Islamophobia and orientalism in Russian-Israelis

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Social Identities, Volume 10, No 1, 2004

Post-Zionist Orientalism?Orientalist Discourse and Islamophobia among theRussian-Speaking Intelligentsia in IsraelDimitryShumskyDivisionsGot Levin t. 14/[email protected]

DIMITRY SHUMSKYHaifa University

ABSTRACT: This article attempts to shed light on a special kind of Orientalistdiscourse that circulates in Russian-Israeli literature and press. This discourse feeds onthe cultural sources buried in the Russian-Soviet imperialist discourse about RussiasOrient, which has been articulated by modern Russian literature, including prominentRussian-Jewish authors, and corresponds to the racially grounded discursive practicescurrently widespread in post-Soviet Russia with regard to natives of the Caucasus andCentral Asia. The article investigates the ways of transferring Orientalist conceptsfrom the (post-)Soviet cultural experience to the Israeli one, identifying the Orientalistdiscourses dual role in shaping the immigrants self-awareness on two levels, the localand the global. On the local level, the Russian-Israeli intelligentsia deploys Soviet-made Orientalist interpretative tools to read and decipher the reality of a new country,

by presenting it as a familiar reality. Identifying and labeling the local Orientals thePalestinians on the one hand and the Mizrahi Jews on the other by means ofnegative concepts borrowed from the Russian-Soviet Orientalist repertoire, a Russian-Israeli intellectual locates her/himself within the Eurocentric Ashkenazi component ofIsraeli society. On the global level, the extreme Islamophobic rhetoric of the Russian-Is-raeli Orientalist discourse, according to which today Israel and Russia, as well as theWest, all share a common Islamic enemy, enables a Russian-Israeli intellectual on theone hand to reassert her/his cultural ties with her/his country of origin, and on theother to heighten the validity of her/his self-image as part of Western culture.

Introduction

A major issue of interest to researchers in the framework of the discussionabout the impact of the large-scale wave of immigration to Israel from theformer Soviet Union is the immigrants relationship with the Ashkenazi elitesand where they stand relative to the dwindling of the Israeli-Ashkenazicultural hegemony. Two opposing arguments have therefore been advanced toelucidate this issue. On the one hand, the immigrants are generally presentedas contributing to undermining Ashkenazi cultural dominance. According toanother view, however, most of the immigrants are becoming socioeconomi-cally and culturally integrated into the ranks of the Ashkenazi middle class, ofwhich they will therefore become an integral part within the next generation.1

1350-4630 Print/1363-0296 On-line/04/010083-17 2004 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/1350463042000191001


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The first argument has recently been expressed by Baruch Kimmerling, ina programmatic essay intended to delve into multicultural discourse in Israel(Kimmerling, 2001a). He argues that, despite their closeness to members of the

Ashkenazi elites in terms of origins, the Russian-speaking immigrants shouldnot be considered the allies of the Ashkenazi Jews in the struggle that the latterare waging in order to maintain their cultural hegemony in Israel. Regardingthe material and occupational sphere, the immigrants wish unequivocally to

become part of the Ashkenazi middle class. In the cultural sphere, however, thetendencies are utterly different. While the immigrants attach unique weight toRussian culture, they seek to institutionalise their separate Russian-Jewishidentity within Israels evolving multi-cultural society. As part of this process,alongside groups of marginalised citizens, such as Israels Arab citizens, theyplay the role of the new Israeli, built on a perception of ethnic-culturalpluralism, constantly challenging the very logic of mono-cultural hegemony

(Kimmerling, 2001a, pp. 6465). In addition to this indirect challenge to Israeli-Ashkenazi hegemony, with which in Kimmerlings view the immigrants can becredited due to their contribution to cultural diversification in Israel, he alsoidentifies a direct cultural confrontation between them and the Ashkenazielites. For Kimmerling, while one of the most striking characteristics of Israeli-Ashkenazi culture is expressed in its Western self-image, the immigrantsattitude toward Western culture is characterised by a feeling ranging betweensuspicion and contempt (Kimmerling, 2001a, p 66).

The opposing interpretation to Kimmerlings, concerning the position ofRussian-speaking immigrants in respect of the cultural rifts in Israel, is primar-

ily advanced by Sammy Smooha. He argues that, in view of their ethnicaffiliation and cultural identification with the dominant Ashkenazi group, theseimmigrants are joining the latter in ever large numbers,2 thereby boosting thegroups strength vis-a-vis the challenge from the weaker strata such as theMizrahim (literally Eastern Jewish communities of North Africa, the MiddleEast, and Asia). Among the set of factors which Smooha views as contributingto this trend, he identifies a strong Western orientation on the immigrantspart (Smooha, 1998, p. 41). This distinction would appear not only to indicatethe immigrants present-day cultural pattern in their destination country, butalso to hint at a certain amount of cognitive baggage that predates their

immigration and underlies this pattern. Smooha does not, however, addressthe question of the immigrants cultural background something which mightperhaps be a crucial factor in shaping their Western orientation on moving toIsrael.

