Later, having emigrated to the United States, he searches for a coping mechanism, still smarting from having been at times an unwelcome minority in the Arab world. The dominant cultures in Morocco, before it took on its Arab Muslim character, were Amazigh and Jewish, while Christians thrived in the Arab world into the 20th century. But Hayoun has little use for garden-variety Zionists like David Ben-Gurion or Golda Meir, who both misunderstood and loathed Arab and Arab Jewish culture. Ben-Gurion, like Golda Meir, was largely ignorant of the intellectual and spiritual history of the Jews of the Arab world, and of Spain, Turkey, and Iran. It is the work of an Arab American man of Jewish faith taking a stand for his world — the Arab world and the human world — from an Arab American perspective.

Source: The North Africa Journal February 15, 2020 18:00 UTC