العوالم الثلاثة: مذكرات يهودي - عربي

by Avi Shlaim, علي عبد الأمير صالح (Translator)

إن الصهيونية أيديولوجية أوربية المنشأ والأفق ومركزها وبؤرتها الجمعية اليهودية الأوربية حصرًا. ولم يكن اليهود العرب، وغير الأوربيين عمومًا، على خارطتها، أو على سلم أولوياتها أصلًا، حتى إن استقدامهم فيما بعد إلى فلسطين كان أداتيًّا بحتًا وللحاجة إلى رأسمال بشري. وكان هناك امتعاضٌ وتردّدٌ في الجدالات التي تنضح عنصرية بين النخب الصهيونية الأشكنازية من عواقب استقدام يهود شرقيين يرون على أنّهم سيجلبون معهم التخلّف والأمراض. يظل الجرح الأعمق في ذاكرة اليهود العراقيين الجمعية، بعد تهجيرهم، هو قيام السلطات في إسرائيل برشهم بالمبيدات بعد هبوط الطائرات التي كانت تقلهم من العراق.

كان آڤي شلايم، مؤلف هذا الكتاب المهمّ، طفلًا في الخامسة من عمره، حين هاجرت عائلته إلى فلسطين. ولم يكن اسمه «آڤي»، آنذاك، بل «أبراهام». لقد دفع اليهود العراقيون والعرب والشرقيون عمومًا، أثمانًا باهظة بعد نزوحهم إلى إسرائيل. فإضافة إلى خسارة وطنهم وبيوتهم وممتلكاتهم، كان عليهم أن يتأقلموا مع مجتمع عنصري تحكمه تراتبية تتربع على قمتها الثقافة الأوربية التي تزدري ثقافتهم وعاداتهم وطقوسهم. كانت ضريبة الاندماج والانتماء هي الانسلاخ الثقافي المؤلم، الذي يبدأ بتغيير الأسماء، ويتطلّب فقدان الذاكرة أو طمسها وإسكات أصواتها، وتمثّل قيم المجتمع الجديد. التمثّل الذي قد يصل أحيانًا إلى كره الذات والشعور بالعار والتنصل من ماضٍ يتعارض مع السردية الصهيونية الأوربية التي تُهيكل الأسطورة القومية وإنكاره. فلم تكن هذه البلاد المسروقة «فردوسًا موعودًا» لليهود العرب والشرقيين، كما هي للأوربيين الهاربين من محرقة، ومن غربٍ ظَلَّ يكرههم ويلاحقهم بشراسة وصدّر عنصريته إلى بلادنا وثقافتنا التي يُسقِط عليها اليوم عنصريته المتجذّرة. أجبر معظم اليهود العراقيين على ترك «جنّة مال الله» وراءهم. ولم يسمح لهم بأن يحملوا معهم من تلك الجنة إلا الحقائب. لكنهم حملوا ذاكرتهم وتاريخهم وهناك من حافظ عليه وحماه مما قد يشوهه أو يطمسه.

د. سنان أنطون، شاعر وروائي عراقي

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Middle East, Memoir, Biography, Politics, Jewish

464 pages, Paperback

First published July 11, 2023

About the author

Avi Shlaim FBA (born October 31, 1945) is an Iraqi-born British/Israeli historian. He is emeritus professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and a fellow of the British Academy. Shlaim is considered one of Israel's New Historians, a group of Israeli scholars who put forward critical interpretations of the history of Zionism and Israel.

Reviews

[Nika · Rating 4 out of 5]

The backdrop to the story is a seismic period in Jewish history which saw the spread of Nazi propaganda in Iraq, the Nazi genocide of European Jewry, the partition of Palestine, the birth of the State of Israel, the origin of the Palestinian refugee problem, the mass exodus of Jews from Iraq and other Arab countries to Israel, and Ashkenazi–Sephardi tensions in the early years of statehood, tensions that in some ways persist to the present day.

Three worlds of Avi Shlaim, a British/Israeli historian, are Baghdad, where he was born, Ramat-Gan, a city in Israel, where Avi’s family moved when he was around five, and London, where the author studied.

The author was born in Iraq to Jewish parents. Avi self-identifies as an Arab Jew. The complex experiences that the author went through have helped him form his perspective on the emergence and developments of the Israeli-Arab conflict. In this memoir, Shlaim reflects on the past events in the Middle East, relates the personal history of his family, the Iraqi Jews, and addresses the prospects of finding a viable solution to the conflict.

Avi offers various snapshots of the life of his parents and grandparents in Iraq. Although they lived through some turbulent events, one example is the infamous Baghdad pogrom (farhud) of 1941, their existence in Iraq was mostly peaceful. They lived an affluent life in Baghdad and had many connections and Muslim friends. This peaceful coexistence came to an end when the state of Israel in Palestine was created in 1948. The two things, the Israeli War of Independence and the Palestinian Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic) tragically intertwined with one another.
Since then, tensions between Arabs and Jews living in Arab countries, including Iraq, appear to have spread steadily. The circumstances beyond their control made Avi's family leave their country of origin. Avi's parents settled in Israel. Their fate mirrors those of many Jews living in Arab countries who had to repatriate to the new state of Israel.
The author does not mince words and describes his family as victims of Zionism, in which they have zero interest. I will permit myself to remark that the Iraqi government at the time could make some other choice regarding the attitude towards their Jewish citizens. I doubt that external pressures (e.g., the Arab-Israeli wars, the actions of underground Zionist organizations), strident as they may have been, could absolve them of all responsibility.
That being said, the seismic changes in the region would have irrevocable consequences for the lives of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people.

One of the major theses that the author takes the pain to convey is that Arabs and Jews peacefully coexisted before the aftermath of the Second World War. It belies the thesis of propaganda according to which there is insurmountable antagonism between Jews and Arabs and the conflict between them has been inevitable. Prof. Shlaim is convinced that the conflict has been driven by nationalistic ideologies on both sides, Zionism and Arab nationalism.
He questions the narrative of antisemitism allegedly practiced by all Arab regimes throughout history and sees antisemitism in Baghdad as "more of a foreign import than a home-grown product." Unlike Europe, where antisemitism largely contributed to The Zionist movement.

The author talks about discrimination within Israeli society in the late 1950s - early 1960s. Multiple times, the young Avi had witnessed how the Ashkenazi (the European Jews) looked down on the Oriental Jews (the Mizrahim). Because of his Iraqi origins, Avi suffered from a complex of inferiority, which rendered him shy and insecure. It prevented him from achieving at school. The poor performance at school led Avi's mother to send him to study in England. She had to use all her connections to be able to do so. The author several times refers to nepotism or wasta in Arabic, which helped his parents in both Iraq and Israel. Avi’s mother always excelled in wasta. She could have given a master class called “How to Make People Do What You Want Them to Do.”

Before starting his university education in the UK, Avi served in the Israel Defense Forces. He regards the Israeli Army as a sort of melting pot that comes close to successfully assimilating Jews from different parts of the world.
His experience in the IDF endowed Avi with patriotic feelings toward Israel. When the war in 1967 was about to break out, he wanted to go to Israel to take part in it. He went to the Israeli embassy in London to volunteer and return to his home country. However, his service was not required. The war lasted only six days and ended with "a resounding Israeli military victory over its Arab neighbors and the tripling of the territory under its control."

The six-day war in 1967 became a historical turning point, according to the author. The view of Israel as a colonial power by its Arab neighbors was reinforced.
The Six-Day War marked the beginning of a change in Avi's mindset. He has become critical of Israeli policies.

The author describes the fate of the Palestinians during The Nakba when many Palestinian families had been forced to flee their homes and become refugees.
As the author points out, the horrors of the Holocaust should stand as a gruesome reminder that dehumanization and discrimination against any group of people should be forbidden and that people who are unjustly persecuted deserve empathy regardless of their origins, religion, or skin color. Everyone deserves to live in peace, safety, and freedom.

The memoir quite cleverly mixes the personal and the political and contextualizes some principal events of the recent past. On top of that, the book teaches the basics about the history of Iraq.
You do not have to always agree with the views of the author to appreciate this book, its erudition, and the scope of the problems it brings up.
In light of the current events, some of the subjects discussed in this book look even more worrying.

To wrap up this review, I will share a few quotes that leave a glimmer of hope.

Because of this experience of the possibilities of interweaving and sustaining multiple identities, I could describe my own position today as akin to that of the main character in Emile Habiby’s novel The Secret Life of Saeed: I am a pessoptimist. I am cautiously pessimistic about the prospect of progress in the short term but I am more optimistic about the chances of a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the longer term.

Remembering the past, however, can help us to envisage a better future.

