim enemy, and henceforth unacceptable. This led to an initial equivocation of Arabic cultural components by the Mizrahim. This complex sociopolitical situation resulted in a unique situation where the Mizrahi subversion of Israeli hegemony through music contains the hegemony that subordinated it. The formation of the musical scene in Sderot presents not simply the Mizrahi resistance to Ashkenazi hegemony, but also a partial reconstruction of Ashkenazi hegemony through this resistance. The Mizrahi pop music genre was shaped out of struggles between hegemonic styles, conducted mainly by Ashkenazim, and through internal struggles between different Mizrahi sub-genres, initially led by the Yemenites.

The activity of Sderot's youth in the 1970s and 1980s was the base where, in the 1990s, various forms of Mizrahi music could enter the mainstream Israeli musical scene. Saada-Ophir classifies three forms of spawned Mizrahi identity, all of which demonstrating an ambivalent feelings towards the musicians' Moroccan past as well as the Orientalist discourse directed at them by hegemonic Zionism: "electrifying the past,""re-Orienting the mainstream,"and "rocking hegemonic hybridity.”

The practice of "electrifying the past" was forged by Sfatayim and Renaissance. These two bands expressed the internalization of the Orientalism they had experienced by creating a musical style that Saada-Ophir refers to as Israeli Moroccan, and by proclaiming its legitimacy in the Israeli musical field. Initially they adopted the Orientalist perspective toward their culture of origin, performing well-known Israeli pop and rock songs, ignoring the Moroccan music they grew up with. The inclusion of Sammy Lazmi in the group changed this, and the band was convinced to sing in the Moroccan dialect of Arabic. They sang old Moroccan songs played at home by the older generation. Later on, the band was exposed to pop songs produced in Morocco, Algeria and France. The band built up a repertoire of songs that reflected their location, in-between their culture of origin and the hegemonic Israeli identity. They sang songs in the Moroccan dialect of Arabic and Hebrew. In addition, some lyrics describe a longing for Morocco and the marginality of Mizrahim in Israel. The internalization of Orientalism that caused the members of the bands to feel shame toward their Moroccan origin eventually led them to try to reinvigorate their "forgotten" music and struggle for its legitimacy.

The practice of "re-Orienting the mainstream" was fashioned by Teapacks and Tanara. These groups take part in partial acceptance of the Orientalist perspective regarding Mizrahim, bringing them closer to the Israeli musical mainstream. They called for an affirming of the ‘melting pot’, advocating for the formation of a unified national musical style.  Teapacks was established in 1988 by teenagers from Sderot and the Shaar Hanegev kibbutz. Kobi Oz, the leader of the band, was born in Sderot to Tunisian parents and as a youth was a central figure in the town's musical progression. 

The mixing of contemptuous lyrics, cheery musical beats, a strange sense of style, a plethora of jewelry and "unacceptable" conduct, Oz "carnivalizes" the prevailing Israeli. Furthermore, he faces Orientalism by seeking to create a common Israeli culture that uses Oriental discourse while challenging its oppressive meanings. Saadi-Ophir's second form of “re-Orienting the mainstream”, presents a desire to reshape the Israeli mainstream. The internalization of Orientalism that caused the band leaders to harbor conflicting feelings toward their culture of origin led them to reinvigorate the national discourse, challenging its Orientalist nature. 

The last of Saadi-Ophir’s forms of Mizrahi musical identity is the "rocking hegemonic hybridity" forged by Knessiat Hasekhel. It presented conformism to Orientalism, and is closely tied to rock yisraeli, the prevailing musical style in Israel. The rock albums of Knessiat Hasekhel include musical elements defined as "Oriental,"missing from most Israeli rock albums, such as the use of the Moroccan dialect of Arabic, melodies classified as "Orientals" and the "undulant" "Middle Eastern" voice of Yoram Hazan. The band composes its own music, singing mostly about love affairs and issues of loneliness and alienation. This more hegemonic style reflects the alienation of Sderot’s youth from the Arabic Jewish identity of their parents and grandparents and their impulse to conform to the prevailing culture. 

