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Orit Bashkin, From Palestinian Village to an Iraqi Transit Camp
November 18, 2015 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Free
Event Description:
Over 130,000 Iraqi Jews arrived in Israel during the 1950s; they were forced to settle in transit camps where they lived in horrendous poverty. Previous scholarship on this migration focused on the state and its actions towards, and representations of, these newcomers. Later generations of scholars highlighted the resistance of Mizrahi men to the state, in the form of mass demonstrations, urban riots, and the construction of political parties. This talk, in contrast, examines the Iraqi individuals in the camps: how family life took shape when families lived in crowded tents and wooden shacks; how Iraqi women raised children in the most dreadful conditions; and how children struggled to survive cold winters and loss of any sense of security. The focus on daily lives in the transit camps, I argue, changes the ways in which we understand resistance. I focus in particular on Iraqis forced to settle in transit camps built on the ruins of the Palestinian villages, Kafar ‘Ana, Khayriyya and Sakiyya and analyze the relationships between the native population displaced, the Palestinians, and the new population, forced to settle there, the Iraqi Jews.
About the Speaker:
Orit Bashkin got her Ph.D. from Princeton University (2004) and her BA (1995) and MA (1999) from Tel Aviv University. She is now a professor of modern Arab history in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Her publications include 25 book chapters and articles on the history of Arab-Jews in Iraq, on Iraqi history and on Arabic literature. She has also edited a book Sculpturing Culture in Egypt [le-fasel tarbut be-mitzrayim] with Israel Gershoni and Liat Kozma, which included translations into Hebrew of seminal works by Egyptian intellectuals. She is the author of the following books: The Other Iraq – Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq (Stanford University Press, 2009 and Paperback, 2010), New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq (Stanford University Press, 2012).
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