Arab-Jewish coexistence is not something that my family and I imagined in our minds; we experienced it, we touched it.

I believe that nations, like individuals, are capable of acting rationally – after they have exhausted all other alternatives.

One thing is certain: without reviving or reimagining the kind of religious tolerance and civilised dialogue between Jews and Arabs that prevailed in Iraq before the emergence of the State of Israel, we will not be able to move beyond today’s impasse.

The outcome I have come to favour is one democratic state between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea with equal rights for all its citizens regardless of ethnicity or religion. This is the democratic one-state solution. Initially, the one-state idea appealed only to a small group of intellectuals; gradually, however, it gained a growing number of adherents on the Palestinian side. As hopes of independence faded, the emphasis shifted to the quest for equal rights under Israeli-Palestinian rule.

[Tim Null · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The outcome I have come to favour is one democratic state between River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea with equal rights for all its citizens regardless of ethnicity or religion. This is the democratic one-state solution." Avi Shlaim

[Foz ☀️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

- مذكرات صعب بالنسبة لي قراءتها ليس بسبب ثقل سردها بل بسبب تحيزي الشديد لقضية فلسطين، هذا الكتاب هو مذكرات يهودي - عربي عاش في ثلاثة دول، وُلد في العراق ثم هاجرت أسرته بعد قيام الكيان الصهيوني إلى أراضي فلسطين المُحتلة، ومن ثم سافر إلى بريطانيا وهذه هي "العوالم الثلاثة" التي ذكرهم الكاتب في مذكراته، وهذه المذكرات جاءت على الصعيد الشخصي له، يتحدث فيها الكاتب عن نشأة أسرته بعد الاحتلال وقبله، وعن العراق قبل وبعد، وعن توالم الأقليات وانسجامهم مع باقي الأعراق والديانات في بلاد الرافدين قبل قيام دولة الاحتلال.
- الكاتب هو مؤرخ صرح بدعم القضية الفلسطينية، ويدين المُحتل.
- أتمنى وكل شريف يتمنى زوال هذه الدولة المُحتلة اسرائيل، والله ينصر فلسطين وأهلها. ما يحدث في هذا العالم مُرعب ومهيب.
وسنة النكبة هي بدايتها.

[Emmeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

The “three worlds” of the title are the three very different social contexts of Shlaim’s childhood: he starts life in Baghdad as the privileged only son of wealthy Iraqi Jews; at the age of five his family moves to Israel and the family fortunes plummet; and as a teenager he is given the chance to study in England.

Shlaim’s thesis throughout is that Arab-Jewish tolerance and social mixing are not only possible but were his family’s entire reality prior to the rise of Zionism.

This is a readable slice of life by a man I have found quietly charismatic in videos around the internet. It’s probably more of a three-star read, because he doesn’t quite manage to tie the macro-historical canvas and the personal story perfectly – largely I think because his family was so privileged prior to the State of Israel that it’s hard to extrapolate the story of more normal Arab Jews from them. He does have some telling details about the discrimination these forced migrants (or, refugees, in the Israeli narrative) faced, such as being sprayed with DDT to disinfect them upon arrival.

I’m adding an extra half star and rounding up because the Iraqi history and depiction of life in mid-century Baghdad were so interesting. To my shame, I realized that the Baghdad of my mind has always been a pile of rubble (not hundreds of years ago of course, but modern history). Shlaim’s stories of the Jewish elite and their villas and barbeques on the shores of the Tigris were evocative and made me keen to read more about Iraq in all its phases of history.

[Hani Al-Kharaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

آفي شلايم أو أبراهام شلايم، يهودي عراقي، أجبرت أسرته على الهجرة إلى فلسطين المحتلة في بداية الخمسينات وهو بعد في الخامسة من عمره. تحدث بتفصيل في هذه المذكرات عن دوافع تلك الهجرة "القسرية" وظروفها ودور الوكالة الصهيونية فيها. أضاف شلايم هنا شهادات موثقة للعناصر الصهيونية التي خططت وشاركت في تفجير تجمعات يهودية في العراق لدفع يهوده للهجرة، وهذه قصة تكررت في دول عربية أخرى. 


والى جانب هذه الشهادة المهمة، تناولت المذكرات الكثير من الشهادات المثيرة حول أوضاع اليهود في العراق قبل النكبة ومدى تعايشهم مع بقية أطياف المجتمع، وتمسكهم بثقافتهم العربية حتى بعد هجرتهم القسرية. كما وثقت المذكرات العنصرية التي قوبلوا بها في دولة الاحتلال، وهو ما يستخدمه شلايم للتأكيد على أن هذا الكيان ليس سوى بؤرة استيطان استعماري غربي.  يؤكد شلايم أن "الحركة الصهيونية في الأصل والجوهر حركة أوروبية قادها يهود أوروبيون أرادوا أن يخلقوا دولة يهودية لليهود الأوروبين". 


ما وجدته مستفزاً هو تجاهل أصحاب الأرض في فلسطين من قبل أولئلك اليهود العرب المهاجرين. فبالرغم من أن الكثير منهم قد أجبروا على الهجرة وبالرغم من تمسكهم بثقافتهم ولغتهم العربية وبالرغم مما عانوه من عنصرية فجة من اليهود الأشكيناز إلا أن ذلك كله لم يدفعهم باتجاه عرب فلسطين او مساءلة ما طالهم او حتى الاقتراب وبناء الصلات معهم. على العكس نجد أن الكثيرين منهم بحسب شلايم قد اندفع اكثر باتجاه اليمين الصهيوني.  


مأخذي الأهم على شلايم في مذكراته هذه يتعلق بخلطه بين القومية العربية كأيدولوجية ثقافية وبين نشأة الدولة الوطنية بعد الحرب العالمية الأولى. هذا الخلط دفعه لوضع "القومية" على نفس المسطرة مع الصهيونية وتحميلهما إثم ما عانى منه اليهود العرب.

[Wasen · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is much to learn from Shlaim through this rendition of his personal and historical story. As a British Iraq with immigrant parents there is so much in his description of how his family and parents felt that I personally can identify with. Shlaim’s family identify as Arabs, they speak the language and have an embedded history of presence in Iraq that speaks to generations of existence. As Shlaim beautifully put it they were “a minority” not “the minority” in Iraq, in a society with many minorities, that co-existed. When he recalls his mother’s and grandmother’s Arabic words describing Iraq it reminds me of all the elderly women I know living in the diaspora. These women more than language all had a common living experience in a country they all regarded as “Jannah”, paradise. Speaking to a cultural unity despite them not sharing the same religion.

The shocking revelations in his account, come as no surprise to most of us who have been aware of the political climate of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The purpose of all political power in the region is the alienation and destruction for the better good of the elite, never the masses. When Shlaim talks about the reconceptualisation of Jewishness and the impact Zionism had in destroying the identity of Arab-Jews, that being cultural Arab and a Jew by religion is an oxymoron, is simply a tactic colonisers have always used. I wondered about the broader context of how this erasure rendered not only Arab-Jews as an identity of the past. But how "An Arab" is now only synonymous with Islam. Despite the region prior to the inspection of “Arabs” was also the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but also home to polytheistic and idolatry worshipers. Therefore, the erasure of the Arab-Jew and the history of Judaism in the Arab world served the Zionist agenda to create this monolithic enemy of all Arabs are all Muslims, all Muslims are the enemy of Jews. Despite a history of multicultural and multi-religious entities coexisting before the inception of Zionism or Israel.

I guess with age comes wisdom, experience and lifetime of reading. And Shlaim throughout this memoir tried his best to keep himself honest, exposing many embarrassing and regrettable feelings throughout this early part of his life. His rendition in epilogue of his IDF service was very striking. Despite everything said and his retrospective analysis of his life, this description around his compulsory service in the IDF summaries what it truly means to be an Israeli. That despite the self-hatred which followed him his whole childhood living in an oppressive, racist, hate fuelling society, at the time his IDF service was very much something he wanted to contribute. This clearly shows that the best way to brainwash a group, is to incite young 18 year olds to murder and destruction, give them power without any understanding of what it does, grow hate in their hearts and feed them lies about everyone being an enemy, from the British to the Arabs to the orients, anyone who isn't us is against us, and let hell unleash.

[Hamid · Rating 5 out of 5]

A phenomenal exploration of identity through personal memoir. Shlaim's account, focusing mostly on his childhood and youth, is a brilliant voyage through himself, his family, friends, Iraq, Israel and the broader politics of the Middle East.

He rejects the current prevailing binary - that it's not possible to be Arab and Jewish. He also rejects the prevailing thoughts that the Jews of Iraq were always considered outsiders who would inevitably have to leave, that Israel was a haven for Arab Jews that offered a better life and that Muslims, that Zionism is inherent to Jewish experience and Jews are natural enemies.

