Ryan Zohar
Ryan is a graduate student in Near East Studies and Library & Information Science at New York University and Long Island University. He writes about Middle Eastern Jewish intellectual history, the politics of Mizrahiut in Israel/Palestine, Iraqi-Jewish cultural production.
As Israel ramped up rhetoric against the Egyptians in the late 1960s and early 1970s, families of all backgrounds and all walks of life gathered together in their homes to laugh, smile, and cry, watching the films of the “enemy.” By 1973, the two nations again found themselves at war, and yet the movies still captivated the Israeli public. In the morning, Israeli sons were sent to war on Egypt’s border, and in the evening their parents watched Egyptian films.