Advocacy means going on the record. Since 2002, JIMENA has brought the history, lived experiences, and perspectives of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews to policy makers, international bodies, and the public. Through statements, letters, and policy responses, we advocate on issues affecting our communities and Jews worldwide - from education and antisemitism to cultural heritage, Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa, and international affairs. These statements show where we stand, what we've advocated for, and why.
Advocacy means going on the record. Since 2002, JIMENA has brought the history, lived experiences, and perspectives of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews to policy makers, international bodies, and the public. Through statements, letters, and policy responses, we advocate on issues affecting our communities and Jews worldwide - from education and antisemitism to cultural heritage, Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa, and international affairs. These statements show where we stand, what we've advocated for, and why.
100% Joint Communal Letter · August, 2026 Leading Sephardic & Mizrahi Organizations Challenge New York Magazine’s “Habibi City” Over Erasure of Middle Eastern Jews 14 Jewish communal organizations call on New York Magazine to acknowledge the exclusion and meet with community representatives. On August 10, 2026, New York Magazine published “Habibi City,” a multi-article feature on New York’s “SWANA” (Southwest Asian and North African) cultural scene. On August 25, a coalition of fourteen organizations representing Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish communities convened by JIMENA delivered the following letter to the magazine’s editors. The letter documents, in the feature’s own words, how belonging to the “SWANA community” was defined in ideological terms that exclude the region’s Jews and render its other non-Muslim indigenous peoples nearly invisible — and it asks the magazine’s editors to acknowledge that framing, include Sephardic and Mizrahi voices as we actually are in future coverage, and meet with the signatory organizations. “SWANA is geography. Your feature defines it as ideology.” From the joint letter To the Editors of New York Magazine: We write as organizations representing the indigenous Jewish communities of the Middle East and North Africa, Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, whose presence in Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia, Turkey, Morocco, and across the region predates the Arab conquests by more than a millennium. We write in response to your August 10 “Habibi City” feature on New York’s SWANA cultural scene, and we write not only for ourselves but alongside the many other indigenous and minority peoples of the region including Coptic Christians, Assyrians and Chaldeans, Armenians, Kurds, Yazidis, Druze, Amazigh, Baha’is, Zoroastrians, whose absence from your pages we will return to below. Your editors have said they welcome good-faith criticism of the feature. This is ours. SWANA is geography. Your feature defines it as ideology. SWANA is offered to readers as a progressive designation: Southwest Asia and North Africa, a corrective to the colonial coinage “Middle East.” But your feature does not use it that way. In its own words, to be “in SWANA community” means embracing a “set of shared beliefs,” among them the assertion that Israel’s conduct in Gaza constitutes genocide. SWANA, readers are told, is a “decolonial framework” and “a way of moving through the world.” Zionism is listed alongside xenophobia and Islamophobia as one of the forces SWANA New Yorkers must “face.” A mayor born in Uganda to Indian parents is welcomed as “SWANA adjacent” on the strength of his politics and religion, while the question of whether Israelis can claim connection to their own region becomes “complicated,” and grows “more so depending on a person’s ethnic background.” Where Israelis do appear, readers are reassured: “Of course, they’re not Zionists.” Follow the logic of your own reporting and the definition becomes unmistakable. Geography is not the membership criterion; politics, ideology, and religion are. A South Asian Muslim belongs by faith and conviction. A Mizrahi Jew whose grandparents were born in the region, expelled from their country of origin, and who carries the region in her language, liturgy, and kitchen belongs only upon disavowal of the movement through which her family survived. In your telling, anti-Zionism is the central organizing principle of the contemporary “SWANA community” and the price of admission to it effectively marginalizing the diverse indigenous peoples of the Middle East who have lived in the region for thousands of years but who do not identify with the anti-Zionist hate movement. In doing so, the feature replicates in New York the very pattern of ideological erasure and cultural cleansing that has fueled the ongoing oppression of, and extreme violence against, ethnic and religious minorities in the region itself. The erasure of the region’s non-Muslim peoples Your feature states that SWANA, “unlike Muslim,” is “not defined by religion.” Yet its communal calendar runs on Eid banquets, iftars, and Ramadan; its flagship magazine describes itself as a home for “the Muslim left”; its milestones are measured in “Muslim clout,” Muslim creatives, and Muslim restaurants; and its geography stretches to include Indian and Pakistani New Yorkers on the basis of shared Muslim identity. We write this not to begrudge Muslim New Yorkers but to highlight coverage that folds Iranians, Arabs, and South Asians into one community on an implicitly Muslim frame quietly equating the region with its majority faith. Iranian equals Arab equals SWANA equals Muslim. That equation erases everyone the region’s own history has already tried to erase. The Middle East and North Africa has never been, religiously, ethnically, or ideologically uniform. The peoples listed at the top of this letter are not guests in the region; they are its oldest inhabitants. Most have endured conquest, dhimmitude, massacre, or expulsion at the hands of the region’s dominant powers, experiences entirely missing from a feature that presents that dominant culture, transplanted to New York, as the marginalized party. Here is the first moral inversion: a “decolonial framework” that treats the heirs of one of history’s great imperial expansions as the colonized, and the region’s actual indigenous minorities as invisible, or, in our case, as presumptive colonizers of our own homeland. What Zionism actually is to us Our communities lived continuously in the Middle East and North Africa for over 2,500 years, before the emergence of Islam. In the twentieth century, close to one million Jews were driven from the Arab and Muslim world, frequently under laws that criminalized Zionism itself. In countries throughout the Arab world Zionism was made a capital offense, over 3,000 Jews were imprisoned, and Jews were stripped of citizenship and property as “Zionists”; across the region, families were dispossessed, imprisoned, or forced to flee under duress. In the political Zionism of the 20th century, we asserted our own indigeneity after living for millennia as second-class