Revenge of Israel's Jewish under-class


April 1, 2015
Sarah Benton

Two articles from Ha’aretz with an inset on Menachem Begin.


One of the many ma’abarot camps that were hurriedly set up for Mizrahi immigrants – mainly from Morocco, Iraq and Yemen. The Yemenis were airlifted out in 1949-50 in Operation Magic Carpet, run by Israel the UK and US after anti-Jewish rioting in Yemen.*

The Israeli left’s defeat had nothing to do with Ashkenazi arrogance

Apologizing for past sins and flaunting our social sensitivity won’t win us any more votes either.

By Carlo Strenger, Haaretz
April 01, 2015

Nehemia Shtrasler [below] argues that the results of the last election, along with those of the last 35 years, are the result of Ashkenazi condescension toward Mizrahim.

Shtrasler’s argument is important because it conflates a correct empirical claim with a wrong-headed explanation.

The empirically correct claim is that much of Israeli politics is not really about the two-state solution or about social justice, but about resentment between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim [Jews who hail from Middle Eastern or Arab countries]. In some cases, as in the politics of Shas, this is explicit, whereas in other cases, as in the high percentage of Mizrahim who vote for Likud, it is implicit, since Likud’s leadership is mostly Ashkenazi.

But Shtrasler’s claim that Ashkenazi disdain for Mizrahim is the cause of the left’s defeat is wrong. Mapai, the early predecessor of the Labour Party which governed Israel for its first three decades, indeed behaved despicably toward immigrants from Arab countries from the 1950s onwards. But the Mizrahi lurch to the right was the result of Menachem Begin’s stroke of genius in 1977 in which he mobilized Mizrahi resentment against the Mapai establishment to draw that population overwhelmingly into the political camp of the right.


Menachem Begin in July 1977 when he ‘announces the legalization of three existing Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank territory controlled by Israel. The Knesset will approve of Jewish settlements in occupied territory, apparently without restrictions.’ Begin led the terrorist group Irgun from 1944 until it was absorbed into the IDF with the founding of Israel. He founded Likud (consolidation) in 1973 and was Prime Minister of Israel from 1977 to 1983. He was a right-wing populist and, though Ashkenazi himself, implacably opposed to the Ashkenazi leftist intellectual elite – a position from which he successfully appealed to the excluded Mizrahim – to end the hegemony of secular Ashkenazi rule. In 1982 he authorised the invasion of Lebanon, leading to the Sabra Shatila massacre of Palestinians by Israel’s allies, the Phalangists, in 1982, a horror from which his reputation did not recover.

Since then Mizrahi voting patterns have reflected a phenomenon known for much of the second half of the twentieth century, in which socioeconomically lower classes tend to vote for the far right, particularly when a country is under some form of threat – which Israel constantly is.

The explanation favoured in the literature of political science and political psychology is that the weaker classes seek a form of self-respect in nationalist ideologies, particularly when those ideologies are tainted with racism.

This holds true for many of Likud’s voters (including some Ashkenazim) no less than those who vote for Marine le Pen in France or Geert Wilders in the Netherlands.

Much of Mizrahi voting patterns are therefore due to the fact that Mizrahim constitute the overwhelming majority of Israel’s lower socioeconomic percentiles and of Israel’s periphery. The more Mizrahim live in the centre, and the more educated they are, the more they vote to the left.

In other words, voting to the right has very little to do with Mizrahi identity in itself (after all, there are many Ashkenazi right-wingers), but exemplifies a pattern that can be observed in many other countries.

Israel’s left has tried to tackle the animosity of socioeconomically disadvantaged Mizrahim in the wrong way. It has desperately tried to show how socially minded it is, implicitly trying to ingratiate itself to the lower socioeconomic classes.

But this strategy has never worked anywhere. Disgruntled white men in the American south will not vote for Democrats, even if the Republicans’ policies deprive them of social benefits. Disgruntled Christians in who live in outlying areas of France vote for Marine le Pen, even though most of them live in places where there are almost no Muslims. Voting is ultimately more about asserting one’s identity than it is about economic interests.

Israel’s liberals must therefore stop trying to ingratiate themselves to anybody. We cannot undo the mistakes of Mapai towards Mizrahim from the 1950s to the 1980s, and apologizing for them, as Ehud Barak did in 1999, won’t win over those who do not believe in liberal principles, be they Mizrahi or not.

If we want to convince voters, any voters, of our views, we should not hide those views behind concern for social justice. If anything, efforts to hide our core principles behind the call for social justice is in itself a form of condescension.

Voters should know clearly what we stand for: We want separation of religion and state, full equality for minorities including women, gays, Arabs and other religious groups.

We should speak our truth loud and clear: More than anything, we care about Israel’s remaining a liberal democracy, and our deepest concern is that Israel’s political right is undermining core liberal values like equality before the law and freedom of the individual.