It's an incredibly nuanced work. If you're interested in the topic, you'll probably already see a swell of condemnation because he suggests that some of the Baghdad bombings were conducted by Zionist agents (similar to eg the Lavon Affair) and presents some remarkable proof. But even if you reject that, it doesn't really do anything to detract from his position and is a small fraction of the book. The nuance comes out through his attempts to understand the Iraqi context of his youth. His family (some of whom were zionists). His love of his own culture (entirely Arab but also entire Jewish). The rise and fall of his family. The Holocaust (not part of his experience and something that impacted mostly Ashkenazi Jews). Prejudice in Israel - he mentions several times the de-licing sprays of middle-class Iraqi immigrants as being a particular humiliation for the group as a whole. On the rejection of Arab identity in order to try to belong in new Israel. And he keeps Palestinians in mind as victims of colonialisation.

Throughout, this is told through family anecdote. Much of which is assessed by Shlaim. He tempers some of his mother's stories, for example, by discussing the family context or other points of view. He goes into various family rifts. Love. Military Service. All with genuine humour and a wonderful sense of self-awareness that is so often missing from autobiography.

Perhaps, most importantly, the book is a message of hope and desire. That it's possible for Arab Jews to again embrace their layered identities. That it might be possible even for fuller reconciliation to occur in ancestral communities.

A beautiful work of memory, history and politics. Highly recommended.

[آية · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Arab Jew" and "Palestinian Jew" are oxymorons today - but it was quite a normal identity to have before 1948. Yet another reason how Zionism is anti-Semitic.

In this memoir, the renowned historian Avi Shlaim explores his experience as a Jew born to an Iraqi family who has been in Iraq for centuries.

Zionists often claim that Jews were kicked out of Arab lands. In this book, Avi Shlaim has much evidence against this, showing the "anti-Jewish hate" in Arab countries in the 20th century were instigated and even staged by Israel in an effort to increase their population.

He also has some really interesting insights in the life and family dynamics of Iraqi Jews, showing the lives of his mother and sisters, and the discrimination he and his family faced as Arab Jews in Israel.

I would recommend reading the first half of the book, which shows the life of Iraqi Jews and how it was ended by Israel. The rest shows his life as a young adult in the Israeli school system and then the UK.

[Marcy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book - especially the part when Shlaim detailed what life was like in Baghdad for the Jewish community before Zionism ousted them from that world. I also like how Shlaim integrated the personal memoir with the historian's critical eye. This was particularly interesting when he became a kind of forensic analyst who went over the details that led to Iraqi Jews being forced to leave the country due, at least in part, to Zionist terrorism. Equally important is the story of how racism prevailed over Arab Jewish communities after they settled in Israel. I wish there were more reflection about how he came to unlearn the Zionism that infected his younger years. However, this is a moving and powerful memoir.

[Mahsa Shahshahani · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
We all know why studying history is important: to understand the past and avoid repeating its mistakes. But for me, history has often felt boring. I find it hard to connect with it unless I approach it through the lens of human experience. I need to feel something. This book did that perfectly.

Avi Shlaim, an Israeli-Iraqi historian from the University of Oxford, tells the history of Israel through his own lived experience as an Arab-Jew. This personal perspective made the history more approachable for me. What stood out was that the story came from within. I’ve always read about Israel from the other side of the story. But Shlaim is not the other side. He grew up inside the system and ultimately chose to reject it.

He begins with the story of his ancestors in Baghdad, who were successful Jewish merchants. He then describes his own early life in Iraq. From there, he explores the broader history of Arab-Jews in Iraq and how their peaceful existence became threatened with the rise of Zionism. He presents shocking evidence that Zionist agents were involved in making Iraq unsafe for its Jewish population. These Jews were proud of both their religion and their Iraqi identity. The goal of the violence was to pressure them to immigrate to Israel.

The next part of the book brings us to Israel, where he highlights the racism Arab-Jews faced from European Jews. According to Shlaim, Israel was built for Ashkenazi Jews, not for Sephardic Jews from the Arab world. Arab-Jews were only encouraged to immigrate because the state needed more people to populate the land after the Holocaust.

Shlaim explains that Jews were never seen as a problem in the East. In Arab countries, Iran, and North Africa, Jews lived as respected minorities. They embraced both their Jewish and national identities. But Zionism needed to create a sense of crisis, a "Jewish problem" in the East, to motivate migration. As a result, Arab-Jews were forced to leave behind everything: their businesses, language, culture, heritage, and history. In Israel, they were pressured to abandon their Eastern identity, speak Hebrew, eat Ashkenazi food, and adopt European customs. The East was seen as backward, and nothing from their past was considered valuable. They were expected to become European and to adopt a hatred of Arabs, the very people they had lived alongside for centuries and whose languages they had spoken as their own.

Later in the book, we follow Shlaim to London, where he moved as a teenager. There he became the man he is today: a historian, an academic, and a revisionist Israeli scholar. He now openly rejects the Zionist project and the state of Israel as it exists today.

I enjoyed this book immensely. The only reason I am not giving it five stars is that it feels one chapter short. I wanted a section where he reflects on how he came to his current beliefs. He mentions being a right-wing Zionist in his youth, especially after serving in the Israeli army and during the 1967 war. There is this chapter called “Awakenings” which I assume was supposed to explain that transition phase in his beliefs. But he never really explains how that belief system shifted. He jumps from his time as a university student in London to his current views on the Middle East and his rejection of the two-state solution. I wish he had included more about that transformation. Maybe he has written about it elsewhere, but I would have liked to see it here, in his memoirs.

That said, this book is excellent. It is informative, thought-provoking, and emotionally powerful.

**A Personal Note:**
When I first picked up this book, it was out of curiosity. With everything happening in Gaza and Lebanon, I wanted to educate myself about Israel. It wasn't personal. I simply wanted to understand a conflict unfolding in another part of the world, something that, at the time, had nothing to do with me.

Funnily enough, halfway through the book, everything changed. Overnight, Israel became a personal issue. They attacked Iran, and the war began. I had to pause my reading. When the war ended and I finally returned to the book, I came back with a different perspective. This time, it wasn’t just about awareness or curiosity. This time, it was personal. Israel was no longer just an intellectual topic for me—it was something I felt, deeply and painfully.

[ali darweesh · Rating 5 out of 5]

كتاب "ثلاث عوالم: مذكرات عربي يهودي" لمؤلفه افي (إبراهيم بالعربية) اشلايم يلقي الضوء على عوالم ثلاثة ربما كانت خافية عن كثير منا. ففي هذه المذكرات يتحدث الفتى اليهودي العربي المولود في بغداد عام ١٩٤٥ عن حياته في العراق وظروف انتقاله وعائلته الى فلسطين عام ١٩٥٠ وبعدها الى بريطانيا للدراسة الجامعية والحصول على درجة الدكتوراه. في سرده للأحداث التي مرت عليه وعائلته يسلط الضوء على مدى الخسارة والحسرة التي منيت بها عائلته والعوائل اليهودية الأخرى التي أجبرت على الرحيل الى الكيان الإسرائيلي والتفرقة العنصرية التي عانى منها اليهود السفارديم الشرقيين من اليهود لأشكناز(اليهود الغربيين) وتلخصها كلمات امه التي ما فتئت تردد عبارة كنا في "جنة مال الله وجينا الى حضيرة خنازير" او كنا يهودا في العراق واصبحنا عربا في "إسرائيل". يعترف الكاتب بالظلم الذي وقع على الفلسطينيين ولكنه أيضا يشير الى الظلم الذي وقع على اليهود الشرقيين من جراء الحركة الصهيونية والشرخ الكبير الذي طرا على العلاقة بين اليهود الشرقيين وجيرانهم العرب. يسرد الكاتب امثلة كثيرة عن العلاقة الطيبة التي كانت سائدة بين يهود العراق والعرب ويتمنى زوال الصهيونية ورفع الظلم والحيف الذي وقع على الفلسطينيين.
لقد استمتعت بقراءة هذا الكتاب الذي اضاء جوانب خافية عن حياة اليهود العرب وعلاقتهم بالصهيونية ودولتها "إسرائيل".

[Osama · Rating 5 out of 5]

في هذا الكتاب، يتحدث إيفي (إبراهيم) شلايم - المؤرخ اليهودي العراقي ال��صل - عن حياته في ثلاثة مواطن: الطفولة في العراق، المراهقة في 'كيان إسرائيل'، والدراسة والإقامة في بريطانيا.