Galit Saada-Ophir concludes her article that the Sderot musical scene presents a unique power struggle between Israeli hegemony and its, Mostly Moroccan, subaltern group. Furthermore, the residence struggle of acceptance between their culture of origin and Zionist ideology, makes the city a fascinating site, where ambivalent and conflicting attitudes come to ahead, particularly regarding music. The historical process that crystallized in Sderot resulted in three different musical articulations of Mizrahi identity, which range from ethnic separatism, to a desire to reinvigorate the mainstream to an almost total adoption of hegemonic Israeli practices. Each of these practices simultaneously confronts Orientalism while accepting it in varying degrees of intensity. This case study highlights not merely the formation of Mizrahi identity through music but also the dialectical course of power struggles between the rules and the ruled in different social arenas.

Contemporary Mizrahi youth in Israel no longer speak Arabic or have any deep connection to the land of their origins, the way their parents and especially grandparents, had in decades past. While many Mizrahi singing stars include some Arabic lyrics, and certainly Arabic musical instruments and aesthetics, Mizrahi music has now crossed over as a Israeli mainstream style, while still being looked down upon. Ella Shoat mentions that, in the early years of immigration to Israel in Mizrahi neighborhoods, “we listened to Umm Kulthum on the radio, as well as to Arab music from our various countries of origin. The Iraqis, for example, continued to listen to Nazim al-Ghazali” (The husband of, prominent Iraqi Jewish singer previously discussed, Salima Murad.) 

In 2012, a ceremony was held in Jerusalem, dedicating a street in the memory of the illustrious, Umm Kulthum, by the Mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat. The Al-Madina newspaper published in Jeddah Saudi Arabia, ran a story in June 2014 that accused several Mizrahi singers for plagiarizing many Arab hit songs without giving the due credit. This list included Sarit Hadad, one of the biggest female stars in the Mizrahi music scene. She is accused of stealing the track “Aa Bali Habibi” from the Lebanese pop star Elissa and having sung Inta Omri, arguably the greatest hit of the legendary Egyptian Umm Kulthum.  

Hadad’s interpretation of Inta Omri is not one in parallel with her Arabic counterparts like Asalah Nasri or Sherine Abdel Wahab, who have also sang this monumental hit. It is evident that she is attempting to pay respect to the Diva by her modest dress, large orchestra, and the camera paying great attention to the instrumentalists, particularly the qanun. The video clip is also of a live performance, not a music video, in line with Umm Kulthum’s own legacy of grand concerts. Thats were the connections stop. The most visible difference is Sarit’s clapping, dancing, and smiling; an alien concept to the legendary Tarab persona of Umm Kulthum, who would stand on the stage with her scarf in hand, belt out her lyrics and then stand quietly again for the next verse. Inta Omri is not intended on being a cheerful song, it is one of yearning and lost love. 

Hadad was born Sarah Hudadatov, her father came from a large traditional Mountain Jewish family and her mother, from Tunisia. When she was ten years old, she participated in a contest for young talent, where she performed on the piano. She also plays the organ, guitar, accordion and tabla. In 2010 she released a new song, a cover of a Lebanese pop hit of the 1970s,  called “Do You Love Me”. Many in Israel were using that very question about Sarit and it seems that the answer is, “Some of us do, but a lot of us really, really don’t.” For every fan who praised the song, there is someone who says it’s awful for one or all of the following reasons: “it sounds Arab; it sounds Mizrahi; it’s a pathetic rip-off of an old Lebanese pop song and what’s wrong with Hebrew music.” The original version of “Do You Love Me” was composed and performed in 1978 by the Bendaly Family, the Lebanese version of the ‘Partridge Family’.

Despite such reactions by some Israeli’s, Hadad’s version was very powerful in how she self-Orientalized herself in a society that looks down upon Middle Eastern culture. She begins the video clip driving through the desert and singing in the Arabic mawal style in Hebrew. Although she does have other tracks where she sings in Arabic, Hadad sings this cover in Hebrew and English, where as the original is in Arabic and English. Whilst in the initial scene her backup dancers are dressed in scantly clad western attire, a moment later it is as if she is in a dream. She ends up in a Bedouin style tent with Belly Dancers, Arabic men in traditional Bedouin garb playing traditional Arabic instruments. She does seem to be sending a message to the establishment that she is proud of her Oriental background. 

