This paper is a socio-cultural study of North African (maghribi) Jewish immigrants to the State of Israel during the first decade after the establishment of the state. I am interested in the way these immigrants narrated their experience, and in the way this experience came to construct a unique collective identity in Israel. To tap into the sentiments of this subaltern group, I will study the personal letters these immigrants wrote their families in North Africa and the letters family members in North Africa sent their relatives who immigrated to Israel. To complement my study I will also examine letters by Ashkenazi citizens of Israel, depicting Jews from Arab lands. All these letters were secretly intercepted and copied by the Israeli state apparatuses which wanted to spy on the soldiers and civilians in order to maintain control over them. The cultural affinity of Jews from Arab lands to the other native (Arab) population of these lands, both Muslim and Christians, was amply demonstrated by scholars. Besides language, many elements of housing style, garb, food etc. were shared across religious communities in the Arab world. However, more than a shared lived experience, the letters by North African Jews used for this study suggest that a collective identity developed among immigrants from Arab lands subsequent their arrival to Israel. The shaping of this Mizrahi or Arab Jewish identity in Israel took form in opposition to another hegemonic identity Jews from Arab lands encountered upon their immigration to Israel—that of the Ashkenazi Zionists. Although the term Mizrahim ("easterners") only appeared in the public discourse in the 1980s and 1990s in opposition to the condescending term bnei edot hamizrah ("descendants of the oriental ethnicities") which was used by the Ashkenazi group, I suggest we can locate the budding of this new identity immediately after Israel was created. Both the letters of the hegemonic Ashkenazi group within the IDF describing soldiers from Arab lands, and the letters by the immigrants themselves, show that discrimination, racism and Orientalization were key in shaping the new Mizrahi identity. This is not to suggest that the Mizrahi or Arab Jewish identity was a passive or a reactive one. On the contrary, the letters show that an oppressive Ashkenazi-Zionist approach towards the immigrants from Arab lands stirred several distinct actions, all pivotal in shaping the new collective identity.