ولا يخفى على القاريء أن المؤلف ينتمي لتيار المؤرخين الجدد، الذين ينتقدون بشكل عام الفكر الصهيوني الاستيطاني وجرائمه المرتكبة بحق الفلسطينيين، ويدعون لمراجعة تاريخية ناقدة لسردية الصهاينة التي تقول بأن فلسطين كانت أرض بلا شعب، سيطر عليها شعب بلا أرض.

ورغم أن الكتاب يركز على السيرة الذاتية للمؤلف، إلا أنني شعرت خلال قرائتها بأنها تفتح الكثير من الملفات التاريخية والسياسية، لاسيما فيما يتعلق بوضع الأقليات اليهودية في الدول العربية، وأسباب هجرتهم للكيان الغاصب، وما تعرضوا له من خسارة مادية واجتماعية، وما عانوه بصفتهم يهود الشرق العرب (السفارديم) كذلك من عنصرية على يد اليهود الأوروبيين (الأشكناز).

عانى المؤلف من صراعات كثيرة تتعلق بهويته، سواء في العراق أو في 'اسرائيل' وكذلك في بربطانيا. والملفت للنظر أنه يتحدث العربية والعبرية والإنجليزية والفرنسية مما سمح له بالاطلاع على مصادر تاريخية كثيرة أغنت الكتاب.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in 2021 I read Massoud Hayoun’s When We Were Arabs. As someone of Arab Christian ancestry learning about these different facets of Arab culture outside of a preconceived, stereotyped, Islamic monoculture has been of great interest to me.

While I found When We Were Arabs to be highly insightful to the world of Arab Jews I was also left feeling a sense of lacking in what I wish to understand about this world and how Arab Jews exist and navigate a post 1948 landscape. When I learned of Avi Shlaim’s Three Worlds I was excited to revisit this subject and hoped to gain a deeper understanding.

I don’t want to spend too much time comparing this book to When We Were Arabs but I will bring up a few key differentiators since these are two very different books on a similar subject. What I didn’t like about When We Were Arabs was its structure. I felt it tried to accomplish too much with its limited page count and vague organization.

While Three Worlds has its own structural issues, I did find it to be a much better overall output. Shlaim is a historian with a career of writing books on this subject. This shows in his writing, which I find makes for a much greater reading experience. This book is a memoir first and a commentary on zionism and the white supremacy of Israeli society second. Shlaim looks to balance these two components and for the most part, I think he does this pretty well.

Shlaim is an Iraqi born Jew who immigrated to Israel in 1950, when he was five years old. When he is a teenager he goes to school in England where he ends up spending much of his later life. This puts him in an interesting position, especially for the time period in which he comes of age. There are many stories of the racism and discrimination of non white Jews, especially in the early days of Israel and still to this day these issues exist in varying ways. Shlaim offers his own accounts of his upbringing to back up these claims with the experiences of himself and his friends/relatives also of Iraqi Jewish background.

The greatest insight from this book are the accounts of pre 1948 Iraq and how an affluent family such as his prospered in Baghdad. How people of different faiths coexisted and how only the outside western influences eventually brought persecution and antisemitism to Iraq. While a very specific point of view, I found this to be deeply insightful as my overall background in the history of Iraq during this time period was severely lacking.

Progressing through the book you get to see how Shlaim’s family emigrated from Iraq, some of the fear tactics used by Israel to force migration of Jews from Middle Eastern countries such as Iraq, Shlaim’s time in Israel and how out of place and othered he was made to feel, and his eventual time in England where he expresses a freedom from this oppressive worldview.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. Shlaim is clearly a skilled writer and historian and having this be a memoir, it reads a lot easier than most history books would. My greatest issue with this book is that the back half feels more lacking than the first. Like I said, the information on pre 1948 Iraq and the analysis of zionist tactics of the time is really well done, balanced well with the personal family narrative. In the latter half this analysis mainly shifts to the background as the personal narrative of his time in school and family affairs take center stage. It's not to say that these stories aren't interesting or informative to Shlaim’s worldview but they take up a lot of the remaining page count when I felt there was more to explore on a grander scale.

Ending around the time he comes of age, I feel this book could have really benefited from a deeper analysis of these levels of racism and discrimination against Arab Jews in an adult mind frame. I didn’t really know anything about Shlaim prior to reading this book so I don’t know how he got from an eighteen year old to this 78 year old man who is now openly critical of the society he was partially raised in.

Like many modern, major published books Three Worlds neatly wraps up around the 300 page mark. Personally I would have enjoyed another one or two hundred pages exploring these subjects deeper. While I think the epilogue redirects the work back to its intentions and offers a quite good, contemporary analysis of the current situation of Palestine, I would have preferred it didn’t feel as tacked on to the end of this mostly personal memoir.

Like When We Were Arabs, for any of its flaws I still highly recommend this book. Where Hayoun talked about the experiences of his North African Jewish grandparents, Shlaim talks about his Iraqi Jewish background. These are two separate cultures who’s main commonality in the modern world is their exclusion and erasure at the hands of zionism. This book was written for general audiences but I believe its main target are liberal Israelis, reform zionists, and open minded westerners. The unfortunate reality is that many in this audience are more likely to give him a chance whereas a Palestinian saying many of the same things would not be granted this opportunity. If this is what breaks through to them, so be it.

[Fatima A. Alsaif · Rating 5 out of 5]

أصعب ما في مراجعة الكتب هو تقييم السير الذاتية. فكيف لنا أن نقيم تجربة شخص آخر؟

ربما كان هذا الكتاب هو الإستثناء .. فكم وددت أن يكون هذا الكتاب أطول وأطول! وكم تمنيت أن أستطيع تقييمه بـ10 نجوم من أصل 5. فقد استمتعت بكل صفحة، وبكل فصل، وبكل عالم من عوالم آڤي شلايم، حتى ذلك العالم الذي نكره. أحببت الفصول الأولى الذي تحدث فيها عن حياة عائلته كعائلة يهودية عراقية، خالية من المشاكل أو العنصرية الدينية. هذا يدحض الرواية الصهيونية الزائفة القائلة بأن اليهود العرب كانوا مضطهدين وغير مرحب بهم في بلادهم. فمن خلال تجربة الكاتب وعائلته والمجتمع العراقي آنذاك، ساد التعايش واحترام التنوع الديني، ولم يكونوا غرباء لأنهم أبناء بلدهم. وقد أشار الكاتب إلى نقطة مهمة حول تداعيات النكبة على اليهود العرب، وكيف ظلمتهم الحركة الصهيونية عبر المؤامرات التي دبرتها ضدهم والإرهاب التي مارسته ضدهم في أوطانهم للضغط عليهم للهجرة إلى الأراضي المحتلة.

“ما أوضحته قصة أسرتي لي، على أية حال، هو وجود فئةٍ أخرى من ضحايا المشروع الصهيوني: يهود البلدان العربية”

لم تكن رحلة آڤي شلايم سهلة ولا مثالية، ولكنها كانت رحلة ملهمة لرجل اكتشف الحقيقة ودافع عنها، ولم يتردد من تعرية الواقع الذي يحاول العدو طمسه. وأعجبتني الدلالات التي يحملها عنوان الكتاب، "العوالم الثلاثة"، والتي قد تُشير إلى تجارب الكاتب وإقامته في ثلاثة عوالم مختلفة (العراق، والأراضي المحتلة، وبريطانيا). ولعل هذه العوالم الثلاثة تُمثل رحلة الكاتب في البحث عن هويته، من عربي يهودي إلى صهيوني، وصولاً إلى مناهض للصهيونية.

لا يهدف هذا الكتاب إلى سرد التجربة الشخصية لمؤرخ بارز فحسب، بل يهدف أيضًا إلى دحض الأكاذيب وتحرير اليهود العرب من التلاعب بهم والأكاذيب التي تُروّج سردية تعرضهم للاضطهاد في أوطانهم.

أظن أن هذا الكتاب من أهم الكتب التي قرأتها هذا العام، وأوصي به بشدة.