and, finally, exiled citizens of the lands of our birth. The movement your feature files alongside xenophobia and Islamophobia is the reason hundreds of thousands of those refugees had somewhere to go, and the reason their descendants, today the majority of Israel’s Jewish population, exist as communities at all. To renounce Zionism as the condition of belonging to a SWANA community is to demand that Jews disavow our own survival. Being Jewish or Zionist is not in opposition to being from a geographic region. For most of us, the two are how we are still here. The cuisine your feature celebrates makes the point vividly. Food is one of the truest records a people keeps of where it has been. The dishes in your pages were also carried out of Baghdad, Sana’a, Cairo, and Casablanca by refugees who left with little else and they survive as living traditions rather than museum pieces because those refugees had a country to carry them to. Your food coverage goes further still: it prints, without comment, a featured restaurant’s menu map on which Israel does not appear at all, retitled “Discover Palestine,” and it refers in the magazine’s own editorial voice to “the land mass currently called Israel.” It reports, with evident satisfaction from one interviewee, that Israeli-owned restaurants are now retreating behind the euphemism “Mediterranean” some, by your own account, after vandalism. A feature devoted to the pride of naming oneself openly treats the return of Jews to concealment as a development to be savored. That is the second moral inversion. The label “Arab Jew” Your feature applies the label “Arab Jew” without qualification. Most Mizrahi Jews reject it and in current usage it functions largely to sever Jewish identity from Israel. The Tunisian-born sociologist and philosopher Albert Memmi answered the label half a century ago, responding to Muammar Gaddafi’s offer to welcome Jews back as “Arabs like us” after they had been brutally ethnically cleansed. He acknowledged the nostalgia the phrase evokes, then wrote: “We would have liked to be Arab Jews. If we abandon the idea, it is because over the centuries the Moslem Arabs systematically prevented its realization by their contempt and cruelty.” The identity was refused to us when we lived in Arab lands. It is now conferred on us in New York, without our consent, because it is politically convenient: an “Arab Jew” is a Jew whose story can be told without Israel. The great majority of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews were never asked whether we accept the label. Instead, your writers located the small minority who embrace it, presented them as representative, and left the rest of us to discover that our identity had been defined by others on our behalf. That is not inclusion. It is a curated exception, deployed to suggest the community has been consulted when it has not – erasure presenting itself as representation. October 7 as a date without victims In your feature, October 7th appears repeatedly and always as a calendar marker for what came after it, never as an event with victims of its own. It was carried out by Hamas, an organization whose founding charter is openly genocidal, calling for the destruction of Israel and invoking Islamic scripture commanding the killing of Jews, and whose record of violence runs in every direction: against Israelis in massacre and hostage-taking, and against Palestinians themselves, from the executions of political rivals in its 2007 seizure of Gaza to its ongoing torture and killing of dissidents. On October 7th, 2023 some 1,200 Israelis were murdered and 251 taken hostage, communities were burned, and sexual violence was documented – none of it acknowledged, even in passing, in thousands of words that date an entire cultural renaissance to that morning. Your readers might never learn that among the towns invaded that day including Ofakim, Sderot, Netivot are some of the most heavily Mizrahi communities in Israel: descendants of the very refugees from Morocco, Iraq, and Yemen whose food and music fill your pages. The people of the region were both among the murdered and among the murdered’s mourners, and your feature could not spare them a single sentence. A “SWANA community” whose “shared beliefs” in anti-Zionism require total silence about Jewish suffering and about the genocidal intent and movement that inflicted the tragedy of October 7th is not practicing solidarity with Palestinians. It is practicing antisemitism. That is the third moral inversion. “We are not asking to be tolerated as exceptions to an ideological rule. We are asking to be recognized as what we are: peoples of the region.” From the joint letter What we ask We are not asking to be tolerated as exceptions to an ideological rule. We are asking to be recognized as what we are: peoples of the region. We ask that New York Magazine acknowledge that its framing excludes the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa except on ideological terms, and renders the region’s other non-Muslim peoples nearly invisible; that future coverage of SWANA communities include Mizrahi and Sephardic voices as we actually are, which for the great majority of us means Zionist, alongside the other erased non-Muslim indigenous voices of the region; and that your editors meet with representatives of the undersigned organizations to discuss how that happens. “The region and its peoples do not belong to one faith, one politics, or one story. Neither should its name.” Original Signatories American Sephardi Federation HARIF – UK Association of MENA Jews Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals Iranian American Jewish Federation of New York (IAJF NY) JCRC-NY JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa Justice for Jews from Arab Countries International Kahal Joseph Congregation Kanisse SAMi – Sephardic American Mizrahi Initiative Sephardic Community Alliance Sephardic Community Federation Sephardic Educational Center (SEC) Zamir Equities Additional Signatories The following organizations have joined since the letter’s delivery on August 25, 2026. Organizations wishing to add their names may do so using the button below. Sephardic Heritage Project The Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America Stand With Us UJA Federation of New York SHAI - Sephardic Heritage Alliance Add your organization as a signatory Download the letter as delivered Press inquiries: Sarah Levin, Executive Director, JIMENA — sarahlevin@jimena.org Convened by JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa · www.jimena.org
