oatmeal on Nostr: RE: Western Jewish communities, which were only recently emancipated, had their own ...

RE: https://kolektiva.social/@MikeDunnAuthor/116432198122334090

Western Jewish communities, which were only recently emancipated, had their own anxieties about the influx of Eastern European Jews. Established Jewish elites feared these “backward masses” would undermine the hard-won argument that Jews could integrate into European society. As #antisemitism surged (the Dreyfus affair in France, Karl Lueger’s openly antisemitic mayoralty in Vienna), Western Zionists had a strong interest in redirecting this migration elsewhere. Meanwhile, non-Zionist organizations, principally the Alliance Israélite Universelle, took a different approach: educating and “westernizing” Jewish communities in the Balkans (initially) and North Africa. It was a project embedded within French colonial presence in North Africa. The AIU’s civilizing-mission framing was itself a well-documented form of cultural imperialism and Jewish orientalism. These power structures were then reproduced in Palestine after Israel’s establishment in 1948, following the Nakba, shaping similar ethnic and class hierarchies (Kazoom).
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