We have not arrived from the sea: A Mizrahi literary geography

This article examines how writers of Middle Eastern background, such as Iraqi-born Yitzhak Bar-Moshe, who writes in Arabic and has been translated into Hebrew, Iraqi-born Sammy Michael, Egyptian-born Yitzhak Gormezano and Iraqi-born Shimon Balas, challenge the processes of adverse essentialisation and racialisation of Mizrahi Jews by the European Jewish hegemony in Israel. These writers identify themselves as portrayers of a Mizrahi self-representation and their works were published during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The paper examines how writers who represent themselves as Mizrahi - a self-representation which has been engendered in the course of their interpositions in the domain of Israeli literature - point to possible courses of intervention in the field of Israeli literature dominated by the Ashkenazi or Eurocentric hegemony. These courses of literary intervention become possible not just because Mizrahi Jews are depicted as a third-world group; but also because they occupy another position - a 'third space' or 'in-between' position. While they belong to the 'Jewish nation', Mizrahi Jews were part of the Arab/Third world. Thus, it is their 'in-between' position that locates them at a privileged site to challenge European Jewish hegemony in Israel by attempting to entrench within it an antagonistic and defiant Mizrahi presence.