Coalition Letter · Updated December 1, 2024 JIMENA Urges Governor Newsom to Adopt the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism 26 Jewish organizations from across California call on the governor to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism by executive order. Read the full letter (PDF) → JIMENA and a coalition of Jewish communal organizations representing communities throughout California have written to Governor Gavin Newsom, urging him to issue an Executive Order adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism. As of December 1, 2024, 26 organizations, including JIMENA, have signed on. JIMENA has been an outspoken advocate of the IHRA definition for many years. After the horrific attacks against Israel and the Jewish people on October 7, 2023, our support took on even greater importance, and we accelerated our efforts. “Now, more than ever before, we firmly believe that the non-legally binding IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism is an invaluable tool in comprehending and combating antisemitism, in all its manifestations. It is a framework that can be employed in complete alignment with the fundamental rights of every individual in our state.” From the coalition letter Why it matters California needs a single definition of antisemitism JIMENA and our co-signers believe strongly that California must adopt a single definition of antisemitism in order to properly counter it. In California’s education system, on college campuses, and amid other public displays and violent acts, antisemitism is increasing at a rapid rate. It is imperative that our state define antisemitism in order to help our public agencies identify and understand what it is. For Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, this is personal. Our families were driven from the Middle East and North Africa by state-sanctioned antisemitism that was often carried out under the banner of anti-Zionism. A clear definition helps institutions recognize antisemitism in all its forms, including when it is expressed through hostility to the Jewish people’s connection to Israel. We appreciate Governor Newsom’s support and leadership at this critical moment. Learn more about IHRA Read the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism and its examples on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance website, or download JIMENA’s short guide to what the definition says and how it can be used. A Brief Guide to the IHRA Definition (PDF) → Signatories as of December 1, 2024 Alpha Epsilon Pi Anti-Defamation League (ADL) American Jewish Committee (AJC) Association of Jewish Educators B’nai B’rith International Bay Area Jewish Coalition (BAJC) California Israel Chamber of Commerce Combat Antisemitism Movement Educators Caucus for Israel Hadassah Hillel at Davis and Sacramento Hillel San Diego Hillel at UCLA Holocaust Museum LA Iranian American Jewish Federation (IAJF) Israeli-American Civic Action Network Israeli American Council (IAC) Jewish Federation of San Diego JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa NEA Jewish Affairs Caucus Progressive Zionists of California Sephardic Education Center Simon Wiesenthal Center StandWithUs WIZO: Women’s International Zionist Organization 30 Years After Read the full letter (PDF) → JIMENA’s work combating antisemitism → Press inquiries: Sarah Levin, Executive Director, JIMENA · sarahlevin@jimena.org
An Introduction of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Definition of Antisemitism
To 40th Governor of California, Gavin Christopher Newsom. Jewish communities throughout our state are deeply affected during these challenging times of conflict and tragedy in Israel, and your unwavering support is pivotal for our collective sense of safety and wellbeing.
100% Statement · May 25, 2023 JIMENA Welcomes the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism For the first time, the White House affirms that students should learn the histories of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews. Today at the White House, President Biden’s outgoing chief domestic policy adviser Susan Rice and Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff unveiled The U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. JIMENA welcomes this important development, which aligns with our vision to achieve universal recognition of Sephardic and Mizrahi histories. JIMENA’s Executive Director Sarah Levin was privileged to participate in White House listening sessions as this historic strategy was being designed. There, she shared how JIMENA has seen antisemitism manifest in K–12 schools and curriculum, particularly in California, the strategies JIMENA uses to counter it, and additional national strategies that are sorely needed. We are heartened to see our feedback and insights included in the National Strategy released today. Strategic Goal 1.1 of the National Strategy aims to “Increase School-Based Education about Antisemitism, Including the Holocaust, and Jewish American Heritage.” That section includes this language: “In addition to learning about the horrors of the Holocaust, students should learn about global histories of antisemitism. This should include histories of antisemitism experienced by Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews—who trace their ancestry to Spain, the Middle East, and North Africa—and their stories of exclusion, persecution, and expulsion. Students should also learn about the history of antisemitism in the United States as well as contemporary manifestations of antisemitism. Educators need readily available quality resources to enable such education.” U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, Strategic Goal 1.1 This is a historic moment for Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish Americans: the importance of teaching our histories has now been recognized and affirmed by the White House. Our work ahead Putting the strategy into classrooms As a long-standing leader in educating the public on the histories of Jews from Middle Eastern and North African countries, JIMENA looks forward to continuing our work with federal and state agencies toward achieving this strategic goal. We have experience working with the California Department of Education (CDE) in this area, and have already prepared lesson plans that address antisemitism experienced by Mizrahi Jews both in the U.S. and in the Middle East and North Africa. In fact, our lesson on antisemitism in the U.S. was adopted by the CDE for its ethnic studies course and includes the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. We express our deep gratitude to the administration for including the IHRA definition in its National Strategy, and reaffirm that JIMENA has adopted this definition as well. Having a National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism that includes our histories is critical to our work combatting antisemitism. We look forward to helping educate and support leaders and educators around the country, and we thank the White House. Read the National Strategy (PDF) → Press inquiries: Sarah Levin, Executive Director, JIMENA · sarahlevin@jimena.org
