Israeli radio officials feared Oriental Jewish music was indistinguishable from Arabic music

Evidence

In 1953, Y. Haftman of the Radio Council requested that “oriental Jewish music not be played in the morning before eight as it is misleading, since the listener cannot distinguish between Oriental and Arabic music.” — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 719

Categorization

• SHARE: For anyone interested in Mizrahi identity or colonial/racial sonic politics — a concrete 1953 policy moment where music programming was policed for ethnic ambiguity.
• XREF: Connects to the soundscape work on how ambient sounds and music encode ethnic/cultural boundaries, and to the im/modesty article’s theme of cultural markers being policed.