The pathetic thing is that while the dancers are dressed in Bellydance fantasy costumes, they are not dancing Oriental at all, rather jazz and ballet, and the music played by the instrumentalists does not come across in the track either. The even more comical part is that many of the dancing scenes are durning the House music breaks in the track and not the Arabic instrumentals. In fact, when Sarit goes into a tabla solo, the scenes of the dancers goes back in fourth between the Arabian and Western sets of costume. I would applaud her however, for taking such a stance with the blatant use of Arabic imagery, music and cultural symbols. I would also argue that this track could be described as passing through all three of Saada-Ophir’s musical discourse "electrifying the past,""re-Orienting the mainstream,"and "rocking hegemonic hybridity.

Today over 50% of Israel's 5 million Jewish citizens are of Middle Eastern and North African ancestry. Many are mixed and of multiethnic heritage today. Socio-economic discrimination coupled with cultural affinity gave rise to a loosely bound and not universally accepted North African and Middle Eastern pan-ethnic marker, Mizrahi ("Easterner"). The Mizrahi construct can be partially understood as a consequence of the unanticipated mass encounter between East, Eastern European, and West in the newly formed state. Middle Eastern and North African Jews arrived in Israel with a rich musical history and expanded upon it. In Mizrahi neighborhoods and development towns, new innovations emerged as Western, Mediterranean, African, and Asian urban and rural musics were reshaped through concentrated and intensified interaction which brought about the Israeli Mediterranean or Mizrahi style of song.

The Other Exodus. Farewell Baghdad (The Dove Flyer). A Film Review.

Reflections on the Jewish Exodus from Iraq based on the film, The Dove Flyer. 

Today is the first day of Passover. On this biblically derived holiday, Jews celebrate the commemorating of their liberation by God from slavery in Pharaonic Egypt under the leadership of Moses. It is the commemoration of the story of the Exodus as described in the Torah, where the Israelites are freed from Egyptian slavery and delivered to the "promised land." 

A lesser known Exodus, that occurred just about 70 years ago, of one of the most ancient and prosperous Jewish communities in history, would be that of the Jews of Iraq. Between 1950-1951, Operation Ezra and Nehemiah airlifted Iraq's Jews to Israel, in one of the more climactic episodes of the Jewish exodus from Arab and Islamic lands. As mentioned in another article of mine "Arab Jews, The Kuwaiti's and Iraq. A Forgotten History," Iraqi Jewish history dates back to 4,000 years to the time of the Patriarch Abraham in Ur, and several generations later when the Jews were sent to exile in Babylon.  In more contemporary history, The Sabbath and Jewish holidays brought commerce and trade in the city to a standstill. Not only did the Jews, who owned the majority of the shops, close their businesses and refrain from shopping, but so did the non-Jews.

An Ottoman census in 1917 numbered Baghdad’s Jews at 80,000 out of the city’s 202,000 residents. By 1947, according to the national census, the Jews were numbered at 118, 000 of Iraq’s population of 4.5 million. Unofficial sources estimated the number as high as 130,000. While smaller communities resided in provinces all over the country, communities were highly concentrated in the largest cities with 77,500 in Baghdad, 10,500 in Basra and 10,300 in Mosul. Nassim Rejwan notes that “[i]n 1904, the French vice-consul of Baghdad gave the number of Jews in the Ottoman vilayet as forty thousand, out of a total population of 60,000.”

Now that we have some background on the matter, I wish to dive into the focal point of this piece, a film review based on the film, The Dove Flyer (in Hebrew and Arabic, but for some reason in English, it is changed to Farewell Baghdad.) Based on the novel of the same name by Iraqi-Jewish author Eli Amir, the screenplay was adapted by the director, Nassim Dayan. One of the most amazing parts of the film is that the dialogue is in Judeo-Arabic, or the Baghdad Jewish dialect of Arabic, a language that will soon be extinct forever with the passing of the generation that was forced to migrate to Israel. The story depicts the last days of the Baghdadi Jews in the early 1950's, following the story of a young Jewish boy named Kabi. During that time, The Kingdom of Iraq was dealing with a great many ideological issues, torn between Royalism, separatism (of the many religious denominations) and most notably communism. The film wrestles with the Jews historical and cultural connection to their non-Jewish Iraqi neighbors, the rise and fall of communism, then zionism and their own connection to their homeland. 