Joint Communal Letter · February 22, 2022 Sephardic and Mizrahi Organizations on New Scholarly Research on Middle Eastern Jewish History Sixteen organizations and congregations welcome the growth of scholarship on our history, and ask that it not sideline the communities it describes. In 2022, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded a federal grant of nearly $250,000 to a scholarly project titled “Reimagining Jewish Life in the Modern Middle East, 1800 – Present.” JIMENA joined Sephardic and Mizrahi organizations and congregations across the United States in writing to the NEH. We welcomed the growing interest in our history. We also raised a concern our communities know well: that writing about Middle Eastern Jews too often reflects the political commitments of its authors more than the lived experience of the people it describes. The letter asks scholars to engage with the existing literature, to represent the full range of our communities’ views, including on Zionism and Israel, and to keep Mizrahi and Sephardic voices at the center of the debate. “Middle Eastern Jews in America, Israel, and around the world must not be rendered tertiary characters in our own stories.” From the joint letter The letter To the National Endowment for the Humanities The past few years have seen an extraordinary flowering of interest in Middle Eastern Jewish life and history. Internationally, the Abraham Accords have opened new opportunities to excavate and reinvigorate Jewish culture and history in Arab nations, while Israel has increasingly paid heed to ensuring that Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish life is incorporated into collective national narratives. Domestically, we have seen an unprecedented rate of growth in academic initiatives focused on the histories and culture of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, from K-12 through higher education. Most recently, the US National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded a nearly $250,000 grant to fund a scholarly project dedicated to “Reimagining Jewish Life in the Modern Middle East, 1800 – Present.” As organizations representing Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, Jewish communities from the Middle East and North Africa, we view the growth in interest in Middle Eastern and North African Jewish history as a welcome and long overdue development. This federally funded NEH grant exhibits growing public interest in our communal histories and as a publicly funded project, invites citizen engagement. As American citizens from the communities the grant seeks to “reimagine” we issue this statement to the NEH to sound a note of caution regarding certain trends which, regrettably, we have regularly seen manifest in writings about Middle Eastern Jews. We do so in the hopes that we can forestall potential distortion and politicization, and intolerable weaponization, of the memory and history of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry. Too often there exists a marked gap between those writing about Middle Eastern Jews, on the one hand, and the views and experiences of the Middle Eastern Jewish community itself, on the other. Frequently, this gap manifests in ill-conceived, tendentious, and often ideologically-motivated “histories” that opportunistically flatten our experience to fit contemporary political agendas. Such works are typically self-consciously partisan and fail to do justice to the complex and layered relationship Middle Eastern Jews have with, among other things, Arabic or Persian language and culture, Zionism and anti-Zionism, Israeli state policies of inclusion and of exclusion, and experiences of dispossession and expulsion in lands Jews had called home for millennia. That these are fraught and politically-contested topics does not justify polemicists deciding to rewrite our stories and histories for their own partisan ambitions. Other times, Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews are “represented” via interactions with an unrepresentative and marginal set of activists and scholars whose views are presented as authoritative even as they characterize only a small sliver of Middle Eastern Jewish perspectives. Individual books, articles, and theses have been cherry-picked and wrongly presented as if they are the only authoritative word on Middle Eastern Jewish life. The result has been to render narratives about Middle Eastern Jews, including those found in major textbooks or public discourse, often virtually unrecognizable to Middle Eastern Jews. This, in turn, has profoundly alienated many in our community from the very projects and literature that should be most essential in preserving our history and facilitating our place in Jewish, Middle Eastern, and global society. This is an inestimable tragedy for Middle Eastern Jews and, we submit, for the scholarly community that should be more invested in accurate historical narration than in scoring transient political points. Middle Eastern Jews in America, Israel, and around the world must not be rendered tertiary characters in our own stories; a frequent occurrence when minority communities become the academic subjects of mainstream, Western scholarship. Some in our community have expressed concern that the new NEH-funded project, helmed by Professors Lior Sternfeld, Michelle Campos and Orit Bashkin, may replicate these well-known and harmful trends in scholarship about Middle Eastern Jews. It is, of course, impossible to judge a book that has not yet been written. However, some of the authors have made concerning statements that suggest either unfamiliarity with, or derision towards, already-existing histories and accounts of Middle Eastern Jewish perspectives. It is entirely true, as one co-author put it, that Middle Eastern Jews were not merely “a group of people waiting for redemption by Zionism but” were also people who “live[d] and prosper[ed] and work[ed] and suffer[ed] … in the Middle East as part of Middle Eastern societies.” It is not remotely true to suggest this is a novel observation representing the need for a full-scale “reimagining” of Jewish life in the Middle East, or that existing literature from Mizrahi Jewish writers have presented their accounts in such a flat and superficial manner. Our intention in writing this letter is to insist that all scholars partaking in the emergent wave of scholarship about Middle Eastern Jews, of which this project is but one, take affirmative steps to guard against painting a false or misleading portrayal of Middle Eastern Jewish history that is more loyal to ideological or political commitments than to complex social histories. This includes avoiding, downplaying, or misrepresenting the state of existing scholarship and history about Middle Eastern Jewish communities, as well as denigrating or denying the values and choices Middle Eastern Jews have made, past and present, including those about Zionism and Israel. The undersigned groups, deeply rooted in our communities’ daily life and with decades of experience collecting and curating the history of diverse Middle Eastern Jewish communities, welcome the opportunity to collaborate and contribute to this new wave of academic interest in our heritage and history. Finally, we recognize that the flowering of new research on Middle Eastern Jewish experience will inevitably produce articles, chapters, or manuscripts that provoke significant controversy and debate. This is unavoidable and part and parcel of a laudable commitment to academic freedom and free inquiry. However, we the undersigned organizations insist on the lodestar commitment that discussions about these controversies and debates do not sideline Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish voices. No single author or manuscript can be expected to capture the full richness and diversity of Middle Eastern Jewish experience, nor do any write upon a blank slate. The new wave of emergent scholarship can and should be placed into conversation with the many excellent works that already exist. As we await the fruits of the next generation of research, and the