Jews were racially Whitened while Arabs were raced as non-White threats

Evidence

That European Jewish settlers in the twentieth century were raced as Whites, notwithstanding the prevalence of American anti-Semitism, demonstrated America’s changing national identity from Protestant to Judeo- Christian, discussed in chapter 4. In contrast, Palestinians (incorrectly presumed to all be Muslims) were raced as unenlightened barbarians whose political grievances were illegitimate in the face of European Jews’ claims. The racial Whitening of Jews occurred simultaneously with Arabs’ (both Christian and Muslim) transition from racial ambiguity to non-White foreign threats—a key facet of the Racial Muslim construct. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 637

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The simultaneity claim — one group’s ascent to Whiteness, driven partly by Holocaust sympathy, requires another’s descent into barbarism — is a genuinely dense observation about how racial hierarchies are zero-sum and relational.
• XREF: Connects to Whiteness-studies work (e.g., Noel Ignatiev, Matthew Frye Jacobson) and to how other groups were Whitened by racializing a foil group.