Rachel Shabi

Rachel Shabi is a British journalist and author. She is a contributing writer to The Guardian and the author of We Look Like the Enemy: The Hidden Story of Israel's Jews from Arab Lands, a book on Israel's Mizrahi Jews (who she calls 'Arab Jews'). She is highly critical of Israeli policy.

Shabi was born in Newham, Essex, England. Her father had Iraqi Jewish ancestry. She studied politics and literature at the University of Edinburgh. She writes on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Middle East for national and international publications such as The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, Foreign Policy, the New Statesman and Al Jazeera English.

Shabi's book, We Look Like the Enemy: The Hidden Story of Israel's Jews from Arab Lands, was published in 2009. In the work, Shabi argued that Israel practices systemic racism against what she calls 'Arab Jews' (Mizrahi Jews). The book received a National Jewish Book Award. She was shortlisted for the 2011 Orwell journalism prize and was a joint winner in the Press Category of the Anna Lindh Journalist Award for reporting across cultures (for her article "We were looking for a nice, peaceful place near Jerusalem" published by The Guardian) the same year. In 2013, Shabi won the International Media Awards' Cutting Edge Media award.

Shabi has often argued that criticism of Israel is not antisemitic, writing:

On the other hand, Adam Levick, writing in Algemeiner has criticized Shabi's stance, saying "Rachel Shabi is a journalist... whose contempt for the Jewish state, and seeming indifference to antisemitism, is consistently demonstrated."

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