inevitable discussion, debate, and disputation that will arise, we would like to bring attention to this bibliography of academic works on Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, that can help guide learning about our community in a way that is respectful of, and resonant with, our own lived experiences. Signed, Signatories 30 Years After A.A. Society Beit Sasson: The Sephardic Congregation of Newton Congregation Bene Naharayim of Queens, New York Eretz Synagogue and Cultural Center Iranian American Jewish Federation JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa JJAC: Justice for Jews from Arab Countries SAMi: Sephardic American Mizrahi Initiative Sephardic Congregation of Paramus, New Jersey Sephardic Education Center Sephardic Jews in DC Sephardic U Sephardic Voices Sinai Temple of Los Angeles Temple Moses Sephardic Synagogue of Miami Further reading A bibliography of our history JIMENA maintains a bibliography of academic works on Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews to help students, educators and researchers learn about our communities in a way that is resonant with our own lived experiences. Explore the Bibliography → Press inquiries: Sarah Levin, Executive Director, JIMENA · sarahlevin@jimena.org
Joint Communal Letter · July 28, 2021 Sephardic and Mizrahi Organizations Denounce Antisemitic Statements by CAIR Leader Hussam Ayloush California’s Sephardic and Mizrahi communities called on Governor Newsom and the California Democratic Party to act on a party leader’s calls for Israel to be “terminated.” In July 2021, JIMENA joined Sephardic, Mizrahi and Iranian Jewish organizations and congregations across California in a letter to Governor Gavin Newsom, California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks and Assembly Member Jesse Gabriel. The letter addressed statements by Hussam Ayloush, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Los Angeles (CAIR-LA) and a delegate to the California Democratic Party, including his calls for the State of Israel to be “terminated.” For our communities, this was not an abstract political dispute. Many of our families were driven from the Middle East and North Africa by state-sanctioned antisemitism carried out under the banner of anti-Zionism. We recognized the language, and we knew where it can lead. “It is not only irresponsible but extremely dangerous for a party leader to call for the destruction of any nation, even those whose policies they disagree with.” From the joint letter The letter Letter Denouncing Antisemitic Statements Made by California Democratic Party Leader To Governor Gavin Newsom, California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks, and Assembly Member Jesse Gabriel: We, the organizations listed below, represent Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish communities in the state of California. We are writing to express our denunciation of multiple antisemitic statements made by California Democratic Party (CDP) leader Hussam Ayloush. As an institution whose mission is to be a “leading advocate for justice and mutual understanding” and whose Los Angeles Executive Director, Hussam Ayloush, currently serves as an Assembly District Delegate to the CDP, we are deeply concerned by CAIR LA’s (The Council on American Islamic Relations LA) role in influencing California’s Democratic Party with revisionist lies about Israel and the Jewish people, and the Middle Eastern Jewish community in particular. These lies are contributing to the rising tides of antisemitism our communities are currently experiencing, and are making the CDP an increasingly hostile place for many Jews, particularly those of North African and Middle Eastern descent. We feel it is critical to open this letter by asserting that the vast majority of Jewish people are indigenous to Israel. As Mizrahi Jews, our ancestors lived continuously in the Middle East since the dawn of Judaism itself. In the mid to late 20th century, state-sanctioned antisemitism, frequently taken under the banner of anti-Zionism, led to the ethnic cleansing and displacement of close to one million Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews from countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa. About 650,000 of these Jews fled to Israel as stateless refugees and the remainder scattered to countries around the world, including the USA, with an estimated 200,000 residing in California. Today, Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews comprise over half of Israel’s Jewish population. Since 2014, former CDP Executive Board member Hussam Ayloush has gone on record with antisemitic, genocidal calls for the state of Israel to be “terminated.” We are deeply disturbed to learn that Mr. Ayloush has also referred to those who support Israel as “heartless hateful bloodthirsty humans” and compared them to Nazis. Mr. Ayloush has repeatedly refused to recognize the positions, needs, and interests of California’s diverse Jewish communities who are predominantly Democrats and avowed Zionists. We are deeply troubled by Mr. Ayloush’s influence over CDP positions and policies as it relates to Israel and the Jewish people and we believe that it is not only irresponsible but extremely dangerous for a party leader to call for the destruction of any nation, even those whose policies they disagree with. We are also deeply concerned that Mr. Ayloush’s ongoing and repeated characterization of Zionism as a “political ideology whose tentacles are rooted in racism” is directly contributing to antisemitic, revisionist histories of the Jewish people. As a coalition of 40 international Sephardic organizations have clarified in a letter to Jewish Voice for Peace, “Zionism has been the yearning of Jews throughout more than 2,500 years of diaspora. Today the majority of the Mizrahi and Sephardic community resides in Israel, and the vast majority of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, in Israel and in diaspora, are self-identified Zionists.” In seeking to obscure these realities in service of his own ideological ends, Mr. Ayloush is promulgating an antisemitic message that seeks to portray Jews as foreign interlopers in Israel and the larger Middle East. This lie is directly contributing towards the catastrophic rise of antisemitism our state is currently experiencing. Mizrahi Jewish communities in our state watch with growing concern as the same antisemitic sentiments and rhetoric that led to the oppression and ethnic cleansing of one million indigenous Jews from the Middle East seem to be infiltrating California’s influential civil rights organizations and the CDP, particularly after the recent war between Gaza and Israel. Members of our Mizrahi communities remember how antisemitic sentiments sprouted into full-fledged, state-sanctioned anti-Zionism in countries throughout the Middle East. Not unlike the current climate we are living in, Zionism in the Middle East and North Africa was hardly ever defined, and this ambiguity enabled terrible acts of antisemitism to occur under the mask of anti-Zionism. We recently watched in horror as Iranian Jewish Americans in our state were violently targeted by “Pro-Palestinian” activists who were shouting antisemitic slurs on the streets of Los Angeles. For many in