Prior to the Arab-Israeli conflict that started with the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, Arab Jews established themselves not only as an integral part of Arab society but also as a vital and sparkling part of its culture and lifestyle. Jewish Egyptians, for instance, lived in harmony and peace with the rest of the population, identifying themselves as native Egyptians. Israel-Pelletier asserts that "Egyptian Jews are connected to Egypt by ties as ancient and enduring as Judaism itself" (Israel-Pelletier 4). A similar but more exciting experience develops in Iraq, given the diversity of ethnic and religious groups such as "Arabs, Kurds and Turcomans, Assyrian and Aramean Christians, and Yazidis" (Beinin xi). According to the prominent Jewish Iraqi figure Sassoon Heskel, "Jews regard themselves as Iraqis and do not claim any minority rights" (qtd. in Schlaepfer 225). It could persuasively be argued that Arab Jews enjoyed a sort of freedom and independence that their Western counterparts lacked. In the West, Jews were profoundly prejudiced against and excluded simply as "Other." Clearly, the Jewish Western experience represents a history of suffering, marginality, humiliation, and loss. As Muriel Rukeyser succinctly puts it: "To be a Jew in the twentieth century/ Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse/ Wishing to be invisible, you choose/ Death of the spirit, the stone insanity" (Rukeyser 65).