When We Were Arabs: A Jewish Family’s Forgotten History, by Massoud Hayoun, The New Press, 2019, hardcover, 304 pp. MEB: $20.
There was a time when being “Arab” didn’t necessarily mean you were Muslim. It was a time when Oscar Hayoun, a Jewish Arab, strode along the Nile in a fashionable suit, long before he and his father arrived at the port of Haifa to join the Zionist state only to find themselves hosed down with the pesticide DDT and left unemployed. In that time, Arabness was a mark of cosmopolitanism and intellectualism. Today, in the age of the Likud and ISIS, Oscar’s son, the Jewish Arab journalist Massoud Hayoun, whom Oscar raised in Los Angeles, finds his voice by telling his family’s story.
Highlighted in the new arrivals section of the August/September issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, When We Were Arabs was selected by the DC chapter of the Network of Arab-American Professionals' book club to be discussed at their September meeting at Middle East Books & More. Currently, we are offering When We Were Arabs at a special price of $20 (usually $27). Stop in or order online today for your copy!
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