The present article, which supports Smoohas position on this issue, istherefore designed to fill this lacuna in his interpretation, as well as to completeit in several other respects. By examining literary and journalistic texts written

by Russian-Jewish intellectuals in Israel, I will seek to shed light on thisunderlying face of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsias3 Western orientation, atwhose centre lies the discourse containing ultimate denigration of the OrientalOther. As will be seen below, this is a special version of the Russian andSoviet Orientalist discourse that characterised Russo-Soviet colonial perceptionof the natives of the Caucasus and Central Asia. The theoretical framework for


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Orientalist Discourse and Islamophobia among the Russian-Speaking in Israel 85

the analysis will be provided by Edward Saids post-colonialist insights, asrecently applied in Slavic studies. In my discussion, investigation into the waysof transferring the Orientalist concepts from the Soviet cultural experience to

the Israeli one will be related to the Orientalist discourses dual role in shapingthe immigrants self-awareness on two levels, the local and the global: (1) itsmediating role with the new reality in the destination country, helping todecode and make sense of it, to find a place within it and situate the self onIsraels cultural map; and (2) its role in reinforcing the link with the country oforigins imperial culture, by situating the self on the universal cultural map.

1. Russian-Soviet Orientalist Discourse and the Russian-Jewish Intelligentsia

The concept of Orientalist discourse, taken from Edward Saids Orientalism,designates the various ways in which the Orient is represented in Western

culture as the opposite of the Western experience. This discourse is based ona structural dichotomy between the rational, enlightened and progressiveWest and the Orient, particularly the Muslim-Arab, which is irrational,uneducated and backward or alternatively spontaneous, enchanting ex-otic and so forth. This conscious construction, characteristic of the body ofacademic, literary and artistic knowledge that evolved in Western Europeanculture over the generations, was closely bound up with the European colonialenterprise in the Orient and provided the ultimate justification for colonialcontrol over it, particularly that of England and France (Said, 1978).

As one of the seminal essays to have contributed to the shaping of the

post-colonial discussion, the impact of Orientalism considerably exceeded theboundaries of Middle Eastern studies. However, when it comes to Slavicstudies and Sovietology, until recently their attempts to examine the extent towhich Saids insights are applicable to the Russian and Soviet imperialistenterprise in the Caucasus and Central Asia encountered two basic obstaclesthat originated in two limitations characterising research into Russian colonial-ism in earlier generations. Interestingly enough, these limitations appear to beclearly demonstrated by, of all things, Russias Orient (1997), a scholarlycollection of essays, which in its introduction emphasises the need to examinethe representations in imperial Russian culture of the natives of Russias

southeastern borderlands in view of Saids approach (Brower and Lazzerini,1997). Firstly, the research considers only the imperialist enterprise of theCzarist Empire, ignoring the colonial endeavours of its Soviet heir. Secondly,and more importantly, the use of the concept Russias Orient to designatethose areas of the Caucasus and Central Asia that came to be included withinthe Empires borders as it expanded, contains a questionable assimilation of thecolonial Russian paradigm, which tended to present this geographical space asan inseparable part of Greater Russia. The reproduction of this paradigm attimes makes it possible to blur the imperial discourse about the natives of theseareas, eventually denying the relevance to it of the Saidian analysis, arguingthat the geo-cultural tie between Russia and the Asian borderlands is, as itwere, too immanent and profound to be summed up in such dichotomousterms as we Russians versus the Oriental Others (Layton, 1997, p 82).


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These two distortions are rectified in Ewa M. Thompsons research (2000)on Russian literature and colonialism. Firstly, the author highlights the conti-nuity of the Russian colonial enterprise from the days of the Romanov dynasty

right up to the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Secondly, she circumvents theobstacle of viewing the non-Russian territories under Russian and Soviet ruleas a kind of Russian Asia. By placing Russian literature, which in Russiancolonial culture undoubtedly played a similar role to that of Western discourseabout the Orient, in the centre of the discussion (Thompson, 2000, p. 34), theresearcher describes how various Others from the Poles in the West, to thepeoples of Siberia and the Far East such as Buriats, Evenks and Tungus who,as Russia constantly expanded, found themselves coming under its authority,were imagined in this literature. In the context of this study, a particularlystriking resemblance can be identified between representations of the RussianOrient in Russian literature and Muslim images in Western European Oriental-

ist discourse. Thus Asiatics are brutish, primitive, miserable andscoundrels, albeit not lacking in a certain heroic, romantic aura. In addition,the colonial author tends to condemn the natives to demonisation, on thewhole combined with complete anonymity, leaving them bereft of any humanidentity. As Thompson convincingly shows, the figure of the despised Asianremains a constant in Russian culture over a number of centuries, fromPushkins and Lermonotovs works in the first half of the nineteenth century toour own days, a time when it is being widely disseminated in the Russianpublic awareness in connection with the discourse about the Chechnyan andCaucasian Mafia (Thompson, 2002, pp. 5774).

One of the main axes of discussion in Thompsons research, which is alsoof great importance for our present purposes, involves the analysis of the

background to the complete absence of post-colonial debate in Russia itself.The reason for this lies, in Thompsons view, in the rhetorical success ofRussian discourse on culture and identity, which has managed to shape theself-image of Russia as a passive, feminine entity devoid of the slightest hint ofaggression. This myth about Russias complete innocence has led to a ratherparadoxical result, whereby a power with an unbridled imperialist appetite ispresented as a country devoid of natural borders, reluctantly fighting for itsexistence. Thus Russian colonialism acquires a kind of moral stamp of approval

and hence it remains outside the domestic critical debates about the Russianpast and present (Thompson, 2000, pp. 4143). Indeed, the Russian intellectualtradition has never scrutinised the Russian colonial endeavour through criticaleyeglasses. Those Russian writers who at various times took great personalrisks by denouncing the Czarist or Soviet regime, were used to emphasise auniversal dimension of the suffering of the Russian people and the spiritualmisgivings of the Russian intellectual, without bothering to consider theindividual voices of the conquered non-Russian peoples (Thompson, 2000,pp. 2930, 33). Hence Russias right to annex foreign territories, to act as theultimate representative of their populations, and to refer to them in derogatoryterms, as was done in her Orient, was viewed in the Russian nationalawareness as a perfectly natural state of affairs.

