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Paper short abstract:

This communication focuses on the construction of these contrasting figures of 'tiers-exclus' and vanquised, through the production of narratives that covers up processes of dispossession still ongoing for Palestinians, and a long history of discrimination for Jews in Islamic countries.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation focuses on narratives that revisit the memories of the Jewish communities in Islamic countries by mobilizing references to the Shoah and the Palestinian Nakba. Today, if some authors consider the history of these communities as reduced to mere fragments of personal memories shared in small family circles, the price of their integration was their "disorientation" in a country that regarded the "Levantine mentality" as a factor in the destruction of individuals and societies. This history has, however, recently received a renewed attention in academic, associative and/or activist circles, the media and various national and transnational public spheres. Based on individual experiences and testimonies, this past is invested with a new significance, calling for the recognition of Jews as refugees from Islamic countries. This recognition is presented as a new debt of Palestinian refugees to Israel. By diverting and appropriating the concept of the vanquished "other", the histories of the Palestinians and of The Jews of islamic countries are inextricably intertwined. This communication focuses on the construction of these contrasting figures of vanquished and 'tiers-exclus', caught as hostages between different states, through the production of narratives that covers up processes of dispossession still ongoing for Palestinians, and a long history of internal discrimination for Jews in Islamic countries. This nexus, where debt and recognition are closely intertwined, reveals a genealogy of positions and ideas mobilized through references to the Shoah and the Nakba, in their chronology and sedimentations.