The film was commercially released in the Spring of 2014 and as previously mentioned, is the first Judeo-Arabic-language film in the history of cinema (specifically, Baghdad Jewish Arabic). Interestingly enough, as was the reality at the time, when the Jews spoke with Muslims, the dialect changes to become the Baghdadi Muslim dialect of Iraqi Arabic. "Haki Yahudi" as I have heard Professor Shohat mention it, or "Jewish Talk", is very much in line with the dialect of Mosul in the north of Iraq. The two most obvious differences to me in the dialects is the absence of the very notable Muslim Iraqi چ (CH) in substitute for the Standard (& Jewish) Arabic ك (K) and the Muslim pronunciation of the ق (Q) as a گ (G). Interesting to note that Judeo-Arabic is one of the only Eastern (Mashriq) Arabic dialects that pronounces the ق (Q) 'correctly' as in Standard Arabic and not like a گ (G) found in the Gulf or the ء (Hamza, glottal stop) of the eastern Metropoli, like Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. 

Some criticisms of the film would be the 'mandatory' additions of Eurocentric Zionist Orientalism. One of the films protagonists, Kabi's beautiful young aunt (his fathers brothers wife) is the stereotypical looking Sabra (native born, 'pioneer' type (during the mandate period) Israeli, rendition of a "Jew," dirty blond hair, fair skin, sparkling blue eyes, outspoken and strong. While no one is saying that only Sabras are outspoken and strong women, as is Kabi's own mother in the film, Naima, I find it curious how Rachelle (his aunt) is so Western looking, where as his mother and fathers casting is much more realistic of Iraqi's during that time. 

The other obvious (& just eye roll worthy) scene of Eurocentric Zionist Orientalism are all the hidden jabs towards Muslims and Islam as being uncivilized and archaic, and the Jews as the great educated modernizers. While it is true that Jews were more educated and 'modern' as far as Western Eurocentrism is concerned, showing the selling of a virgin, and showing the blood stained sheet have no bearing on the story line other then for dramatic effect. (Not to mention the fact that Jews also demanded virgin wives and up until very recently, even in the United States, would demand the proof that the bride was still a virgin!)  Another super annoying and totally INACCURATE portrayal was that of Egyptian style Oriental (belly) dancer's and music outside the brothel scene were Kabi and his less then sophisticated friend visit one evening. Now why is it inaccurate? First of all, Iraq has its own culture, art, music and dance. The two piece sexy Oriental (belly) dance costume had JUST become a commodity in cosmopolitan Cairo, Beirut and Istanbul in the 1950's where only elite locals and Europeans would frequent such upscale European style supper clubs. The red light district in Baghdad most likely had it's own Kawleeyat, not another Sabra looking girl dancing to an Oud and Tabla, more likely it was an Oud and Naqqara, and fully covered, dancing with her hair. 

Lastly the societal divides amongst the Jews themselves were most notable to me. The two major ones were gender and class. Kabi's mother Naima is very strict on her stance of not wanting to leave Iraq, that she is an Iraqi and that this is the land of her ancestors. One of the most emotional lines in the film (which I think is very telling of the majorities' feelings,) was something along the lines that '(over) one thousand years vanished into the air.' The Jews had been in Iraq prior to Islam and Christianity and were driven out in the blink of an eye against their own accord. Professor Shohat is very clear in her writings that this is a complex issue and was a decision made between the Zionists, the Iraqi government and to a lesser extent imperial powers and very little decision making was left to ordinary Iraqi Jews. Extremists on the side of the Zionists and the government seem to be the ones that got their way. The population exchange of Iraqi Jews to Palestine and Palestinians to Iraq, commenced, exhibited in one of the final scenes when we see Palestinians move into Kabi's families' home as they depart for the airport.  