Thompsons insights into the selective nature of Russian intellectuals


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criticism of the State and the regime are crucial to an understanding of theRussian-Jewish intelligentsias attitude towards Russian cultures discourseabout the Orient. It should first be noted that a number of Israeli sociologists,

who tend to see Russian-speaking immigrants in Israel as a group with afiercely critical approach to the Israeli establishment, frequently attribute toJews from the former Soviet Union a culture of criticising the State as such,ostensibly derived from the quasi-subversive approach to the Soviet regimewhich characterised many of them in their country of origin.4 The myth aboutthe rebellious spirit of the Russian intelligentsia as a whole and specifically andespecially its Russian-Jewish form, is also endorsed wholeheartedly by theintellectuals among the immigrants themselves.5 Such a sweeping claim isoversimplified, insofar as it ignores the essential question relating to thedistinction between those strata of Russian and Soviet culture and politics thatfell within the purview of Jewish criticism and those that remained outside it.

Addressing this question is likely to have illuminating implications for anotherquestion, which is not unrelated to the previous one: what do people from theformer Soviet Union reject in Israel out of the whole cultural and politicalpanoply of the new country and what parts do they tend to accept? In anyevent, when it came to the Orientalist discourse, which is part and parcel of theRussian and Soviet imperialist culture, in fact the attitude to this matter of theRussian intellectuals of Jewish origin was no different from the attitudeprevalent among the Russian intelligentsia per se. In the spirit of the traditionof the Russian hegemonic culture, of which members of the Russian-Jewishintelligentsia considered themselves part as long as they were in the Soviet

Empire, and still continued to feel themselves part in Israel also (Golden, 2001a,p. 17), the outstanding figures of the Russian-Jewish intellectuals over theprevious hundred years contributed to an imperial creative endeavour to shapethe image of the Russian Orient.

For the purpose of illustration I will give just two examples of importanttwentieth century Russian-Jewish writers: Osip E. Mandelstam (18911938) andIsaac E. Babel (18941940). These two literary figures are reasonably well-known, both for their great contribution to modern Russian literature and fortheir critical attitude to the communist regime, for which they paid with theirlives during the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s. As such, these two occupy

a fairly distinguished position in the cultural pantheon of Russian-Jewishintelligentsia, in the former Soviet Union and Israel alike.Mandelstam is considered one of the greatest figures of Russian poetrys

Silver Age, spanning the twilight years of Czarist autocracy and the initialstages of the Soviet regime. In the early 1930s, Mandelstam was one of the fewintellectuals to openly challenge the regime, when in one of his famous poemshe attacked Stalin and the members of his entourage in the most vitriolicfashion. Furthermore, Mandelstam was known for his special affection forGeorgian culture and literature, being particularly enchanted by Georgianpoetry. In connection with the present subject matter, special attention should

be given to one of his essays from the early 1920s, in which he expounds histhoughts about the position of Georgian art under the youthful Soviet regime(Mandelstam, 1990, pp. 30710). As the representative of civilised Russia,


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which had, as he put it, sympathetically followed Georgias cultural develop-ment for a hundred years, he praised Georgian cultures special ability not to

blend with the Orient (Mandelstam, 1999, p. 308). True, the author argues,

Georgia had frequently looked in the direction of Orient, but it had alwaysmanaged to overcome it through the excellent artistic means. As the faithfulheir of Pushkin and Lermonotov, who had long since established the image ofbrutish Asia, Mandelstam has no need of redundant explanations as to thenature of this Orient. It is obvious that this is a quintessentially negativeentity, the complete antithesis of genuine spiritual creativity. Nevertheless, theauthor advises Georgian culture not to entirely discard its quasi-Orientalexterior so as to maintain its intoxicating Eroticism, which had in the pastproven so enticing to Russian poets (Mandelstam, 1999, p. 307).

Babel, Mandelstams contemporary and one of the most innovative figuresin modern Russian literature, was also not exactly an admirer of the communist

regime. As early as the 1920s he provoked the wrath of the Soviet military elitewhen his famous Red Cavalry stories exposed the Red Armys cruelty in theCivil War. Nevertheless, when it came to descriptions of the Soviet Orient,Babels voice, like that of Mandelstam, harmonises with the chorus of Russian-Soviet Orientalist discourse. This is manifest in his story My First Fee (Babel,1999, pp. 41929), the outcome of the authors time in Tbilisi, the Georgiancapital, at the beginning of the 1920s, as a journalist for the local Russian-Sovietnewspaper. The story is about a young man working as the linguistic editor atthe Caucasian commands military publishing house. He suffers from loneli-ness and depression in the suffocating atmosphere of Tbilisi, which is both

foreign and strange to him. The hero finds the way out of his profound mentaldistress by falling in love with a tall, white-faced Russian prostitute whostands out in the midst of the simian hordes of the natives (Babel, 1999,p. 421). As he spends time with her, the hero makes up a story about hismiserable existence as a homeless youth from the Russian countryside, whowandered throughout the Caucasus, forced to live cheek by jowl with the localsavages and in this way for the first time discovers his talent as a storyteller.Profoundly moved by his tale, the prostitute refuses to take any payment fromhim for her services hence the heros first fee. A reading of the story clearlyreveals the role that the author assigns to the natives of Tbilisi, including the

local landscape. The local simian hordes that crush spirits and women(Babel, 1999, p. 427) personify the complete opposite of the experience to whichthe hero aspires one based on love and creativity. To Babel, therefore,Tbilisis Oriental bazaar illustrates precisely what the Orient illustrates forMandelstam mans brutish and sterile side, a side that must be overcome.

