Zionist settlers encountered an internal Jewish Orient before any Arab one

Evidence

As the first encounter with the East for many Jewish immigrants in Palestine was the encounter with the Jewish East—the communities of “exotic” Jews from Asia and the Mediterranean—this often exposed the foundations of the “internal orientalism” in Jewish Israeli society. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 586

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘internal orientalism’ — the orientalist gaze applied to fellow Jews, a concept carried through the chapter.
• SEED: Essay angle: how every colonial settler project has its ‘internal Orient’ — the co-ethnic group treated as authentic and backward simultaneously.
• XREF: Connects to Edward Said’s Orientalism and to the chapter’s core thesis about oriental Jews as colonial ‘material’.