our Jewish Middle Eastern communities these violent acts of antisemitism elicited visceral fears and memories of similar events many experienced in countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa. At a time when hate crimes against Jews account for over half of religious-based hate crimes in the USA and when antisemitism continues to be the most prevalent religious-based hate crime in California, up a disturbing 72% since 2016, it is essential for the Democratic Party and all civil rights organizations in the state to draw clear redlines against language and activities that explicitly and implicitly target California’s Jewish communities. The CDP Code of Conduct states: The CDP expects all leaders, members, employees, and others associated with the CDP to act professionally, respecting the personal rights and dignities of all individuals involved with the party so as to create a productive, inclusive environment for all. All individuals should feel welcome and safe within the CDP, regardless of their sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, ancestry, religion, creed, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, military or veteran status, body size, domestic violence victim status, or any other legally protected classifications. The CDP’s behavior standards are not limited to CDP conventions and other meetings. Harassment will not be tolerated at any and all events sponsored by or affiliated with the CDP, as well as in CDP-related calls, texts, emails, and social media like Facebook, Instagram, and SnapChat. We believe that Mr. Ayloush’s harmful rhetoric violates the CDP Code of Conduct, and we strongly urge the leaders of the CDP to take appropriate action to help ensure that state party leaders are not allowed to denigrate the “ethnicity, national origin, ancestry, religion, creed” of others, and that the CDP remains a welcoming and safe place for Jewish Democrats, including Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews. Sincerely, Signatories Arielle Yael Mokhtarzadeh Co-President, 30 Years After Jasmin Niku Co-President, 30 Years After Susan Azizzadeh President, Iranian American Jewish Federation Gina Bublil-Waldman President, JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa Sarah Levin Executive Director, JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa Rabbi Daniel Bouskila Rabbi/Director, Sephardic Educational Center Neil J. Sheff President, Sephardic Educational Center Rabbi David Wolpe Max Webb Senior Rabbi, Sinai Temple Titles as of July 2021. Since this letter Continuing to call out CAIR’s influence JIMENA has continued to speak out about CAIR’s role in shaping how Jews, Israel and Zionism are presented to Californians, especially in public education. In “Necessary Disruption,” published in Distinctions Journal in 2025, Executive Director Sarah Levin describes how CAIR and its affiliates have worked to embed anti-Israel, anti-Zionist ideology into education, and how JIMENA intervened in California’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum to make sure the experiences of Middle Eastern Jews were taught. We support the work of the Intelligent Advocacy Network (IAN). IAN is a California watchdog that works to promote transparency and the lawful use of public funds and political influence. Its research and complaints to government agencies have raised serious questions about public funding received by CAIR’s California chapters and about the fundraising practices of CAIR’s political arm, questions that have since been reported by national news outlets. We are grateful for IAN’s efforts to bring accountability, and we encourage Californians to learn more about its work. Learn about IAN’s work → Notes [1] “The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR),” Anti-Defamation League. adl.org [2] Hussam Ayloush, Facebook post, August 3, 2014. facebook.com [3] Hussam Ayloush, post on Twitter, August 4, 2014. twitter.com [4] Hussam Ayloush, “A Slur on Muslim Community,” Orange County Register, December 1, 2002. meforum.org [5] Sephardic and Mizrahi Communal Response to Jewish Voice for Peace, January 23, 2019. jimena.org [6] California Democratic Party Code of Conduct. cadem.org Press inquiries: Sarah Levin, Executive Director, JIMENA · sarahlevin@jimena.org
Joint Communal Letter · January 23, 2019 Sephardic and Mizrahi Communal Response to Jewish Voice for Peace Sephardic and Mizrahi organizations and congregations from the United States, Israel and the United Kingdom call on JVP to stop using our history to advance its anti-Zionism. In January 2019, Jewish Voice for Peace published “Our Approach to Zionism,” a statement that presented the Mizrahi and Sephardic experience as a driving force behind its anti-Zionism. JIMENA joined a coalition of Sephardic and Mizrahi synagogues and communal organizations in the United States, Israel and the United Kingdom in rejecting that framing and calling on JVP to remove all references to Mizrahi and Sephardic history from its organizational literature. The letter has since been cited in other communal statements as a clear expression of where our communities stand: the vast majority of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, in Israel and in the diaspora, are self-identified Zionists. “The most tangible political accomplishment of anti-Zionism in the 20th century was not to establish a Palestinian state, but to engender the decimation of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish communities across the Middle East.” From the joint letter The letter To Jewish Voice for Peace We, the organizations and congregations listed below, represent Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish communities in countries around the world, including Israel. We are writing to express our denunciation of Jewish Voice for Peace’s (JVP) latest document, “Our Approach to Zionism”, which tokenizes, appropriates, revises and explicitly lies about Mizrahi and Sephardic history and experiences in order to promote a hostile, anti-Israel agenda. As Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, we reject JVP’s framing of the Mizrahi and Sephardic experience as a driving force of their anti-Zionism and we request that JVP remove all references to Mizrahi and Sephardic history in this document and in all other organizational literature. We ask them to stop in their failed attempts to represent Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, in any capacity. JVP’s latest statement is built on the erasure of Mizrahi and Sephardic voice, truth and history and ultimately promotes an agenda which is harmful to Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews. Because it cannot accept the simple historical truth that most Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews are and continue to identify as Zionist, JVP instead propagates a portrayal of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews as pawns without any agency. We reject this revisionism, and call it out for the orientalism and racism that it is. Because it does not fit with its authors’ preconceived views about Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, the JVP document fails to reference the genuine importance and communal role of Zionism in the lives