The Middle East has long been a region of complex relationships and political tensions, with the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict at its center.
While much of the global discourse about peace in the region has focused on the ideological and territorial disputes between Israel and its neighbors, one critical aspect of the region’s history and contemporary reality has often been overlooked: the historical, cultural, and social role of Jews as part of the Middle Eastern landscape.
In an effort to address this oversight, a new initiative, “Medabrim Mizrah Tichon” (Speaking Middle East), aims to shift the conversation and bring a new lens to conflict resolution and peace-building by highlighting the Mizrahi Jewish experience and identity.
This initiative seeks to redefine the way Israel and its people are perceived in the broader Middle East, focusing on the rich heritage and indigenousness of Mizrahi Jews to the region, who are believed to make up 40%-50% of the Jews in Israel nowadays.
The organizers view that, historically, this community has often been marginalized by both anti-Israel and pro-Israel voices in favor of more Eurocentric narratives, focusing on the Holocaust or European Zionist voices but overlooking Middle Eastern Jewry.
In this context, “Medabrim Mizrah Tichon” aspires to bring Mizrahi culture, tradition, intuition, identity, and language to the forefront of conversations about peace and conflict in the region.
The initiative is part of an incubator of projects led by “Tema – Hopes, Actions, Impact,” which focuses on bringing forth the diverse voices of Israelis of all backgrounds, religious affiliations, and genders, in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, viewing the crucial issue as a conversation that should include all the different parts of Israeli society.
Changing the conversation, challenging the narrative
The “Medabrim Mizrah Tichon” initiative was born out of the recognition that much of the discussion about the Middle East and Israeli peace efforts has ignored the fact that Jews have been an integral part of the region’s historical and cultural fabric for centuries.
The goal of the initiative is to challenge the dominant narrative around Israel’s place in the Middle East, highlighting the indigenous aspect of Jews to the region, rather than their being portrayed as a foreign or Western imposition.
According to the organizers of the launching seminar, held last week in the Jerusalem Hills, Israel’s internal and external policies have been shaped largely by a liberal, Eurocentric perspective.
This framework has overlooked the significance of Israel as a Middle Eastern entity with deep cultural and historical ties to the region.
They also argue that the absence of a Mizrahi voice in public and political discourse has led to a skewed understanding of Israel’s identity and its role in the broader Middle East.
Participants in the launching seminar included activists, researchers, journalists, academics, social entrepreneurs, and community leaders from Israel’s diverse Mizrahi public, with participants’ heritage stemming from India and Afghanistan to Morocco and Tunisia.
They came from different Mizrahi and regional spheres to collaborate on new projects that will promote the idea of the Middle Eastern Jewish identity in the public discourse.
One of the main organizers of the seminar was Ophir Toubul, a writer and longtime Mizrahi social activist of Jewish-Moroccan origin, who authored books regarding early and modern Zionist ideologies in Mizrahi communities, as well as the revolution of Mizrahi music in mainstream Israeli radio playlists.
Toubul’s innovative yet deeply rooted narration of Zionism was laid out in one of the main sessions of the seminar, in which he traced the roots of the modern national liberation ideology back to two main Mizrahi characters – Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai from Ottoman Sarajevo and Rabbi Yehuda Bibas, who served as rabbi in Corfu, modern Greece.
According to Toubul, these two figures, who are known as part of a group dubbed “Mevasrei Hatziyonut,” or “precursors of Zionism,” were in fact those who laid the ideological and popular foundations for modern Zionism.
According to Toubul, Mizrahi Zionism differed from its Ashkenazi counterpart in that it did not involve a rejection of traditional and religious Judaism, and was more family- and community-oriented, as opposed to its atheist, socialist counterpart in Europe.
In his book Kol Hator, Toubul describes Mizrahi Zionism as a natural ideological development of the Jews from the Middle East, who had been making pilgrimages and aliyah to Israel for centuries, and established vibrant, centuries-old Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Tiberias, Safed, and Hebron, defying the view of Zionism as a movement coming from outside or “from the sea.”
Dignity and history, not only security
Other sessions involved discussions and lectures regarding the usage of social media to convey messages of interreligious, traditionalist dialogue; religious and political discourse as seen in the Abraham Accords; and examples for Mizrahi discourse in academia and in intercultural exchanges.
One highlight of the event was a gala evening with live Jewish Moroccan music, featuring Prof. Meir Buzaglo as well as foreign diplomats as guests of honor, who were urged to get acquainted with the story of Mizrahi Jews and their potential contributions to the discourse.
According to the organizers, one especially reflective moment came at the end of the evening, when one diplomat pointed out that this was the first time in his several-year tenure that he was present in a conversation regarding the conflict that didn’t raise any security-related concerns, but spoke mainly of shared heritage and traditions.
Elad Mordechai, one of the founders of the initiative, explained that “Medabrim Mizrah Tichon” is an opportunity to reframe how Israelis and Jews are perceived within the region.
According to Mordechai, after the October 7 massacre, Israel was often labeled as a “white colonialist occupier” in the international discourse. This narrative is, in his view, a distortion of the reality that Israel is a Middle Eastern nation with its roots in the region.
He noted that “half of Israeli society comes from backgrounds that reflect the region’s cultural and historical makeup, with many Jews having lived under Muslim rule for centuries before their migration to Israel. This shared history and experience should be acknowledged in the broader discussion about peace and conflict in the Middle East.”
Danel Ben Namer, another organizer of the seminar from mixed Mizrahi and Ashkenazi heritage and a social entrepreneur focusing on Middle Eastern initiatives, commented: “Before the event, I had a hypothesis that there was a connection between new organizations that arose after the Abraham Accords and the beginning of the war – and the traditional Mizrahi language of Jews from Islamic countries.
During the seminar, I was able to see this connection very clearly. About half of the participants spoke Arabic – all of them Jews – and this was not something we had planned in advance.”
When prompted to give examples of Mizrahi cultural codes’ potential contribution to dialogue, Ben Namer brought up the issue of honor. “Honor is certainly a strong component in our Middle Eastern sphere. While secular and religious people who originate in Europe fail to grasp this value, Arabs and Mizrahi Jews share it on the deepest and most intuitive level, and this can prove a game changer in any form of dialogue. Likewise, their own stories of forced exodus from the region are significant for their perception and views regarding the Middle East.”
Ben Namer continued: “In the end we are all peace-loving people who want to live with dignity alongside each other in our neighborhood, but we should not apologize for our existence or for the fact that we have lived here in our region thousands of years. My grandmother always told me that ‘once Israel elects a Mizrahi prime minister, peace will be closer,’ and today I find myself pondering on her words more than ever.
“In any case, bringing our Mizrahi heritage and voices to the forefront is what we aim to do. It makes our discourse more wholesome and encompassing, and we are keen on proving that it will have a positive impact for the future of our children.”