What Fauda’s Co-Creator Told Hamas’ Founder
Dear Friends,
When we fail to tell our Greater Sephardic history, we leave others free to distort, erase, and rewrite Jews out of existence. This is why the American Sephardi Federation’s work is so vital and deserves your support.
We preserve, perpetuate, and promote Greater Sephardic history, cultures, and contributions as an integral part of the Jewish experience.
We recover and amplify invaluable Jewish voices through our National Sephardic Library & Archives, exhibitions, publications, projects, the ASF’s Sephardi House Fellowship program, the ASF New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, and Festival Sefarad.
This summer, when we honored Fauda co-creator Avi Issacharoff with the ASF Pomegranate Award, he recalled interviewing Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in Gaza. Avi was then a young Arabic-speaking Israeli journalist. Yassin told him Hamas wanted “‘no Jews between the river and the sea.”
Where were Israel’s Jews supposed to go? Avi asked. “‘Back to their houses in Europe and the U.S.,’” Yassin replied. “But Mr. Sheikh, look at me. My family is not from Europe nor from the U.S.” Yassin was stunned. Avi explained how his family made Aliyah in the 19th century: half from Bukhara, in present-day Uzbekistan, and half from Kurdistan.Yassin turned to him and said: “‘You can stay.’”
It is one thing for Hamas’ founder not to know history. Today, the denial of the Jewish people’s diverse rootedness in Israel has become widespread.
For too long, the Jewish community has relied on Hasbara and Holocaust education to counter antisemitism. Both are very important, but neither gives young Jews the inheritance and knowledge they need to feel connected and proud, nor gives the wider world a meaningful understanding of Jewish peoplehood.
We need to tell the full story, including how Sephardic/Mizrahi travelers and traders, publishers and philosophers, scientists and singers helped shape the modern world. A story that includes Baghdad and Bombay as well as Berlin, Bialystok, and Boston.
Please help us scale the ASF’s proven approach to empowering young people and expanding our circle of friends and allies.
Your generous gift will help us bring the richness of the Greater Sephardic world to new and diverse audiences urgently in need of this perspective.
If we do not tell our story, others will continue telling it for us.
Shanah Tovah U’Metukah!
Anyada Buena,
David E.R. Dangoor, President
&
Jason Guberman, Executive Director