[Harith Alrashid · Rating 5 out of 5]

هذه ليست مذكرات عادية لأن كاتبها مؤرخ مرموق بل هو بروفسور تاريخ في جامعة اكسفورد العريقة فإذا كتب عن أحداث تاريخية فإنه سيتحرى الدقة والموضوعية والمصادر التاريخية الموثوقة
مذكرات افي شلايم هي مذكرات يهودي عراقي هاجرت اسرته في بداية الخمسينات الميلادية الى اسرائيل وهو في سن الخامسة لكنه يستقي معلوماته من اقاربه ومن المصادر التاريخية عن وضع اليهود في العراق قبل نشأة اسرائيل وكيف كانوا اهم اقلية هناك حيث سيطرت على جزء كبير من الاقتصاد العراقي بالمعنى الايجابي وبالتالي كانت هجرتهم لاسرائيل غير متوقعة لولا احداث مريبة دفعتهم الى الهجرة ويتهم المخابرات الاسرائيلية بمحاولة ترهيبهم حتى يندفعوا للهجرة ويخسروا اموالهم ومكانتهم هناك وليتحول ا الى وضع اقتصادي اسوأبكثير ويعاملوا بدونية في اسرائيل لانهم مشرقيين
من المثير ان يذكر الكاتب بإحصائية دقيقة ان اكبر جالية يهودية في البلدان العربية هاجرت الى اسرائيل هي الجالية اليهودية في العراق وبفارق كبير عن بقية البلدان العربية وكنت اظن ان المغرب كانت تحتوي على الجالية الاكبر
سؤال اخير ممكن ان يطرح هل لو لم تقم دولة اسرائيل هل ستساهم الجاليات اليهودية في العالم العربي في التفوق الاقتصادي للعرب حيث كانت خبرتهم التجارية والاقتصادية كبيرة ام لا وفي الكتاب ان وزير المالية العراقي في زمن الملك فيصل كان ساسون اليهودي وقد ادار مالية العراق في تلك الفترة باقتدار

[Chad Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read!! Fascinating learning about the history of Iraqi Jews. Found Shlaim’s life story interesting as well!

[Isabel Ozkan Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bursting with gratitude for Avi Shlaim, the scholar, and Uncle Abi, our elder, for their diligent historical work, thoughtful evolutions, and prescient "Pessoptimism"❤️

[Rudina Yaseen · Rating 5 out of 5]

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رقم مئة واثنا عشر /2024
العوالم الثلاث-مذكرات يهودي عربي
Three Worlds: Memoir of an Arab-Jew
افي شلايم – Avi Shlaim
المترجم علي عبد الكريم صالح
تطبيق ابجد

من هو اليهودي العربي: حسب تعريف الكتاب[ يعرف اليهودي العربي بأنّه فردٌ يحمل هوية مزدوجة: يهودية وعربية، عاشَ وتأثرَ بثقافة البلد العربي الذي ولدَ وترعرع فيه. تعدّ تجربتي الشخصية في بغداد مثالًا حيًا على هذا التنوع الثقافي الغني الذي باتَ مهددًا بالاندثار. في عام، 1950عندما غادرتُ وعائلتي بغداد، كان هناك حوالي 300 ألف يهوديّ يعيشون في العراق. اليوم، ومع كتابة هذه السطور هناك ثلاثة فقط.]


العوالم الثلاثة لافي شلايم، المؤرخ البريطاني/الإسرائيلي، هي بغداد، حيث ولد، ورمات غان، وهي مدينة في إسرائيل، حيث انتقلت عائلة آفي عندما كان في الخامسة من عمره، ولندن، حيث الإقامة والعمل والجنسية والحياة والموت.

سأقسم فصول الكتاب ضمن العوالم الثلاث وسيتم دمج بعض الفصول.

العالم الأول: من الفصل الأول(العرب) الى الفصل الثامن (وداعا بغداد):
• في مذكّراته، يصف شلايم سنواته الأولى في بغداد باعتباره ابنًا ليهوديٍّ عراقي (على الرغم من أنَّ اسمَ شلايم، من جهة والده، “ربما كان اسمًا ألمانيًا يعود إلى أجيالٍ عدة”). نشأ في بيتٍ يتحدّث العربية، وكان منغمسًا في الثقافة العربية، ونما في العراق. يرى شلايم أنَّ يهودَ العراق هم عرب، وإذا كان الفلسطينيون هم الضحايا الرئيسيين للحركة الصهيونية، فإنهم لم يكونوا وحدهم، بل كان يهود العالم العربي من الضحايا أيضًا. “من خلال منح اليهودية بُعدًا إقليميًا لم يكن لديها من قبل، أبرزت [الصهيونية] الفرق بين المسلمين واليهود في الفضاءات العربية. سواء أحبوا ذلك أم لا، فمن الآن فصاعدا تم ربط اليهود بالدولة اليهودية”.

• ويؤكد الكاتب بأن المواطنين العراقيين المنتميين للعراق كوطن والدين اليهودي كعقيدة فقط الذين هُجِروا قسراً من وطنهم العراق عن طريق إرهابهم من قِبل عصابات صهيونية زُرِعت بينهم وقامت بعمليات تفجير ضد مراكز يهودية ثقافية ودينية في العاصمة العراقية (قبل وخلال عام 1950) بل لأنه يوضح بصدق ووجدانية، وعبر التحليل الموثق، استمرار تمسك عدد كبير من أبناء الجالية اليهودية العراقية بهويتهم العراقية حتى بعد اضطرارهم إلى الهجرة الجماعية إلى إسرائيل بين عامي 1950 و1951 وعلى مراحل تبعت اعتداءات الفرهود التي ارتكبت ضدهم في الأسبوع الأول من حزيران (يونيو) 1941 والتي نفذتها مجموعات عراقية متشددة ضمت ضباطاً في الجيش والشرطة جرت معاقبتهم لاحقاً. وقد غطى الكاتب هذه الأحداث في الفصل الخامس.

• شلايم كان في الخامسة من عمره عندما هاجرت عائلته إلى إسرائيل حيث عانت اقتصادياً واجتماعياً هناك بعدما كانت في أفضل أحوالها المادية والاجتماعية في بغداد وكان والده تاجراً محترماً يمتلك علاقات وثيقة بالمواطنين والمسؤولين العراقيين.

• وبعدما كانت والدته (سعيدة) سيدة مجتمع تتهافت على التعاطي معها سيدات المجتمع العراقي آنذاك فهي تحولت بعد الهجرة إلى إسرائيل إلى عاملة هاتف في مؤسسة للخدمات اضطراراً لإعالة عائلتها بعدما أصبح زوجها عاطلاً عن العمل في إسرائيل وماكثاً في منزل متواضع يستمع فيه إلى الأخبار والموسيقى باللغة العربية لعدم تمكنه التحادث بالعبرية التي لم يتعلمها ولم يمارسها ولاستمرار انتمائه الحضاري والثقافي إلى العربية الذي ربما أدى إلى طلاقه من زوجته بسبب غربته ومن ثمة وفاته وحيداً في منزله المتواضع الصغير في إسرائيل في عام 1970.

• الصهيونية القاسية لم تحول فقط الفلسطينيين إلى لاجئين بل حولت اليهود الشرقيين إلى غرباء في أوطانهم الأصلية. ولم تنفذ تلك الصهيونية تقسيم فلسطين فحسب بل قسمت في عام 1947 ـ 1948 وبعده التعايش الإيجابي بين اليهود الشرقيين ومواطنيهم الآخرين في دول الشرق الأوسط وأفريقيا وخصوصاً بين اليهود والمسلمين والمسيحيين في العراق.

• في الفصل السابع يوضح شلايم بالوقائع والأرقام أن عامي 1950 و1951 كانا الأسوأ بالنسبة إلى العراقيين اليهود، ففي خلال عام غادرت أكثريتهم بلدهم الأصلي باتجاه إسرائيل (وبينهم عائلة الكاتب) ولم يبق في العراق سوى ستة آلاف عراقي يهودي (العدد الفعلي بالأرقام للعراقيين اليهود) الذين هاجروا بين حزيران (يونيو) 1950 وحزيران (يونيو) 1951 كان مئة وعشرة آلاف ليصبح العدد الإجمالي لهؤلاء مئة و25 ألف في فترة 1948 إلى 1953. وكان التعايش اليهودي الإسلامي قبل ذلك نموذجياً، برأي الكاتب وحسب مصادر أبحاثه. وتتذرع أوساط صهيونية بان عدداً كبيراً من المهاجرين اليهود من العراق فعلوا ذلك برضاهم بعد اعتداءات «الفرهود» عام 1941 والتعديات المباشرة وغير المباشرة التي خططتها ونفذتها أحزاب فاشية عربية تأثرت بالنازية الألمانية وبكرهها لليهود في العالم. العملية الأشد خطورة ضد يهود العراق. نُفذت في 14 كانون الثاني (يناير) 1951 عندما رميت قنبلة ضد كنيس سعيدة شيمتوب في بغداد ما أدى إلى مقتل أربعة عراقيين يهود وجرح عشرين آخرين. ولم يؤكد الكاتب هوية مرتكبيها ولكنه أشار إلى إمكان ارتباطهم بجهات عراقية قومية متعصبة كانت تسعى إلى المزيد من هجرة اليهود، أو بدوافع شخصية.