In view of research into the representations of the Orient by these twoidols of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia, it must be noted that this stratumsdisagreements with the regime and the Soviet state in no way indicate anythingabout its attitude to one of the persistent and seminal axes of Russian, Sovietand post-Soviet culture alike the Orientalist discourse. The imperial knowl-edge of the swarthy Asiatics that members of this intelligentsia have acquiredthrough the mediation of Russian literature, therefore constitutes an importantpart of their cultural baggage when they move to the Middle East.


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2. A Little Sunny Republic:The local Dimension of Russian-Israeli Orientalist Discourse

In his novel Inostranka (A Female Foreigner), Sergey Dovlatov (19411990),

one of the great writers of the Russian diaspora in the last generation,describes, in the ironic and incisive language so typical of him, the all-encom-passing confusion that overwhelmed the inhabitants of a Russian-Jewish immi-grant neighbourhood in New York on hearing the following shocking piece ofnews: a beautiful young woman from the neighbourhood was having aromantic liaison with a Hispanic man. This was the pained reaction to thispiece of news on the part of one of the neighbourhood intellectuals: Beautifulwomen always fall for these cheeky Georgians What? Hes Hispanic? Ifthe truth be told, its the same thing (Dovlatov, 1993, pp. 6566). By puttingthese words into his heros mouth, the author is undoubtedly trying to indicate

a particular method by means of which the Russian-speaking immigrants in theUSA are likely to identify and mark local swarthy Others. The rich repertoireof images of the Asiatics drawn from Russian-Soviet discourse in theimmigrants eyes tantamount to watertight facts helps them to interpret thecolourful human scenery in their new surroundings, utterly confident that theyare facing a familiar reality. The fact that instead of Georgians as a readilyidentified category there might be Armenians, Uzbeks, Chechnyans and soon simply makes the system more effective, since this blurring of individualethnic groups makes it possible to simplify an actual cultural reality bysqueezing it into a single all-embracing category.

Does this system operate and if so how among the Russian-speakingintellectuals in Israel? In order to consider this question, I will first of allexamine the work of Dina Rubina, undoubtedly the most successful novelist ofall writers of Russian literature in Israel. A native of Tashkent, Uzbekistan,Rubina immigrated to Israel at the end of the 1980s, after publishing a numberof stories in the Soviet Union. However, she established her reputation in theRussian literary world only after coming to Israel, primarily as a result of her

books reflecting her Israel experience. These were issued in the 1990s byprestigious Moscow and St Petersburg publishing houses.

As an introduction to our discussion of representations of the new land and

its inhabitants in Rubinas books, we will first focus on the least Israeli ofthem, Kamera nayeszhayet! ... (Camera Approaching! ... 1993/94). In this clearlyautobiographical tale, the female protagonist looks back at her life in Uzbek-istan, while also weaving in her thoughts about her present-day experiences inIsrael. It can clearly be seen that out of the sum of the heroines experiences oflife in Tashkent, it was her encounters with the Uzbek natives which left themost negative impression in her memory. For example, the Uzbek studentswhom the heroine encountered when she was teaching a musical discipline atthe Culture Institute aroused feelings in her that ranged between contemptand resentment. It becomes clear that the basis for this feeling is to be foundin the bedrock of knowledge about Uzbek culture at the disposal of theauthor-heroine knowledge about whose certain nature there is not theslightest doubt in her mind. In this connection, what she considers to be the


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most significant item of knowledge concerns how Uzbek men relate to womenand to love between a man and a woman. According to her, the way everyUzbek man sees it, the female world can be divided into two. On the one hand

there are Uzbek women who serve their husbands in humility and obedienceand are therefore, deserving of their mens protection; and on the other, all therest, who are irredeemable whores and hence legitimate targets for sexualassaults (Rubina, 2002, p. 252). The representations of the Uzbek man rangehere between an enslaver of women in the domestic setting and a cruel rapistoutside it. Irrespective of the scenario, the sentiment of exalted love remainspatently beyond his reach.

This, in the opinion of the author-heroine, is the nature of the Uzbekstudents whom she faces in her lectures, making a supreme effort to open upto them the world of Schumann and Schubert. In this setting she does notconceal her self-pride, seeing herself as a kind of ambassador of European

culture among these boorish and obtuse shepherds. And yet this civilisingmission is doomed to failure, since anyone who is incapable of knowing theemotion of love cannot possibly grasp the greatness of classical music. Couldyou perhaps play this with a little more feeling, the heroine begs one of herstudents who is practising Schuberts Serenade. After all, it is a lovesong Im sure you yourself love someone? No! a young Uzbek studentreplies to Rubinas heroine, overcome by fear and terror at her question,We We dont love! We want to get married! (Rubina, 2002, pp. 25455,emphases added).

