Blackness in Israel: Rethinking Racial Boundaries

Description

This book explores contemporary inflections of blackness in Israel and foreground them in the historical geographies of Europe, the Middle East, and North America. The contributors engage with expressions and appropriations of modern forms of blackness for boundary-making, boundary-breaking, and boundary-re-making in contemporary Israel, underscoring the deep historical roots of contemporary understandings of race, blackness, and Jewishness. Allowing a new perspective on the sociology of Israel and the realm of black studies, this volume reveals a highly nuanced portrait of the phenomenon of blackness, one that is located at the nexus of global, regional, national and local dimensions. While race has been discussed as it pertains to Judaism at large, and Israeli society in particular, blackness as a conceptual tool divorced from phenotype, skin tone and even music has yet to be explored. Grounded in ethnographic research, the study demonstrates that many ethno-racial groups that constitute Israeli society intimately engage with blackness as it is repeatedly and explicitly addressed by a wide array of social actors. Enhancing our understanding of the politics of identity, rights, and victimhood embedded within the rhetoric of blackness in contemporary Israel, this book will be of interest to scholars of blackness, globalization, immigration, and diaspora. Cover Half Title Series Information Title Page Copyright Page Table of contents Contributors Introduction What is blackness? Blackness in Israel Blackness and Mizrahi Jews Blackness and Arabs Blackness and Ethiopian Jews Blackness and African descendants Structure of the book Notes References Part I Background 1 The image of the black in Jewish culture: An overview The dread of blackness The swarthy Jew and his black counterpart In the biblical and rabbinic traditions The medieval view Following the great geographical discoveries Notes References 2 Jewishness, blackness and genetic data: Israeli geneticists and physicians tracing the ancestry of two African populations The genetics of human population – historical background The genetic expedition to Ethiopia Genetic ancestry testing in a genomic age CMH on Y-chromosome and the Lemba tribe Conclusions Notes Bibliography Part II Blackness in the Jewish Israeli society 3 Kinked race and Ethiopian Jewish blackness in Israel: An ethnography Jewish blackness as Stigma Historical context of Ethiopian Jewish blackness “White” Jews and “Black” Jews in Israel Explaining blackness as stigma: Forms of discrimination Race and prejudice within: The upward mobility of Baryas “I have a word for you too!”: Coping with racism Conclusion Notes Bibliography 4 Black-Israeli lives matter: Online activism among young Ethiopian Israelis Background The use of symbols, illustrations, and collective emotions Black lives matter in Israel Social integration or radical protest? Conclusion Notes References 5 Blackness in translation: The Israeli Black Panthers, 1971 Screwing over the “Blacks”! Black and White in the Theater Social science and the politics of comparison Empathy replaced by fear Musrara, 1971 Weaponizing blackness Interpellation and identity play Ethnicity and class Ethnicism, culture, and geography Conclusion Notes References 6 Blackness, Mizrahi identity and ethnic shifting in contemporary Israeli popular music Introduction History of Mizrahi music What is “blackness” and how is it deployed in Mizrahi Music? Focus and analytical approach Mizrahi identity as a musical-aesthetic counter narrative Africans and African Americans represented in Hip Hop produced by Mizrahim Blackness as an experience of shared alterity Yair Dalal’s collaboration with the Bedouin Azazme tribe Conclusion Notes Bibliography Assi, Seraj (2018) The History and Politics of the Bedouin: Reimagining Nomadism in Modern Palestine. London: Routledge. 7 A different hue of blackness: The Haredi case Introduction Blacks Hashkhara – blackening Racialization? Notes Bibliography Part III Contested blackness 8 “I am blacker than you”: Mizrahiness and Ethiopianess in an educational boarding school in Israel Social classifications and ethnic hierarchies in Israel Research design Organizational construction of Mizrahiness, Ethiopianess, and blackness: “Black in the bad sense of the word” Mizrahi students: “We are the niggers of the state of Israel” Ethiopian students: “They prefer that we not be Mizrahim but that makes no sense” Discussion: Blackness as social problem and as resistance References 9 Black city: Sounding race, territory and belonging in Tel Aviv’s “African refugee crisis” Refugee status and the making of a “community of dissent” “Voice under domination”: Performance as oblique and overt resistance Public sound as force in the refugee debate Notes References 10 Trajectories of soul citizenship: African dance clubs between global blackness and local awareness Soul citizenship Labor migrants in Israel The club Different trajectories: Pan-Africanism and global black Pan-Africanism Global blackness Conclusion Notes References 11 Already black … and proud, and righteous: The African Hebrew Israelite Community in the State of Israel Black self-making in 1960s America: Black pride, black power and the original black Hebrew Israelites The Hebrew Israelites’ power to define meets the power of the Jewish state Conclusions in the meantime: Black is, black ain’t and the matter of black Jewish anomalies Notes References Part IV Blackness and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict 12 What is the color of the Arab?: A critical view of color games “Asmar”: The fluctuation of the liminal color Black as a certificate of indigenousness: Reflection of the moment of national resistance in poems and pictures Darkness as a trap: Reflection of the moment of ambivalence in autobiographic poetry and prose Blackness as regression, whiteness as privilege: Reflection of the moment of national withdrawal in visual expressions Summary Notes References 13 What color are Israeli Jews? Intersectionality, Israel advocacy, and the changing discourse of color and indigeneity The first wave: Color, decolonization, and Palestine solidarity after 1967 The second wave: Intersectionality and its discontents Israel advocacy and the weaponizing of language: Jews, whiteness, and indigeneity Caveat: The complicated history of Jews, Zionism, and color Conclusion Notes References Index