of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews. Zionism is an embedded religious principle of our faith, demanded in our Bible, fulfilled by our ancestors, Judges and Kings, by our First Temple and Second Temple Commonwealths. It has been the yearning of Jews throughout more than 2,500 years of diaspora; the Babylonian Diaspora, the Byzantine Diaspora, the Spanish Diaspora, the European Diaspora and the Middle East and North African Diaspora. The Establishment of the State of Israel in the lands of Ancient Israel is the fulfillment of that religious imperative. Moreover, political Zionism was a part of Jewish communal life in nearly every country in the Middle East as is evidenced by the underground Zionism clubs that existed throughout the region. Today, the majority of the Mizrahi and Sephardic community resides in Israel, and the vast majority of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, in Israel and in diaspora, are self-identified Zionists. In seeking to obscure that reality in service of its own narrow ideological ends, the JVP statement perpetuates a history of racist exclusion where Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews are spoken for and spoken over. The document fails to recognize and address the rampant state-sanctioned anti-Semitism, frequently taken under the banner of anti-Zionism, in the 20th century. Under the color of law, one million indigenous Jews from the Middle East and North Africa were persecuted, dispossessed and ultimately fled or were ethnically cleansed from countries their ancestors lived in for millennia. Of those, 650,000 found refuge in Israel, the place where they regained freedom, rights and a sense of personal security. It fails to grapple with the terrible truth that the most tangible political accomplishment of anti-Zionism in the 20th century was not to establish a Palestinian state, but to engender the decimation of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish communities across the Middle East. As a (now-publicly) anti-Zionist organization whose spokespeople and leadership continue to be predominantly Western and Ashkenazi, JVP must reckon with the deeply-embedded anti-Mizrahi and Sephardic orientation inside the anti-Zionist movement. We acknowledge the history of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish marginalization in Israel, as many of the undersigned organizations have been at the forefront of efforts to overcome that history and dismantle discriminatory barriers. Yet JVP’s ‘discrimination’ narrative is a blunt and outdated Israel-bashing tool. Many charges of early cultural discrimination no longer hold true in 21st century Israel. Mizrahi and Sephardic culture is a central element of Israeli society, and today Mizrahim have held every government post except prime minister. Inter-ethnic Jewish marriages in Israel are running at 25 per cent and the mixed Israeli family is fast becoming the norm. But most importantly, JVP deliberately overlooks how, with the exception of a handful of post-Zionist Mizrahi academics who are non-representative, the Mizrahi and Sephardic community in Israel overwhelmingly has asserted its demands for equality as an instantiation of, not departure from, Zionist ideals. For JVP to now appropriate our struggle as part of a political campaign that most Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews reject is deeply disrespectful, yet sadly predictable from an organization whose interest in the Mizrahi community has always proven to be instrumental and transactional in character. Indeed, we have seen first-hand the exclusionary and isolating practices promoted by JVP, including the opportunistic elevation of cherry-picked voices whose views stand far outside the Mizrahi and Sephardic mainstream, and the endorsement of BDS and anti-normalization movements which attempt to cut off Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish activists from allies and resources around the world. Simply put, in the fight for Mizrahi equality, JVP has not been and is not now an ally, and more often than not it has explicitly aligned itself with those who have done us harm. We condemn its self-congratulatory and ahistorical attempt to position itself as a friend of the Mizrahi community even as it continues to talk over and erase actual, extant, and living Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish community organizations. Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish history has long been abused as a talking point for this or that ideological agenda, and for years JVP has been among the primary offenders. Their statement on Zionism is only the latest example of a long history of patronizing hostility towards Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, and should be rejected by anyone who considers themselves an ally of the diverse voices in the Jewish community. For those interested in genuinely hearing and engaging with the Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish community, the organizations undersigned below stand ready to educate you. Signatories 30 Years After A.A. Society Inc Babylonian Heritage Center of Great Neck, New York Beth Abraham Synagogue of the Sephardic Congregation of New England Coalition of Organisations of Jews from Arab and Islamic Countries in Israel Composed of Association of Jews from Damascus, Syria E’eleh BeTamar: Association of Jews from Yemen Eli: Association of the Jews from Lebanon Kedem for Information on Orientalism Merage Foundation for Jews from Iran Moriah: Association of Jews from Algeria Organisation of the Jews of Kurdistan Orot Institute for Moroccan Jews Shemesh: Organization of Jews from Iraq The Jews of Harat-Afganistan in Jerusalem The World Federation of Tunisian Jewry Union des Juifs d’Egypte en Israel Congregation Bene Neharayem of Jamaica Estate, New York Congregation Ezra Bessaroth of Seattle, Washington Historical Society of Jews from Egypt Harif, UK Association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa Iranian American Jewish Federation JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa JJAC: Justice for Jews from Arab Countries Kahal Joseph Congregation of Los Angeles, California Magain David Sephardim Congregation of San Francisco, California Manhattan East Synagogue S&P Sephardi Community of London Incorporating Bevis Marks Synagogue Lauderdale Road Synagogue Wembley Sephardi Synagogue Sephardic Community Alliance Sephardic Congregation of Evanston, Illinois Sephardic Congregation of Florida Sephardic Educational Center Sephardi Federation of Palm Beach County Sephardic Jews in DC Sephardic Legacy Project Sephardic Minyan of the Boca Raton Synagogue Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation of Seattle, Washington World Organization of Jews from Iraq For those interested in genuinely hearing and engaging with the Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish community, we stand ready to educate. The Laws That Criminalized Zionism → Press inquiries: Sarah Levin, Executive Director, JIMENA · sarahlevin@jimena.org
