Abstract
This lecture investigates the historical construction of Mizrahi Jews as intermediaries straddling the divide between Jewish and Arab identities and between Hebrew and Arabic. It traces the ambivalent genealogy of this mediating role, showing how Mizrahim were enlisted by the Zionist establishment as translators, spies, collaborators, and broadcasters, even as they were viewed with suspicion for blurring national and cultural boundaries. Through case studies of Mizrahi mistaʿarvim and Kol Yisrael Radio station in Arabic, the lecture rethinks mediation not as reconciliation but as a contested practice of power, surveillance, culture, and belonging in the post-Ottoman and post-partition Middle East.