حصل شلايم على كثير من المعلومات حول حياة العرب اليهود في بغداد من والدته سعيدة بالإضافة إلى أبحاثه في جامعة اوكسفورد ولقاءاته مع أشخاص عرب يهود من الأجيال التي عاشت في بغداد قبل انتقالها إلى إسرائيل.

العالم الثاني رمات جان: ارض الميعاد
هنا الدولة والوطن وارض الميعاد والغربة والمنفى واقتلاع الجذور لأنشاء جذور جديدة لم يفكر أحد بها

• يخبرنا الكاتب إنه «فشل في دراسته وفي علاقاته في السنين الأولى لحياته بسبب إصابته بعقدة نقص نظراً لأن المجتمع الإسرائيلي آنذاك كان عنصرياً تجاه اليهود الوافدين إلى إسرائيل من دول عربية وشمال أفريقيا، وكانت تتحكم فيه المجموعة اليهودية العنصرية الوافدة من أوروبا الاشكناز التي احتقرت اليهود السافارديين الآتين من مجتمعات شرقية واستخدمتهم للزيادة الديموغرافية على حساب العرب الفلسطينيين الذين بقوا في بلدهم فلسطين بعد عمليات التهجير العنيف الذي مارسته العصابات الصهيونية ضدهم للاستيلاء على أراضيهم ومنازلهم وحقوقهم.

• ويقول شلايم جملةً معبّرة في الفقرة التمهيدية للفصل الأول وهي: «صرت بعد الهجرة من العراق إلى إسرائيل ولداً عربياً في أرضٍ أوروبية يهيمن عليها الأوروبيون اليهود ويقبع في أسفلها العرب والأفارقة اليهود.
ويعتبر ان هذا الواقع المؤلم كانت له حسناته، إذ ساهم في اكتسابه قدرة حرة على تجاوز العنصريات القومية في المراحل التالية من حياته وفي اختياره موقعاً متوازناً بالنسبة للصراع العربي ـ الإسرائيلي وللحقوق الفلسطينية الشروعة.

• ومن المُثيرِ للاهتمام بشكلٍ خاص في المذكرات مدى شعور شلايم، بعد انتقال عائلته إلى إسرائيل في العام 1950، بالتفاوت بين اليهود الاشكناز واليهود المز راحيين، الذين هاجروا من العالم العربي. كان هناك تكبّرٌ وتعجرفٌ من النخبة الأشكنازية في إسرائيل تجاه القادمين من الشرق، ويأسف شلايم لأن الهوية العربية بين اليهود العرب “أُحيلت إلى الماضي”، لصالح “العقلية الاستشراقية الأوروبية المُتغطرسة” التي تعاملت مع المز راحيين الآتين الجدُد كمواطنين من الدرجة الثانية. يتذكّر شلايم: “كنتُ أشعرُ بالخجل بشكلٍ خاص من التحدّث باللغة العربية في الأماكن العامة، لأنَّ اللغة العربية في إسرائيل كانت تُعتَبَرُ لُغَةً قبيحة، لُغَة بدائية، والأسوأ من ذلك كله، لغة العدو”.

• يصف شلايم كيف أن زميلته اليهودية العراقية التي التقى بها في جامعة أكسفورد، ميراف روزنفيلد حداد، شرحت له الصمت الطويل الذي عاشه والده يوسف. بالنسبة إليها، فإن يوسف “وصل إلى بلد يهود أوروبا الذين ليس لديهم أدنى فكرة عن ثراء حضارته ولا عن مكانته ووضعه. وإذا كان ثمة شيء، فهم يميلون إلى اعتباره وأمثاله متخلّفين وغير متحضّرين. ما المغزى من الحديث مع هؤلاء الناس؟ وحتى لو أراد أن يتحدث، لم تكن لديه لغة يتواصل بها معهم”

العالم الثالث لندن:
عالم افي الثالث كان سبب إقامة دولته ونكبة فلسطين يروي شلايم كيف أرسلته والدته القوية الإرادة إلى بريطانيا لمتابعة دراسته، بسبب أدائه الضعيف في المدرسة. غادر إسرائيل في أيلول (سبتمبر) 1961 ولم يَعُد أبدًا لفترة طويلة من الزمن. في وَصفِ رحيله، “لقد غادرتُ أرضَ الميعاد من دون أن ألقي نظرة أو ألتفت إلى الوراء”. لماذا هذه الحموضة؟ “لقد شعرتُ، لأول مرة في حياتي، بشعورٍ عميق بالتحرّر. لقد صرتُ بمفردي الآن، متحررًا من قيود المدرسة وضغوط المجتمع الذي يهيمن عليه الاشكناز”، يوضح شلايم
.
• ومع ذلك، ترك الكتاب القراء يتساءلون عن شيءٍ واحد. إلى أي مدى يُعتَبَرُ استياء شلايم تجاه إسرائيل نتيجةً لوَعيِهِ المتزايد وعدم رضاه عن مجتمعٍ مبنيٍّ على الظلم الواقع على الفلسطينيين؟ أو إلى أيِّ درجة يرتكز هذا الأمر على تجارب عائلته المُفكَّكة في إسرائيل؟

• ليس من السهل الإجابة عن هذين السؤالين. من المؤكد أن حقيقة أن عائلة شلايم اضطرت إلى مغادرة العراق والقدوم إلى إسرائيل للانضمام إلى ما كان آنذاك مجتمع المز راحيين المُضطَهَدين، جعلته أكثر حساسية لمحنة الفلسطينيين. ومع ذلك، لم تكن هذه النتيجة فورية، ويتساءل المرء عما إذا كان ما قلب المفتاح هو الطريقة التي حطمت بها إسرائيل روح والد شلايم بشكلٍ فعال.

• ختتم شلايم قصته بنهاية غير عادية يشن فيها هجومٍ مباشرٍ على الصهيونية ودولة إسرائيل الحديثة. حتى بعد كل ما حدث من قبل، لقد عملت هذه الجهات بنشاط محموم على محو التراث القديم المتمثل في “التعددية والتسامح الديني والعالمية والتعايش. وفوق كل شيء، لم تشجعنا الصهيونية على رؤية بعضنا البعض كإخوة في البشرية، متساوين في الإنسانية، كما يقول. لقد تحولت إسرائيل، التي أنشأت أصلاً على يد “حركة استعمارية استيطانية” ارتكبت “تطهيراً إثنياً في فلسطين”، إلى “دولة قلعة تعمل بعقلية الحصار وتعزز توجهات الإبادة الجماعية تجاه جيرانها”.

• هذه الأفكار التي يطرحها شلايم تمثل منطقة شديدة الخلاف والتنازع. وهو يعترف بأن غالبية الإسرائيليين، بما في ذلك عائلته، غاضبون من تصنيف إسرائيل كـ “دولة أبارتيد”، ولكن هذه هي بالضبط الحقيقة التي يراها.

• أما بالنسبة للطريقة الأكثر فاعلية للتقدم نحو الحل، فمن الصعب طرح حجة مقنعة ذات مصداقية تعاكس استنتاجه فشل ما يسمى حل “الدولتين” للصراع الإسرائيلي الفلسطيني؛ فبعد سنوات من التوسع المستمر وغير القانوني للمستوطنات الإسرائيلية، بات السؤال الجوهري يتساءل ببساطة، أين ستكون الدولة الفلسطينية بالضبط؟ ولذلك، يفضل شلايم حل الصراع باختيار طريق الدولة الواحدة، رغم عدم القبول له باعتباره مسعى هامشي متطرف، بيد أنه ينظر إليه لآن بجدية متزايدة بين العديد من الأطراف، بما في ذلك الفلسطينيين وقلة قليلة جداً من الإسرائيليين، وهو حل يضمن، بزعم شلايم، ” حقوقاً متساوية لجميع مواطني الدول، بغض النظر عن العرق أو الدين” وهذا يعني “نهاية دولة إسرائيل اليهودية”.

[Diana Ishaqat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Personal, informative, and talks about the important (yet overlooked) experience of Jews leaving Iraq and the societal and political changes in between for people who loved Iraq and wanted to stay.

Some mention Shlaim’s family’s wealth as to why they don’t like the book. No one can speak for everyone or represent all opinions (they shouldn’t speak for others, anyway).

It’s important to know that Iraqi Jews were of different classes and that unlike the dominant Zionist narrative that says that Jews in the Arab world were so impoverished that they didn’t know what a toilet was (as per Golda Meir), many prospered, had major businesses and in the words of the author were “a minority, not the minority”. Many others lived in conditions similar to what the rest of the population had at that time.

Shlaim also uses the term Arab Jew as in, a Jew who identifies with the Arab culture due to his upbringing and proximity with Iraqis even after the exile.

