Doctoral Student Fellow

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies

History Begins at Home: Mizrahi Settlers In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 1967-2005

Yaël Mizrahi-Arnaud studies the history of Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews, with a focus on how ethnicity, nationalism, migration, and collective memory shaped Middle Eastern Jews’ shifting allegiances across the twentieth century. Her dissertation examines Mizrahi participation in the Israeli settlement movement in the 1970s and 1980s, tracing how state policy and ethnic identity intersected in the making of the settler population. Her work on Middle Eastern Jewish history across the Levant and U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East has appeared in Palestine/Israel Review, Jewish Currents, and elsewhere. Supported by Fulbright-Hays, she conducted archival and oral history fieldwork in Israeli settlements across the West Bank in 2025-2026.