In the spirit of the Russo-Soviet literary discourse about the Russian Orient

and out of a very explicit link with the Russian-Jewish voice within it, thefigure of an anonymous Uzbek student comes to personify the essence of thecharacter of an entire Asian people, as it is undoubtedly known to theauthor-heroine. And indeed, we will have no difficulty in identifying parallels

between Babels Georgians crushing spirits and women and Rubinas women-enslaving and rapist Uzbeks. In order to dispel any doubts about the veracityof the writer-heroines knowledge of the Uzbek people, she allows her Uzbekhero to express himself on behalf of the entire Uzbek people. And so speakingin the first person plural the student admits to his peoples basic inability to fallin love and to love.

It must be stressed that this kind of image is not limited to an individualdescription of the Uzbeks alone: rather, in the writers eyes it represents theessence of the Orient generally and of the Muslim world specifically. As such,Rubinas Uzbek goes beyond the boundaries of the orientalist discourse in hercountry of origin and starts to become an interpretative tool when confrontingthe Muslim Other in Israel. Even in Camera Approaching! ..., whose plot islargely set in the former Soviet Union, this tendency is quite conspicuous, forexample when a rude Arab labourer whom the author-heroine has come acrossin Jerusalem immediately reminds her of her encounter with a drunken Uzbekin Tashkent (Rubina, 2002, pp. 31213). But we find more explicit and instruc-tive continuity between the images of the Russian Orient and the IsraeliOrient in Rubinas more Israeli works. Consider, for example, Here ComesThe Messiah! (1995/96), her most famous book, which has been translated into


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a number of languages, including Hebrew and English. The novels femaleprotagonist, Ziama, falls victim to Palestinian terror, when she is stabbed in thethroat before the eyes of her husband as they are eating out in their favourite

restaurant. Her assailant, a young Palestinian woman who lives in a villagenear Hebron, has a personal story that helps to shed light on this murderousact. She is 22 and despite her unattractive appearance she had a fairly goodchance of getting married. However, she transgressed and slept with herformer schoolteacher. And as if this was not enough, she also got pregnant byhim. It is quite clear to her that from now on, her days are numbered: whenthis state of affairs becomes known, her brothers will undoubtedly kill her toprevent her from bringing shame on the family, since theres no other way. Atthis stage the wretched young woman gets help and advice from her teacher-lover. True, he is not exactly enthusiastic about marrying her, but he is willingto show her what he considers the surest way out of her predicament:

Go and murder a Jew, he told her, Then theyll lock you up in jail,youll give birth there, and youll stay there with your baby. And thatway youll bring honour and veneration on your family (Rubina,1999, pp. 3045)

Rubinas story of the young Palestinian woman can be identified as nothingmore than an upgraded version of the representation of the Uzbek Orient inCamera Approaching! While the image of the Muslims in Uzbekistan as apeople unable to love to a large extent remains a theoretical assertion, at mostsupported by a declaration by the Uzbek hero, in the Palestinian context this

image is expressed in a more concrete form. To put it another way, thePalestinian heroines understanding that theres no other way that is, thatin the Muslim family it is impossible to deal with cases of extramaritalpregnancy other than by executing the pregnant woman, hence the operativedecision to forestall violence with violence in order to try to transform shameinto honour reinforces and provides empirical proof for the Uzbek Muslimsdeclaration that indeed We dont love! In this way the author also providesher readers in Israel and in her country of origin alike with an originalexplanation for the phenomenon of Palestinian terror: that Palestinian terror isnot related to the Palestinian-Israeli whirlpool of blood rather, it is rooted in

the character of the Muslims, who know neither love nor compassion.Compared with her representations of the Muslim Orient, Rubinas dis-course on the Jewish Mizrahim Oriental Jews appears to be morecomplex. Thus, for example, when the heroine of Here Comes The Messiah!arrived in Israel, she discovered that We, basically, are an Oriental people. Sheaccepted this with perfect composure, just as a mother welcomes her baby forthe first time (Rubina, 1999, p. 15). But the Orient that the heroine accepts andeven welcomes has nothing whatsoever to do with the concrete Israeli being.This is the biblical Orient, as imagined by her on seeing the landscapes of Judeaand Samaria, which are, it would appear, primarily populated by Russian andAshkenazi settlers, with fairly colourful personalities. The Jews from Islamiccountries, on the other hand, do not appear in the book as independent figures:they either provide silent ornamentation, or they are there to personify what is


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regarded by the heroine as Levantine characteristics of Israeli culture, such asindolence, complacence, or irresponsibility (Rubina, 1999, pp. 16, 114).

In this context, special attention should be given to the figure of Mustapha

the Weird, a mentally unstable Persian Jew who spends his days on theJerusalem-Tel Aviv bus. He sells items to the regulars on this route, as well asto the peddlers at the central bus stations in both cities, going by the name ofMessiah because he is for ever singing the Hassidic melody, Here comes theMessiah (Rubina, 1999, pp. 1720). Hence Mustapha plays an important sym-

bolic role in the novel: the song constantly on his lips gives the novel its title,while his strange and mysterious character keeps the reader tensely anticipat-ing what is going to happen to the books primary heroine. No less symbolic,however, is what happens to this character at the end of the novel. After herdeath, Ziama meets the real Messiah who turns out to be her belovedgrandfather, a Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jew (Rubina, 1999, p. 31). Thus a

crazy Mizrahi Jew, who gives off an odour of sweat, beer, urine and deodor-ant hands over the role of Messiah to a Russian-European Jew (Rubina, 1999,p. 17).