Overall, smooth narration of how Iraq became a state, the turning points for the Jewish community, and the early stages of their arrival to what became Israel.

[Ahmed al-Hijazi · Rating 5 out of 5]

The memoir of an Iraqi Jew born in Baghdad in 1945 shares the heritage and memories of the Iraqi-Jewish community, who were forced to leave their homeland primarily due to the influx of Zionist-European immigrants in Palestine and the establishment of Israel on Palestinian land, as the author explains. The narrative continues after the exodus of Jews from Iraq and other Arab states, describing life in the “Promised Land” and the discriminatory treatment they faced from the ruling Ashkenazi (Eastern European Jews) government, which regarded Middle Eastern Jews as an inferior race.

The painful experience of many Arab-Jews, who suddenly lost their prosperous and happy lives in their homeland, is depicted. Avi Shlaim provides evidence that the bombs targeting Jews in Baghdad prior to the departure of the Iraqi Jews were organized and conducted by the underground Zionist movement in the country. This, coupled with the establishment of an Israeli state on Palestinian-Arab land, led to the end of the Iraqi-Jewish community in Iraq.

[Nadav David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I deeply appreciate that this book exists, both for my own learning and connection to my Iraqi Jewish lineage, and for the important histories it tells that are largely forgotten, rejected or ignored in popular discourse about Jews, Israel/Palestine, Zionism and the SWANA/MENA region (aka the “Middle East”). Shlaim’s writing is well researched and offers nuanced and layered perspectives into the interplay of Zionism, antisemitism, and Arab nationalism in the exodus of Jews from the region in the mid 1900’s (and he uncovers with evidence the role of the Zionist underground in several bombings of Jewish sites in Iraq during that period). All that said, I struggle with the writing style as is tries to weave memoir, history and political analysis in a way that lands pretty clunky and circular for me. Nonetheless, very much worth reading.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a recent concept for me, the Arab-Jew; i.e., people who were Arab in nationality and culture and Jewish in religion. Shlaim uses his New Israeli Historian lens to look at his family history, a combination that allows for questioning received wisdom. He acknowledges that his family's history in Iraq is an upper class one and recommends a novel to expand the narrative to working class Iraqi-Jews, a novel based on experience and research: Victoria by Sami Michael. I've requested it from InterLibrary Loan.

The three worlds are Iraq, Israel, and London. The Iraq experience was mostly idyllic, the experience in Israel disorienting, in London a time for regaining self-confidence. In Israel, Arab-Jews were not treated as equal to Ashkenazi Jews, the latter forming the dominant society and seeking to assimilate all others in the quest to create national unity out of the mix of immigrants.

His family's experience in Iraq gives him hope that a one-state solution could work, one state where all citizens are equal. The last sentence of the book is ". . . I believe that nations, like individuals, are capable of acting rationally--after they have exhausted all other alternatives" (302).

[Eliza Whalen · Rating 4 out of 5]

a strong and clear account of just one of the ways that israel has endangered and uprooted not only the palestinians, but jewish people as well. i enjoyed how shlaim managed to weave his personal history in with more academic explanations of life as an arab jew in the mid 20th century. some very touching and even relatable anecdotes, especially those concerning his family and relationship with his mother and father. also a genuinely devastating set of circumstances that made for an interesting pairing with edward saids “out of place.” (this was an audiobook listen, while im simultaneously reading saids book). its striking how many similarities you can find between the two stories (shlaim describes himself as literally feeling “out of place” on multiple occasions). id like to read a muslim palestinian or ashkenazi perspective from the same time period next if anyone happens to have a rec……

[Abigail · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw Avi Shlaim speak at the Edinburgh Book festival this year, alongside Palestinian author Raja Shehadeh, and was intrigued by his memoir. I wasn't disappointed. It was fascinating, from his wealthy life in Baghdad as a child, to his family's exile to Israel, and finally his education in England. I've learnt so much and found his account to be balanced and backed up by research. In the epilogue, he expounds the one state solution for Israel and Palestine, which is like a distant dream at this point, yet is beautiful in the hope it presents. May a solution come sooner rather than later.

[Fatima Al-Quwaie · Rating 5 out of 5]

لم أعد أستسيغ قراءة السيَر، لما يعتريني الملل في غالب الأحيان.
قصص الناس وتجاربهم لم تعد تهمني.

لكن يطرأ في ذهني يهود المشرق، تحديدًا يهود اليمن ويهود العراق؛ وتقلبات الهوية التي مروا بها، هجرتهم وبالتالي تأقلمهم مع مجتمع عنصري كالكيان الصهيوني.

المؤرخ آڤي شلايم هنا استثناء، لأن المذكرات ليست في مجملها شخصية، هي ذاكرة اليهود العرب، الذين أُجبروا على الهجرة بشكل ممنهج كان وراءها الحركة الصهيونية السرية في العراق.

مذكرات مهمة تكشف الكثير، صريحة، مقنعة، مبرَرة.

[giovi · Rating 5 out of 5]

a very well done blend of memoir and history. i particularly found interesting the parts about the zionist underground bombing iraqi jews themselves in order to encourage hostility and emigration to israel. zionism is absolutely abhorrent, this book is a solemn reminder from a man who was once indoctrinated into it himself

[Nourhan Al-Kayyal · Rating 5 out of 5]

" الفلسطينيون هم ضحايا المشروع الصهيو//ني الرئيسيون. أصبحَ أكثر من نصفهم لاجئين وأُزِيل اسمُ فلسطين من الخريطة. لكنَّ هناك صنفًا آخرَ من الضحايا، أقل شهرةً ويُتحدَّثُ عنهم أقل بكثير: إنهم يهود البلدان العربية. "

📖 العوالم الثلاثة: مذكرات يهودي-عربي_آفي شلام

آفي شلايم مؤرخ بريطاني-إسرائيلي من أصل عراقي، ترك الصهيو//نية وأصبح واحداً من أشهر المؤرخين الجدد الذين يفنّدون الدعاية الصهيونية حول فلسطين والأرض الموعودة.

الكتاب هو سيرة ذاتية عن عائلة المؤرخ وأقاربهم وحياتهم في العراق ومغادرتهم لاحقاً في العام 1950 إلى الأبد وحياتهم داخل إسرائيل مع بعض التوثيق التاريخي حول حياة يهود العراق في زمن السلطنة العثمانية وعهد الملكية والانتداب البريطاني وصولاً إلى أعوام 1948 حتى 1950، والأسباب التي ساهمت بترحيل اليهود العراقيين من وطنهم.

يسلّط هذا الكتاب الضوء على عدّة نقاط أهمها:

-رفض اليهود العراقيين للصهي//ونية واعتبار أنّ هذه الحركة منشأها أوروبا واليهود الاشكناز.
-دور الحركة الصهيو//نية في ترحيل اليهود من العراق من خلال العمليات الار*هابية بهدف دفعهم للهجرة إلى اسرائيل.

-العنصرية تجاه اليهود المشرقيين والآتين من شمال أفريقيا ومعاملتهم كعرقٍ أدنى منزلة.

كتاب مهم جداً ويجب أن تضعوه على قائمة قراءتكم.

[Nick Sliwka · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really, really moving and captivating memoir! Reminded me of Said’s «Out of Place». The chapters about the attacks in Iraq in 1950 read almost like a detective story.

[Alexandria · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most insightful and important books I’ve read this year. I value Shlaim’s values of showing up for an often overlooked/forgotten sect of Middle Eastern society—Arab Jews. He provides a variety of perspectives that span across religions across cultural customs and across political ideology

[Rowan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Shlaim claims authority on Muslim-Jewish relations based on the five years that he lived in Iraq. As in, from ages birth to five. As humans typically do not form/cannot later access ANY experiential memories prior to age 3 (https://www.science.org/content/artic...), this leaves 2-3 years of Shaim’s own experiences and perceptions of Iraq, yet 8 out of 12 chapters that take us from ages of birth to 18 are set there. He includes some stories told by his older family members … but not eight chapters’ worth. So what else is there?

Well, the whole of one chapter out of the 12 (or 13 if you want to be generous and count the epilogue that takes us to age 21) is devoted to a debunked conspiracy theory about who was behind a string of terrorist attacks on Iraqi Jews. This conspiracy theory has been so thoroughly disproven that a previous proponent has been successfully sued for libel, which Shlaim skirts by accusing only people who are conveniently already dead. His “evidence” is: 1) the testimony of one person with “minor involvement,” decades after the fact, with no corroborating witnesses, who apparently has not told anyone else that he knew the bombers’ identities even though that would be a major news story, who is openly racist (“Arab-spurning” p132), who “could not remember specific dates and locations of the bombing incidents” p136) and who, by Shlaim’s own admission, gets other details of the story wrong (“Karkkouli was inaccurate on the back story[sic] of the bribe and the bombing of the synagogue” p142)… and 2) a police report, dated from the period in which the Iraqi government frequently falsified evidence in its trials, that “does not carry any of the usual marks of an official document” p148.

