it would be so disingenuous for me to say that my culture is iraqi jewish or syrian/palestinian jewish or ashkenazi brazilian jewish. regardless of the fact that saying that all together is a mouthful, prior to me being born, my family had lived in israel for two entire generations surrounded by moroccan jews, russian jews, yemenite jews, german jews, and so on so forth...
american culture is largely informed by the various different ethnic and racial groups that live here. so are canadian and british culture...most of the countries i would list would be western bc the concept of the "cultural melting pot country" is largely western in nature. when you shove a group of people together to live amongst one another they will often form a common cultural identity. it's how most of the countries in the middle east have unique cultural and national identities despite the fact that their borders were created arbitrarily by (primarily) england and france with little regard to the actual ethnic and cultural demographics that already existed there. why is it that when you shove a bunch of jewish people together to live amongst one another for nearly a century, a common cultural identity isn't formed? and that's not to mention how nonjewish israelis have informed and shaped israeli culture as well.
if you can recognize that ashkenazi jewish culture is something that exists and is distinct from the host countries those jews might have hailed from (oddly enough i never see any leftists claiming that ashke jews stole german culture, russian culture, romanian culture, etc.) then i dont see why it's so difficult for you to acknowledge that the jews living in MENA also had distinct cultural identities, despite similarities between their cultures and that of their home countries... and that when those jews were expelled from their countries en masse and forced to come to israel, they forged a new cultural identity which took from aspects of all of their prior cultures. me saying that amba or sabich are iraqi jewish foods is largely pointless outside of israel because there are no jewish people living in iraq anymore. you're not going to find amba or sabich outside of israel, and if you do, then you're probably at an israeli restaurant.
i am israeli. my culture is israeli. maybe its inconvenient to you and the narrative youve adopted to acknowledge that israeli culture is a thing that exists, but that doesn't change reality
case in point: i gave someone the opportunity to tell me how i should identify if not israeli. they dodged the question, pussied out, and stopped answering.
y'all dont have an answer for how i should identify either; the only solution you can come up with is that i should stop existing. and why? because my paternal grandfather was born in haifa? because my mother's great grandparents were unsafe in iraq and had to be airlifted into israel, by israel, in secret? because my paternal grandmother, whose family had to flee germany when the nazis rose to power, decided she wasn't going to wait around and see if brazil would become hostile to jews as well and made aliyah to israel? because i had the "misfortune" of being born to israeli parents?
and some chud will probably answer this by going "yes. all zionists should die" but that doesn't erase the fact that y'all don't have an answer. you don't know how to cope with the fact that israelis exist and that israeli is in fact a real cultural identity and would much rather shut your eyes to the reality of the world to keep living in the fantasy land you were sold by antizionist propaganda because everything is so much simpler that way
either that or you're not actually all that opposed to genocide 🤷♂️ but you'd never admit that either