This converting of the Mizrahi Messiah into an Ashkenazi one in Rubinasnovel provides us with an instructive reflection of immigrant intellectualsdiscourse about Israel, comprising two basic steps: reading Israels culturalmap and locating the self on that same map. As far as the first step isconcerned, on a fundamental level one can indeed subscribe to the view ofthose scholars who consider that immigrants read the Israeli reality withcritical eyes. However, one must be precise and say that at this point the

Russian-Jewish intelligentsias stinging criticism is directed first and foremostat what it designates as Oriental or Levantine. This point will help to clarifythe meaning of the next stage in the Russian discourse that is locating the self.Tellingly, the most prominent Russian intellectuals wish to see immigrantsinvolved in the cultural war on the Ashkenazi side against Israeli societysOriental foundations. It is in just such terms, for example, that AlexanderVoronel a Tel-Aviv University physics professor and editor-in-chief of22, aprestigious journal of literature and ideas that defines itself as the organ of theRussian-Jewish intelligentsia in Israel presents the vocation of Russian Jews.As the diplomatic process gathers speed and there is a chance of relations

between Israel and the Arab states warming up, he argues, only the Russian-Jewish immigrants can save the country from the horror of Levantisationwhich is bound up with these dangerous developments. Like Rubina, Voronelidentifies the primary characteristics of Levantisation as indolence, compla-cence, technological ignorance, and economic negligence (Voronel, 1998,pp. 233, 240).

When it comes to the interpretative means that help the Russian-Jewishintelligentsia to chart its cultural identity in relation to Israels Jewish popu-lation, here the weight of the language of Russian-Soviet colonialism is no lessgreat than in the case of Rubinas confronting the Muslim Other. Firstly, thisintelligentsias criticism of Israeli-Jewish cultures Levantine characteristicsemerges from an acknowledged position of ongoing affiliation with the tra-dition of imperial culture. In the spirit of the Orientalist rhetoric of the great


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Russian writers and poets, non-Jewish and Jewish alike, the immigrant intellec-tuals present themselves as bearers of European culture in its improvedRussian version, as opposed to the image of primitive natives inferior culture

(Rubina, 1999, pp. 26364; Beltov, 2003). Secondly, the standard Soviet Asianimages continue to be at the immigrants disposal when they need to categoriseand label Moroccan, Yemenite, Persian Jews and so on. It is with good reason,therefore, that writer Boris Geller (2003), in a mordantly satirical essay aboutIsraeli society published recently in the Vesti weekend supplement, combinesthe images of an ignorant Georgian from Kutaisi and a boorish Yemenitefrom Israel as the antithesis of an ordinary Russian-Jewish intellectual. For theassociative nexus between swarthy Soviet and Israeli individuals, as well as thevalue differences between them and a Russian Jew, are supposed to beperceived by the Russian-Israel reader as something perfectly natural. And asif that were not enough, Geller gives Israel an extremely telling name one

that should also be perfectly transparent to his readers in the light of theirSoviet experience dubbing it the Little Sunny Republic (Geller, 2003, p. 26).This is a well-known denigratory expression in Russian-Soviet discourse, thatat the time could have been applied to any Caucasian or Central Asianrepublic, irrespective, if truth be told, of its actual littleness. And indeed, theterm refers, not to a republics territorial size, but to its negligible culturalweight compared with the imperial culture, as well as to the colour of itsinhabitants skin sunburnt, as it were. Now, transferred to the pages of thehighest-circulation Russian-Israeli newspaper as a term designating Israel, ineffect this expression is used to spotlight these selfsame two elements, thereby

isolating through images familiar to the immigrant that very feature ofIsraeli existence which must be critiqued above all its Oriental aspect.

3. IsraelRussia, IsraelEurope:The Global Dimension of Russian-Israeli Islamophobia

The Oriental discourse, as a body of knowledge intended to nurture anunderstanding of Western cultural supremacy, is based on the tendency todescribe the Orientals in as simplistic a fashion as possible, while completelyignoring the concrete geographic, economic and cultural contexts of their lives.

At the same time, insofar as the rhetoric of this discourse is concerned, it isgenerally far from being simple. On the contrary: while it expresses Westerncivilisations dark and contrasting side, the Orient must simultaneously attractand repel. The combination of Arab cultures enchanting refinements andoutrageous inanities, for example, as expressed in Orientalist texts analysed bySaid (Said, 1978, pp. 22830), is intended therefore to enthral the Westernobserver and especially to render fascinating the challenge of controlling theMuslim Orient. Hence images which are on the sketchy side are frequentlypresented as beguiling and intricate mysteries. Furthermore, the very peoplewho give voice to and shape the Orientalist discourse wish to impart a hint ofcomplexity, expertise and objectivity to their approach to the Orient.

On the other hand, when it comes to representations of the Arabs and Islamin the Russian press in Israel, generally we find an extreme and simplistic


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version of the Orientalist discourse. Not only does this fail to make use of thetraditional colonialist rhetoric as described above: on the contrary, it constantlyundermines it, calling its operative effectiveness into doubt in view of the war

of civilisations between West and East (Weiman, 2003). According to thetenets of this variant, which can be best defined by the notion of Islamopho-bia, European cultures tendency to be entertained by the romantic images ofthe Arabs and the Orient, while at the same time nurturing false hopesconcerning the possibility of bettering and reforming the Arabs in theframework of colonial projects, has ultimately led Europe to capitulate toIslamic barbarism.

