Rachel Wahba, at The Blogs

Jul 27, 2024, 3:28 PM

The Courage to Object – Radical Islamic Terrorism

My ancestors in both Iraq and Egypt feared the murderous “Yitbach El Yahud,” slaughter the Jews, the ever popular rallying cry of the crowd exiting mosques onto the street after Friday night prayers. All it took to stir up the...

Jun 1, 2024, 4:19 PM

Remembering The Farhud After October 7th

My mother and family in Baghdad shortly before the Farhud.

June 1st, 1941 as Baghdad’s Jews were preparing for Shavuot a massacre known as the Farhud broke out in the Jewish Quarter. For forty-eight hours Baghdad’s Jews were terrorized. The crowded Jewish Quarter was where the poorest of Baghdad’s...

Apr 2, 2023, 8:45 AM

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Noa Tishby, Bill Maher and Mizrahi invisibility

When the TV host described Palestinians as 'browner' than Israelis, the actress-activist shouldn't have let it slide

Sep 30, 2022, 10:54 AM

Respect – Mizrahi Experience

Since the Six Day War, Jews in the United States and in Israel largely operated on the premise that peace could be bartered for with land. Surely the “conflict” was about “occupied territory,” the West Bank/Judea Samaria that Israel...

May 6, 2022, 7:34 AM

Progressively Sliding into Antisemitism

We have been progressively sliding into antisemitism since Arafat’s cunning and perverse “Zionism is Racism” speech (United Nations, 1975), gained momentum in Progressive spaces. The narrative was set in motion, growing into the twisted logic of BDS and false claims...

Dec 1, 2021, 9:50 AM

The anti-Zionist Mizrahi heritage revisionist problem

Social media enabled Mizrahi activists to amplify our stories. And yet, too many people are mystified, what is a Mizrahi Jew? And what exactly happened, did something happen that emptied the Arab nations of its Jews? Do we have...

Aug 23, 2021, 8:53 AM

Anti-Jewish Racism, Self Esteem, and Israel

The existence of Israel is vital for our collective self-esteem, a People among people, as Jews everywhere. Why aren’t we smart enough to override the anti-Jewish racism we have internalized, now posing as anti-Zionism? I grew up “Stateless,” the child of...

Jun 17, 2021, 10:22 AM

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My Mizrahi mom and why Pride matters

She survived the Farhud massacre, struggled with terminal cancer, and once said the worst trauma in her life was finding out her daughter was a lesbian

Apr 30, 2021, 8:42 AM

Envy and the Oldest Hatred

When Israel’s existence is questioned daily in the media and antisemitism is repackaged and normalized as “anti-Zionism” from Qatar to Ireland, when Israel hatred dominates the United Nations, and BDS raises its ugly head, envy is at work. It...

Jan 28, 2021, 9:05 AM

Antisemitism, Then and Now

As a child in seventh grade at a Catholic International school in Japan, I was told in no uncertain terms that Hitler would go to heaven but my Jewish soul was eternally damned. I was routinely scolded by the...

About Me

Rachel Wahba is a San Francisco Bay Area based writer, psychotherapist and the co-founder of Olivia Travel. An Egyptian-Iraqi Jew, Rachel was born in India and grew up stateless in Japan. The many dimensions of her exile and displacement are a constant theme in her professional work as well as her activism as an advisory board member for JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa).