Victor Vasilev

As a Palestinian who refuses to parrot our leadership’s lies, I have to say it bluntly: Telling Mizrahi Jews - Jews from Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, and the rest of the Arab world, that they are doing “ethnic cleansing” to us is the gaslight of the century. Let’s start with facts. Mizrahi Jews didn’t “come from Europe.” They lived in the Middle East for thousands of years, long before Islam, long before Arab conquest, long before any modern state. Their ancestors spoke the same ancient Hebrew mentioned in the Qur’an’s stories, they prayed facing Jerusalem, and their communities in Babylon, Damascus, and Sana’a existed for over 2,500 years. They are as indigenous to this region as the olive trees, as native to the Middle East as we are. When Arab states turned against them in the 20th century, after Israel was established, they were ethnically cleansed: homes looted, businesses seized, citizenship revoked, synagogues burned, people lynched. Nearly a million Jews were expelled from Arab lands. Most fled to Israel with nothing. And now, decades later, our leadership dares to call them the colonizers? The same families who were driven from Baghdad, Aleppo, and Tripoli - who rebuilt their lives from refugee camps in Israel, are accused of committing the same crime that was done to them. That’s not just hypocrisy; it’s historical amnesia. If we truly want justice, we have to stop gaslighting our neighbors and start acknowledging that their story is Middle Eastern too. Our liberation won’t come from denying theirs.