What lies behind a radical Islamophobic tendency of this kind? One of theexplanations advanced for this phenomenon in Israeli research ascribes it to theimmigrants desire to thereby become an integral part of official-patriotic Israelidiscourse, demonstrating Jewish patriotism in view of a feeling of competing

with the other leading sectors of the Israeli state (Kimmerling, 1998 p. 287). Idoubt, however, whether expressions of Russian-Israeli discourse about theArabs and Islam would enhance the Russian publics prestige in the eyes ofIsraeli society were they to be translated into Hebrew: even compared with themost extreme right-wing Israeli discourse, the representations of Muslims thatfill the Russian press in Israel, spanning the entire gamut from the prestigiousVesti to tabloids such as Secret and Echo, are defamatory in the extreme.Expressions such as [Muslims are] the ugliest offshoot of the human race(Hayenko, 2001), the Oriental smell (Danovich, 2003), or The Protocols of theElders of Islam (Sobol, 2003)6 would likely trigger a public outcry even during

the Second Intifada, resulting in the Russian press being banished to thefurthest fringes of political legitimacy.

It seems to me that the role of Russian-Israeli Islamophobia can be eluci-dated if we pay attention to the focal points of the geo-cultural orientation ofthe Russian community in Israel, as revealed in texts of this kind. Notwith-standing the Israeli political context of the discussions about Islam in theRussian press, these focal points are without doubt Russia and Europe. TheRussocentric and Eurocentric dimensions of the Russian-Israeli discourse aboutthe Arabs and Islam are made very clear by reading countless articles in thepress that deal with these subjects. The discussions Russocentric axis is

programmed first and foremost by a view that identifies a shared destinyexisting between the State of Israel and Federal Russia in all matters relating totheir difficulties in dealing with the Muslims rampant behaviour regardingtheir territories the Palestinians on the one hand and the Chechnyans onthe other. As such, frequently the Russian-Israeli press expresses amazementand anger at the relative continuity of the Russian governments pro-Arabposition, accusing it of complete blindness to the pan-Islamic conspiracyagainst the civilised world (Danovich, 2003) and betraying the real interests ofthe Russian people itself, which genetically cannot abide these evil Muslims(Ben-Ari, 2003).7 The Eurocentric axis, on the other hand, focuses on thediscussion of the cultural and political ramifications of the immigration toEurope by Third World natives generally and Muslims specifically. As in thediscussion about the Muslim problem in Russia, in this context too the


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Russian-Israeli intellectuals wish their independent, unique voice to be heard the warning voice of those who know Islam well from their own MiddleEastern experience and have a background of combating it. They comment

unfavourably on the weakness of European countries with glorious culturaltraditions, like France, which is fast becoming hostage to multitudes from theMaghreb and Persian Gulf (Ben-Ari, 2003) and conversely laud the bravery ofleaders such as Joerg Haider who are seeking to reinstate the EuropeanContinents real nature, as it was before it became a paradise for Africans andAsians (Borisov, 2000). Above all, the constant in such discourse is the imageof Israel in the forefront of the European campaign against Islam, or more

broadly against Islamic fundamentalism (Weiman, 2003).This being the case, it may be argued that the Islamophobic discourse plays

a dual role in shaping the cultural identity of the Russian-Israeli intellectual.The global narrative fashioned by the Russian-Israeli press, according to which

today Israel and Russia, as well as Israel and Europe, all share a commonOther Islam helps this Russian-Israeli intellectual on the one hand tostrengthen his cultural ties with her/his country of origin and on the other toheighten the validity of her/his self-image as part of European culture. Theextreme tone of her/his rhetoric is intended to reflect her/his unique place inthe Russian and European discourse about Islam, by virtue of being a prac-titioner confronting Muslim barbarity on a daily basis. In this way, her/hisperception of her/himself as having the ability to provide the Russians andEuropeans with relevant insights into Islam by virtue of living in the MiddleEast can help to upgrade her/his imaginary geo-cultural position on two

levels: (1) from the Russian-Israeli margins of the Russian-speaking diasporatoward the centre of the Russian imperial discourse (Israel-Russia); and (2)from a little sunny republic in the Middle East to the forefront of the battle forEuropean values (Israel-Europe) (see Weiman, 2003).

Conclusion

In a series of articles devoted to elucidating cardinal aspects of the Zionistconsciousness and Israeli culture, Israeli historian Amnon Raz-Krakotzkinrecently propounded the view that one of the cardinal foundations of the

modern Zionist discourse involves the basic acceptance of the Orientalistparadigm, which makes a dichotomous distinction between West and East astwo diametrically opposed cultural entities. Raz-Krakotzkin argues that byadopting this view, Zionism aspired to define the Jews as a European nation,highlighting an essential difference between them and their Oriental MiddleEastern surroundings. Thus in what appears to be a paradoxical fashion, the

Jews departure from Europe and settling in the East ultimately led to theirreintegration, as it were, in the West (Raz-Krakotzkin, 1998, p. 44; 1999, p. 258;2002, p. 317).

