“The Arab Jews and the Zionist Politics in Israel” is the theme, which will be presented at CRCS&ICRS Wednesday Forum. Discussion will be held on Wednesday, February 27, 2008. The key speaker will be Leonard C. Epafras. The discussion will take place at the Graduate School of Gadjah Mada University, third floor, room 306, at 13:00 to 15:00.
Below is the abstract of theme, which will be presented.
The Arab Jews and the Zionist Politics in Israel
By; Leonard C. Epafras
We observed that in Indonesia, generally people equated the Jews with the Israelis and the Zionists. However, the three should not be easily equated because in fact, the dynamics within the three is more complex than one could imagine. There are anti-Israel and anti-Zionist Jews, and besides the politics to Judaize Israel, there is also the politics to Israelize Israel by Israeli Arabs. The Israelize Israel basically a the Judaization of Israel. This complexity of the issue is even mask one of the growing stingy issue in Israel, that is the recognition of the Arab Jews. The Jews whose heritage rooted not in New York and London, or any Western cities, but in Baghdad, Cairo, Tunis, San?a, and other Islamic countries in Middle East. Zionism not only displaced seven hundred thousand Palestinians from their land but also nine hundred thousand of Arab Jews from their homelands for centuries. Furthermore, this Jewish group was not getting equal treatment as the Jews from Western countries in the newly established State of Israel. This politics of discrimination, along with the discrimination toward the Arabs and Palestinians, is arguably, structured by the politics of colonialism and Orientalism of the Western discourse. This paper would give a preliminary assessment of the issue how an ideology could forge the intended identity of its fellow citizen by leveling the identity of the other, makes it unproblematic and undivided.