That’s seriously it. A guy who got a lot of his facts demonstrably wrong and an allegedly official document without any official marks. He devotes an entire chapter (of his “memoir”) to this.

This is deeply representative of the quality of Shlaim’s “research” as a whole.

More on how his timeline is shoddily constructed and often contradictory: https://www.algemeiner.com/2023/06/28...

Three Worlds is a pile of debunked racist conspiracy sprinkled with the occasional family anecdote. Instead, check out Neighbors (Gross), History on Trial (Lipstadt), In Ishmael’s House (Gilbert), Uprooted (Julius), Palestine Betrayed (Karsh), A Mizrahi Manifesto (Mazzig), or Son of Hamas (Yousef).

In more detail:

He also never acknowledges that Jewish is also an ethnicity - “Mizrahi,” the term typically used by Iraqi Jews, is an ethnicity alongside Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Beta Israel, etc and Reform, Masorti, etc are the religious denominations. How can you write about ethnic conflict in the Middle East if you don’t know what ethnicity the major players are?

It is particularly remarkable that he tries to portray Jewish as solely a religious category when he is writing about Israel and even the laziest, most underachieving student of Middle Eastern history could tell you that the early Jews trying to establish modern Israel, the first Zionists, were largely areligious, even anti-religious, socialists.

Moreover, if Israel “stole” land from Arabs and Mizrahim are Arabs “whose religion happened to be Jewish” (p. 8), then Israel’s Mizrahi majority should just mean that the land has been returned to the Arabs from whom it was “stolen” and Shlaim can stop ranting and have a lie down. And yet…

Overall, the book’s narration is extremely, comically, beyond-parody racist. For just one early example, “It gave the Jews a territorial base for the first time in over 2000 years. This made it easier for Islamic fundamentalists and Arab nationalists to identify the Jews in their countries with the hated Zionist enemy and to call for their extrusion.” (p.14) Jews have a “territorial base” but in the very next sentence, Arabs get to have “countries.”

You could find something like this on every page. Early Israel offered sanctuary to Iraqi Jews suffering terrorism and state persecution in the form of sham trials with falsified “evidence,” which Shlaim describes as “Zionists exploited the bombing incidents, issuing warning to the Jews to hurry up and leave the country before it was too late” (p. 126, emphasis mine). Shlaim’s hallucinations of evil continue through to the end: “In my rendition, Operation Ezra and Nehemiah was not a noble rescue mission by the fledgling Jewish state, but the self-serving instrument for the transfer of the Jews from their homeland” (p.296). Yeah. Really. Clearly early Israelis just wanted more tent cities for… fun? He never considers the fact that no other country stepped up to rescue (let alone offer a home to) these persecuted people and thus Israel was their only option.

If a state already suffering unrest, shortages, and other issues from a DOUBLING population desperately trying to make room for more oppressed Jews and offer them a way out and a new home when no one else dared isn’t a good or noble act, what is?

We can see his answer in comparing his descriptions of Iraqi and Israeli origins: even though “The British not only hand-picked the first ruler of Iraq, they also designed the political system of the new state in such a way as to conceal their own dominant role” (p. 25), Iraq is never called a colonial project. Israel is, repeatedly and zealously, despite it being independent of colonial powers from its founding. Likewise, even though that hand-picked British leader was actually from Damascus (never part of Iraq), and Iraq contained territories not previously ruled together (unlike Israel, built on Jewish ruins that were actually a small part of a larger ancient Jewish homeland), Shlaim rails hypocritically against Israel while the worst he said of Iraq is a tender admission that Prince Faisal was “an outsider.”

What does he object to? Not colonial meddling, clearly. Just Jews. Shlaim objects to Jews. If an Arab state airlifted persecuted Arab and/or Muslim people to safety, we can be assured that Shlaim would be fully in support, because his objections to Israel are purely racial.

Moreover, Shlaim does not question, object to or comment on Iraq’s choices to discriminatorily fire Jews from jobs in the civil service, make “Zionism” punishable by death, falsify evidence against Jews in order to kill them and take their property, force Jews leaving the country to sacrifice their citizenship, force Jews leaving the country to sacrifice any possibility of ever returning to or even visiting Iraq, “freeze” (steal) the assets of Jewish refugees because it wanted the money but not the people, or any other abuses. That’s all fine, so his objection isn’t to inhumane acts, merely who is doing them - thus, his objections to Israel are racial. In Shlaim’s view, none of these things are worth objecting to, not illegal, immoral, “self-serving,” or things that Iraq had no right to do.

Arabs can have countries, Arabs can persecute, murder and steal, but if a Jew even saves a life he must still be bad, because Shlaim simply believes that things are bad because Jews do them.

As far as I could tell, the only governmental action Shlaim ever openly questions (let alone opposes!) is the Jews getting ANYTHING in the Palestine partition. He argues passionately that it was “illegal,” “immoral,” that Britain “had no right” to give them anything because they were not the majority throughout the entire area (you know, the way that any people who have been colonized tend to be dispersed and small).

Truly, I think this is the essence of antizionism: persecution of Jews is fine, unremarkable, understandable, even good, but as soon as they have some degree of safety from persecution, it is “illegal, “immoral,” etc, etc, etc, etc.

In general, his arguments, such as they are, rely on the idea that the majority can do whatever they want and the minority should just go along with it. Which isn’t exactly DEcolonial. He doesn’t object to the way that the colonial powers promised the Kurds their own independent country but then lumped them in with Iraq. While he gleefully harps on the Jews’ small population in the Levant relative to Arab groups, he never shows any awareness of how it came to be that way, even colonial powers’ more recent atrocities like Ottoman massacres of Jews, Ottomans forbidding Jews form living in their native land, or Brits blocking refugees from fleeing the Holocaust. Shlaim clearly thinks that the Palestinian Arabs should have all of the Jewish part of the original partition because they became refugees from there… without ever considering that the same logic applied non-racist-ly would give Israel all of Iraq and most of Europe and the Middle East besides! Shlaim’s logic characteristically stops after one step without considering other consequences - very elementary, “why don’t they just print more money??” thinking.

He also alleges that the Arabs of the Jewish portion of the Palestine partition had it worse than Iraqi Jews, even though 2/3 of Arabs became refugees whereas 99.99% of Jews did. Math is even less this guy’s strong suit than history, apparently.

Altogether, this shows that his opposition to Israel is purely racial in nature. Not because of how it formed, or refugees, or populations.

Perhaps most damningly, the central argument on which the book rests, that previous historians have exaggerated Muslim hostility towards Jewish minorities living among them and that there is a long history of peaceful coexistence so Jews don’t need a state (so then would the Palestinians not need a state either??), is a rhetorically convenient lie. He admits as much in his very first footnote, which I’m quoting in full here because - come on:

“Benny Morris, for example, depicts the air attack on Israel in 1948 as a jihad, a holy war. In the conclusion to his book on the first Arab-Israeli war, Morris writes that it was not just a contest between two national movements over a piece of territory, but ‘part of a more general, global struggle. Between the Islamic East and the West.’ Benny Morris, 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War (New Haven: Yale University press, 2008), p. 394. Another example is Martin Gilbert, the British-Jewish historian and ardent Zionist, who devoted the last of his many books to the history of the Jews in Muslim lands. The book is ambitious in scope, covering 1,400 years of Jewish-Arab history, from the rise of Islam in the seventh century to the present day. But it is little more than a catalog of Muslim hatred, hostility, and violence toward Jews. Antisemitism is said to be the fundamental, underlying force that shaped Muslim-Jewish relations. By piling one horror story on top of another, however, Gilbert ended up painting a misleading picture. He was psychologically hard-wired to see antisemitism everywhere. There result was a distortion of the history of of Muslim-Jewish relations to serve a Zionist political agenda. Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael’s House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands, (New Haven: Yale University press, 2010).”

So, looking at that quote, what do you notice?

Consider what arguments he is not making.

He can’t refute any of the claims made in the book. He can’t even argue that they left something important out.

If anti-Jewish aggression from Muslims is not really that widespread, where are his counterexamples of good relations and respect for Jews by Muslims? Does he propose any other correction to an inaccuracy?

No. Because he can’t. His entire argument is “their work is bad because it makes people believe stuff I don’t.”

And the “stuff I don’t” is clearly facts because Shlaim cannot refute these authors, only complain about them.

A regular David Irving.