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This article explores how age became racialized in the context of British Mandate Palestine (1917-48). Specifically, it charts European Zionist discourses about how Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews aged in different ways. These discourses, which I call "age talk, "played an important role in the court case of Rachel Habshush Ohevet-Ami. In June 1939, Ohevet-Ami, a young Jewish woman of Yemeni and Moroccan descent, disguised herself as an "Arab" and attempted to execute an attack targeting Palestinians in Jerusalem. In her ensuing trial, two questions would decide Ohevet-Ami's fate: How old was she And who had the power to decide? As this article searches for an answer, it addresses questions along the way that lie at the heart of the history of British Mandate Palestine about what it meant to be an Arab or a Jew, an "oriental" or a "European, " a terrorist or a freedom fighter, and a child or an adult.
Key words: age, Irgun, Mizrahi Jews, Palestine, Yemeni Jews
Caroline Kahlenberg, "The Girl with a Bomb in Her Basket: Age, Race, and Jewish Terror on Trial in British Mandate Palestine," Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society n.s. 29, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 2024): 189-215. Copyright © 2024 The Trustees of Indiana University. doi:10.2979/jss.00013
The Palestinian Arab boy was no older than 12 when he thwarted a terrorist attack.1 On a Friday morning in June 1939, he had just finished his work-selling sesame bread outside of Jerusalem's Central Prison-when a young, veiled woman dressed in modest black clothing offered him another job: to carry her basket up the hill to the prison gates, where she said she was going to visit her brother. The boy accepted, but he soon noticed three strange things about this woman and her basket. First, though she looked like other Palestinian Muslim women, her Arabic accent did not sound local. Second, her basket was surprisingly heavy for what she claimed was in it: olives, bread, and fruits. And third, the bread peeking out of the basket, as the boy would later testify, was not "Arab" but "Jewish."
When they reached the prison gates, the boy acted on his suspicion. He approached an Arab police officer stationed nearby who, along with two British officers, searched the young woman...