The Arab-Jew opposition is a naturalized modern construction

Evidence

Beyond a horridly all too familiar and inescapable “cycle of violence,” what is it that maintains the distance and kindles the enmity between the Arab and the Jew? What purposes are served by, what are the reasons for, the naturalization of this distance, the naturalization of the opposition, of the enmity between Arab and Jew, one that, as prominent narratives would have us believe, goes back to ancient biblical times, the ineluctable legacy of “the Middle East,” a region and a land eternally ravaged by war and conflict? How did the ostensible markers of Arab (an “ethnic” marker) and Jew (a “religious” one) come to inscribe themselves so forcefully on modern discourses of the most varied kind-political, religious, cultural, and so forth-even when accompanying distinct or even opposed political agendas, caveats and sophisticated critiques and debunkings? — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 36

Categorization

• QUESTION: Challenges the ‘ancient biblical times’ narrative of inevitable Arab-Jew enmity as a naturalized modern discourse — worth chasing how the ethnic/religious marker split was produced.