Karlinksy’s edited volume, intended for an academic audience and consisting of a lengthy introduction followed by 14 chapters, holds that Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs living abroad each represent a version of the diaspora experience. But are these two experiences really parallel?
Israelis leave a country where they are the majority and become minorities, usually in Europe or North America—a situation commonly understood to fit the description of “diaspora.” But can Arabs who left what is now Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza (or their descendants) really be considered part of a diaspora when virtually all of them live in countries where they share the majority language and religion and remain “Palestinian” in large part due to the ministrations of UNRWA (and whose ancestors, in many cases, migrated from those very same countries relatively recently)?
Be that as it may, the book partly addresses a potentially uncomfortable issue for all those committed to the Zionist project: Jews who have emigrated from Israel. Particularty noteworthy are the chapters by Uzi Rebhun, offering a demographic portrait of Israelis abroad, and by Jonathan Sarna, exploring how Israelis in the United States differ from Jews whose ancestors left their countries fleeing persecution.
Apart from the questionable “diaspora” parallel between Israelis and Palestinians abroad, several chapters concern neither population. They appear to have been included merely to pad the volume, accounting for more than one-quarter of its length. These include chapters on Turkish migrants in Berlin; “Symbolic Language in Iranian Art and the Iranian Diaspora”; two chapters on immigrant entrepreneurship; and an interview with sociologist Alejandro Portes, whose long career in migration studies touched neither Israelis nor Palestinians. As a volume intended for an academic audience, Diasporas inevitably also includes ventures into the now- standard academic preoccupation with sexuality, featuring chapters on “Queer Israelis in Berlin” and “Female Jewish Israeli Immigrants Between Heteronormativity and Singlehood.”
Mark Krikorian
Executive Director
Center for Immigration Studies, Washington, D.C.