Needless to say, the women were very nationalistic and did not want to leave Iraq at all, opposed to the men that all stood behind a different ideology. Kabi's uncle, Hazkel, who is jailed at the start of the film is a communist. Once the government crushes the communists, they become Zionists. Something I am not entirely convinced of actually happened. It is well known the the Iraqi communist party was the largest in the Middle East and had many strong Jewish members. Most of them immigrated to Israel because they were escaping communist persecution, like in the case of Sami Michael, one of the most famous Iraqi Israeli authors today, not anti-semitism or even Zionist zeal. Kabi's father, Salman, initially comes off as a nationalist and royalist. Some where in the films progression he is revealed to be a zionist, and while a modestly successful business man, he has been supporting the underground with weapons from Basra, something his mother comes to call him out for and resent him for. Kabi's neighbor and fathers best friend, Abu Adwar (a pigeon keeper, hence the films name 'The Dove Flyer', even though they are pigeons and not doves) is a hardcore nationalist that wants nothing more then to stay in Iraq. However his son, a communist, turned zionist, sends his daughter (and the boys sister) to Israel (vis-a-vis) Iran before Operation E&N and sort of goes crazy after that. Similar to Trump's America, every member of the family seems to have a different opinion that is tearing homes apart. 

Now for the class divid. In Rejwan’s memoir, he divides the Jewish community into four economic classifications: the rich class mainly made up of merchants and bankers, composing 5% of the population; the middle class consisting of petty traders and employees at 30%; the poor that made up of about 60% of the population and the remaining 5% composed of beggars, mostly from the north. In one of the films final scenes, Abu Adwar and Kabi cater a dinner party for Abu George, a wealth Jewish merchant and Prime Minister Nuri Said. They over hear at the dinner that the decision has been made that the Jews will be sent out of Iraq. Nuri Said states that Abu George and family however will not leave Iraq, that they will stay under his projection due to the governments need for such 'esteemed' business people. Later we hear Kabi retelling the ordeal to Abu Saleh, the head of the Zionist underground, were he responds by calling him a traitor, that he sold out his people. The class divid and its relations between the government and less politically influential is another factor to consider. 

Finally I wish to wrap up with some final thoughts and considerations. On January 14, 1951, a bombing took place in the Masuda Shemtov synagogue courtyard in Baghdad. The courtyard served as a gathering place for Jews, prior to their departure to Israel. At the time of the bombing, several hundred people were present, 4 were killed and about 10 were wounded. The Iraqi authorities blamed two activists from the Zionist underground, and had them executed. The British embassy in Baghdad had its own assessment of the motives behind the attack: Activists of the Zionist movement wanted to highlight the danger for the Jews of Iraq, in order to incite Israel to accelerate the pace of their airlifts. The embassy also offered a second possible explanation: The bombs were meant to influence well-off Jews in Iraq who wished to stay there, to get them to change their minds and come to Israel, too. Nonetheless it was a means to scare the Jews to leave Iraq at the hands of the Zionist underground, not Iraqi Muslims. 

This scene is significant in the film, and in the entire history of Mizrahi imigration to Israel because it  highlights a common myth in the Eurocentric Zionist rhetoric of the evil Arab. It is a reminder of the destructive character of Israel’s creation. Not only did it represent a nakba (disaster) for the Palestinian people, it also forced a people deeply rooted in their respective Arab countries to become assimilated into a culture that regarded them as inferiors and endorsed their forced departure to be 'human dust' and 'human material.' While we commemorate our deliverance from Egypt on Passover, I hope if we may also contemplate the other, forced, exodus that took place during the mid twentieth century. Not only that of the Iraqi Jews but that of the Egyptian Jews in the late 1950's, Operation Magic Carpet were the entirety of Yemenite Jewry was airlifted out between 1949-1950. The Moroccans, Tunisians, Libyans, Lebanese and Syrians, just like Naima says in the film, 'vanished into the wind.' While the Zionists like to call this immigration an 'Aliyah' or a ascent, for Jews of Arab and Islamic lands it was very much a decent. Stay tuned for more in the coming days.