True, for the most part Russian-speaking immigrants are not Zionists.Moreover, as a number of studies emphasise, they can also be extremely criticalabout the key elements of Zionist-Israeli culture and consciousness, such as theZionist ethos, official-patriotic rhetoric, or the militaristic nature of Israeli


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society (see footnote 4 above, as well as Epstein, 2002; Golden, 2001b, pp. 6970). And yet, when it comes to the Russian-Jewish intelligentsias attitude to theIsraeli Orientalist discourse, it not only accepts its framework, it expresses it

even more strongly. In fact, what we have is a kind of parallel Russian-Israelidiscourse, fed by cultural sources that are buried in the Russian-Soviet imperi-alist discourse about Russias Orient. The Orientalist dimension of this dis-course contains all the defamatory representations of natives of the Caucasusand Central Asia which have been disseminated first and foremost by modernRussian literature, including prominent Russian-Jewish writers. So when mem-

bers of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia arrive in the Middle East, they comearmed with Orientalist interpretative tools, which help them in reading anddeciphering the reality of a new country, by presenting it as a familiar reality,in this way aiding them in situating themselves on the Israeli cultural map. Thereading and deciphering process is bound up with identifying and labelling

dark-skinned locals, using negative concepts borrowed from the Russian-SovietOrientalist repertoire. In this process the local Orientals the Palestinians onthe one hand and the Mizrahi Jews on the other in the immigrant intellec-tuals eyes, come to stand for Israels character as a Levantine state, with aculture inferior to her/his own Russian-European culture. As a result, theimmigrant locates her/himself within the Eurocentric Ashkenazi element ofIsraeli society, seeking to see her/himself as helping Israel overcome itsOrientalness.

This is not the only thing that the Oriental discourse does for the Russiancommunity in Israel. In addition to its role as a compass that helps them in

finding their way around the cultural experience of a new country, it is alsoused by a Russian-writing immigrant intellectual as a means of renewingher/his imaginary bond with the culture of the country of origin. As such,extreme Islamophobic rhetoric is of the utmost importance, structuring on thepages of the Russian-Israeli press the image of Islam as the Other an Othercommon to Israel and Russia alike. As such, the Muslim Other acts as a basiccode in establishing the common language between a migrant and the countryof origin, which underpins the imaginary Israeli-Russian dialogue that osten-sibly addresses a common problem that of the pan-Islamic conspiracy. TheIslamophobic rhetoric in the press also operates in a similar fashion in imagin-

ing the dialogue about Islam between Israel and Europe. In connection withtheir European self-images in the Israeli context, the immigrant intellectualsrepresent themselves to their European imaginary interlocutors as members ofthe European culture living in the Middle East and who, in view of theirspecial experience in dealing on a day-to-day basis with the Palestinians, arelikely to be able to help the Europeans with practical advice concerning therampant behaviour of the form of Islam imported into their countries. TheRussian immigrant in Israel, himself likely to be perceived by the Russian andEuropean cultural discourses as someone on the margins, therefore shiftsher/his imaginary cultural location to within the centre of the civilised world.

As a result, we must once again unmistakably endorse Sammy Smoohasassertion concerning Russian Israelis Western orientation pattern. It may even

be contended that Raz-Krakotzkins argument about the Orientalist paradox of


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Zionism, based on reintegration in the West via a move to the East, is evenmore applicable to many members of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia in Israel.For the process of reproducing the Russian-Soviet Orientalist paradigm a

process which affects them as they move to the Middle East is ultimatelybound up with a reaffirmation of their Russian-European cultural identity, asthey assert its complete contrast with their new Oriental surroundings. How-ever, this is a form of Orientalism which is made in Russia, does not belongto mainstream Zionist discourse and hence is perhaps best defined as post-Zion-ist Orientalism.

Dimitry Shumsky may be contacted at Got Levin St. 14/24, Haifa 32922, Israel, e-mail:[email protected].

Notes

1. The centrality of this issue to studies of the Russian immigration to Israelhas been underscored, for example, in the detailed research by ElazarLeshem and Moshe Lissak about the immigrants ways of collective consol-idation: Leshem and Lissak, 1999, p. 163.

2. In his other book, Kimmerling also identifies the increase in this tendencyamong the immigrants. However, he still tends to primarily highlight theinstrumental dimension of immigrants affinities with the Israeli-Ashkenazi

culture (Kimmerling, 2001b, pp. 13649).3. In connection with social and cultural life in the former USSR, the concept

of intelligentsia denotes a fairly heterogeneous group of educated people,including first and foremost writers, poets, artists and journalists, but alsopeople from the exact and technological sciences who are interested tosome degree in art, literature and philosophy: Lissak and Leshem, 1995,p. 25.

4. Kimmerling, 1998, pp. 27576; Lomsky-Feder and Rapoport, 2001, p 12;Lerner, 2001, p 43; Rapoport and Lomsky-Feder, 2002, pp. 23637.

5. See, for example, an essay by psychologist Vadim Rotenberg (2003), who

identifies this spirit as being responsible for the immigrants scepticalattitude to the accepted norms of Israeli society and culture.6. The title of the article Pro[to]cols of Elders of Islam contains a

Russian play on words, intended to present the Arabs as both evil andmoronic, by contrasting the Arab of today with the anti-Semitic image of

Jews in the nineteenth century, when they were perceived as evil andclever. In colloquial Russian, the word prokol means failure. So theauthor is arguing that while what was formerly perceived by anti-Semitesas a global Jewish conspiracy seemed to be true because of the Jewssuperior cleverness, todays global Arab conspiracy is driven by theignorance and stupidity of the conspirators. Incidentally, this article ap-pears against the background of a caricature showing a monkey dressed asa man, wearing a T-shirt saying I love Darwin.


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7. It should be noted parenthetically that this author, former businessman ZviBen-Ari (Grigory Lerner), is a fairly well-known figure in the Russiancommunity in Israel. They consider him a hero who dared to stand up to

Israels financial establishment paying the price of spending a numberof years in prison. In the 1990s the story of his trial and conviction, knownas the Lerner Affair, rocked the Russian press in Israel, marking animportant milestone in the immigrants collective consolidation process.

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