The encounter: Ashkenazi Zionism and the Jews of the Muslim world, sociohistorical background

Defining the identity of an oppressed collective is central to any political struggle. As in national struggles, a cultural or ethnic group’s self-definition is a necessary link in the sociopolitical struggle. As shown by Edward Said,1 so long as a group’s identity is shaped and defined from without by the dominant cultural hegemony, not only does the group not determine the components and borders of its identity, it is also manipulated to serve the hegemony’s agenda and internalizes its own false identity.