I Was a New Immigrant for a Month: The Aliyah from Yemen and the African Problem

Aryeh Gelblum

1949

Sensitive Content

This entry portrays racism and xenophobia encountered by Mizrahi Jews in Israel. The text provides insight into history; however, The Posen Library does not condone or promote oppression of any kind.

In the living quarters of the [North] African [Jews] in the transit camps, here’s what you’ll find: you’ll find filth, card games, and money, drunkenness, and whoring. Many of them are afflicted with eye, skin, and venereal disease. Not to mention burglary and theft. Nothing is safe against this antisocial element, and no lock can seriously close…

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Creator Bio

Aryeh Gelblum

1921–1993

Journalist Aryeh Gelblum went from Poland to Palestine in 1925. As a writer for the newspaper Haaretz in the late 1940s, he described Israel’s immigrants from Arab countries, spreading venomous stereotypes. Haaretz published a series of fifteen articles by Gelblum, who lived in settlement camps for a month, pretending to be an immigrant named Ḥaim Klopstock.

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