We would like to utilize this post to reflect on a disarming trend taking place on college campuses across the country: the alarming rise of Anti-Semitic, Anti-Normalization, BDS activity. It is impossible to address Anti-Semitism on campus without confronting the growing anti-Israel sentiment. Though veiled as political activism, BDS campaigns are in effect vehicles for Anti-Semitism, as they target the world’s only Jewish State, and lead to silencing and bullying of Jewish and pro-Israel students. BDS and anti-Israel activism relies a false narrative which portrays Jews as white European colonialists who invaded a third-world country, displaced a significant portion of the indigenouspopulation, oppressed and segregated the remainder. As North America’s primary organization representing Jewish refugees from the Middle East & North Africa, JIMENA is uniquely positioned to refute these myths by empowering students with the personal narratives of former Jewish refugees indigenous to Arab countries and Iran. We teach students that: “Jews and Israelis are not white colonists, we are indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa. We speak Arabic. We have been made refugees from countries we lived in for over 2,500 year. In today’s value, we had $6billion confiscated when we fled.” BDS messaging preys on college student’s ideologies of empathy and support for the “third-world victim” while singling out those with “white privilege” as the oppressors. This has had a catastrophic effect on Jewish students confidence, willingness, and ability to support Israel. This damaging BDS messaging has effectively served to isolate, unaffiliated, and disempower many of our Jewish students and potential student supporters of Israel. There is no better counter defense to this propaganda than the story of Jewish refugees from Arab countries. JIMENA is the only organization who can balance Palestinians exclusive monopoly on Middle Eastern refugee claims by exposing current and past ethnic cleansings and refugee crises in the region. Contrary to the BDS narrative of Jews in Israel as European settler colonialists, Jewish communities lived and thrived throughout the Middle East & North Africa continuously for over 3,000 years – predating the Arab Islamic conquests by centuries. Only as recently as the 20th century, 850,000 Mizrahi & Sephardic Jews were forcibly displaced from Arab countries and Iran as a result of ethnic cleansing and brutal, systemic anti-Semitic violence. Of the suddenly stateless, penniless Mizrahi refugees, an overwhelming 60% sought refuge in one of the only countries in the world that would accept them: the State of Israel. Today, Mizrahi refugees and their descendants comprise over half of Israel’s Jewish population, and are intrinsic to the country’s society and cultural fabric. Sharing the histories of Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa is a potentially paradigm-shifting tool. Yet their stories remain largely unknown to students, Jewish communal staff and professors at universities across North America. Facets of JIMENA’s established on-campus programming include: – JIMENA Student Internship: students develop and implement JIMENA-themed academic projects, engage their peers in on-campus JIMENA events, and expose their campus community to the personal and communal stories of former Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa – Mizrahi & Sephardic Speakers Bureau: our 40-member Speakers Bureau, which has presented at over 100 campuses, serves as the North American voice of Jewish refugees from Arab countries. The Bureau is composed of former refugees, experts and cultural ambassadors who have compelling first-hand stories and the knowledge to represent Jews from Arab countries. – Advocacy Training and Kit: a comprehensive guide for students & faculty to address the story of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. It includes 11 country-specific histories and statistics on Jewish population and migration within the last century; public speaking tips and debating best-practices; a comprehensive bibliography and list of resources for learning more; and ideas for events and possible programming on college campuses to stay involved. – Collaborations: JIMENA has worked with a diversity of campus student organizations, including Muslim and Christian groups. Numerous on-campus student organizations such as Stand With Us, CAMERA, Jewish Agency for Israel Fellows, Hillel and numerous Jewish high schools continuously rely on JIMENA’s resources to educate and empower their students on the subject of Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Our speaker’s presentations, film screenings, Sephardic cultural engagement programs, and advocacy trainings have been regularly utilized by all leading student organizations. JIMENA remains the central resource center on issues related to refugees from Arab countries and Iran. Moving Forward. In these critical times, JIMENA seeks to expand our impact. Some of our campus programming goals include: JIMENA’s goal is to become the central resource and distribution center for campus activities and resources promoting the history of Jewish refugees from Arab countries. We aim to strengthen our relationship with Jewish student organizations who have students on the ground and an expressed interest in JIMENA’s narrative. Through our partnerships with on-campus organizations, we’d like to provide JIMENA produced, Mizrahi Refugee Advocacy Kits, Forgotten Refugees films, and JIMENA Speaker Presentations to Jewish student groups, interns and fellows, on every North American college campus. This will ensure that Jewish students have access to a plethora of information and speakers who can empower and teach them how to effectively incorporate the Mizrahi refugee narrative in their Israel advocacy. Incorporating the Sephardic and Mizrahi refugee experience into Jewish Day School curriculum will strengthen students’ ability to properly advocate for Israel and will enrich their understanding of Jewish diversity, and Middle Eastern history and demography. JIMENA “Journey to the Mizrah” initiative is producing Mizrahi and Sephardic content that incorporates issues of Jewish refugees, Jewish multiculturalism, current Jewish demographics, and Middle Eastern diversity, refugee, and humanitarian issues and to create incentivized teacher training blocks. Provide JIMENA Speakers Bureau advocacy and cultural programming at campuses throughout North America. Ideally, we’d like to have a JIMENA speaker present at every major North American campus in 2015/16. Articles written by JIMENA Student Interns Remembering the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa. Ha’Am UCLA’s Jewish Newsmagazine Keeping prejudice under control: The Jewish people deserve the security of a homeland. The Daily Californian Visits to Stanford Exhibit Israeli Multiculturalism. Stanford Review Summertime discovery about by Mizrahi heritage. J Weekly UC Berkeley Student Leader Testimonial. Youtube Jewish Refugees From Arab Countries on College Campuses Shared history of persecution unites Mizrahi, Sephardic Jews. Jewish Journal The Forgotten Refugees: CAMERA Fellows Event Tent at Cal: No flaps, only civil discourse about Israel. Jweekly Israel ‘apartheid’? Absurd BDS claim debunked at Cal. Jweekly Jewish woman describes family’s flight from Tunisia, Virginia Commonwealth University No Holds Barred: Bringing the fight to Students for Justice in Palestine. JPOST JIMENA Against BDS at UC Berkeley