We believe, for good reason, that it is in Israel’s existential, moral and political interest to remain a Western country. We have strong arguments behind our world view, and we believe that our moral beliefs coincide with Israel’s long-term existential interest of being part of the Western World.

No amount of political correctness will cover up the fact that we are now fighting a political and cultural war for Israel’s identity. Only by standing fully and firmly behind our principles do we show genuine respect for voters, and might possibly convince them that our position better ensures Israel’s future.



Rabbis attend a prayer rally and memorial to mark one year since the death of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas party and the Sephardic Jewish community in the Jerusalem Payis Arena Stadium in Jerusalem, Israel, 28 September 2014. Shas followed Begin’s lead in bringing religion into political life – and moving sharply to the right on behalf of the despised and excluded. Photo by Abir Sultan / EPA

The price of intra-Jewish ethnic condescension in Israel

Mizrahim suffered widespread oppression, discrimination and neglect. Today this is no longer the case, but what remains – the condescension and derision – is just as bad.

By Nehemia Shtrasler, Haaretz
March 26, 2015

Call it whatever you want: the State of Israel versus the State of Tel Aviv; the periphery versus the centre; the black tribe versus the white tribe – in the end, the truth will hit you in the face: We’re talking about Mizrahim versus Ashkenazim.

This is the main explanation for the election results. It’s also the explanation for the result of the previous election, and all those that came before it. The ethnic genie is alive and well, and will be with us for many years to come.

You can argue from now until the cows come home over the right solution to the conflict with the Palestinians. You can disagree about the causes of the high cost of living and exorbitant housing prices. That’s not what made the difference. It was Ashkenazi (Jews of Eastern European descent) condescension toward Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern descent) that determined the election outcome.

For it’s possible to persuade people that the time has come for a diplomatic solution that will prevent the emergence of a binational state that would spell the end of the Zionist dream. It’s also possible to persuade people that the government is to blame for failing to bring down the cost of living and housing costs. But it’s not possible to degrade and mock and insult a large group of people and then go and ask the Mizrahim for their votes.

Nobody is willing to be humiliated. Nobody is willing to let their values and beliefs be disparaged. Every person has self-respect that guides him and his actions, and this holds true for Mizrahim just as it does for Ashkenazim. Nonetheless, time after time, the condescension comes from one direction only: from Ashkenazim, directed at Mizrahim.

Let’s take a brief inventory: In the heated 1981 election campaign, Shimon Peres was heckled and shouted at during an campaign stop in Beit Shemesh. He lost his cool and shouted back: “You don’t scare me. I’m not afraid of your fascism, your Khomeini-ism, or your Mizrahi social movements.” And at that same emotionally charged rally, Mordechai Gur called out: “We’ll screw you just like we screwed the Arabs.” It was in the same election, perhaps the stormiest in the country’s history, that entertainer Dudu Topaz said at the big campaign rally in Malchei Yisrael [now Rabin] Square: “The [Mizrahi] riffraff are in Metzudat Ze’ev [Likud headquarters in Tel Aviv]. They are barely good enough to serve as guards on a base, if they even enlist,” and in so doing drove the final nail in the Labor Alignment’s coffin. Begin won that election by a 10,000-vote margin.

In 1998, Labor MK Ori Orr’s offensive remarks about Moroccan immigrants were reported, and a year later, in the 1999 election, actress Tiki Dayan said at a conference at Kibbutz Shefayim that “Bibi supporters are rabble from the shuk.”

In this election, we had artist Yair Garbuz talking about the “kissers of amulets and idolaters who prostrate themselves on the graves of holy men.” Arye Dery immediately pounced, morphing “kissers of amulets” into “kissers of mezuzahs,” thereby hugely increasing the ranks of the offended group.

Many Israelis have the custom of kissing mezuzahs. They are not ultra-Orthodox or even Orthodox. They are traditional. They keep kosher (70 percent of the public), they go to synagogue on the holidays, and some might also light a candle on the grave of the Sephardi kabbalist Baba Sali. So what? Does that make them completely irrational? Does that mean they have less understanding of social, economic and security issues? Does their vote count for less than the vote of those who still vote for Mapai and Ben-Gurion?

Once upon a time, when Mapai still ruled the roost, the Mizrahim, who were concentrated primarily in the periphery, suffered widespread oppression, discrimination and neglect. Today this is no longer the case, but what remains – the condescension and derision – is just as bad.

The Alignment (and then Labour and now the Zionist Union) is perceived as “Ashkenazi,” regardless that it was once headed by Amir Peretz from Sderot. Likud is perceived as “Mizrahi,” regardless if it has only been headed by Ashkenazim. It is the party that opened its doors to Mizrahim like David Levy, Silvan Shalom, Meir Sheetrit, David Magen and Moshe Katzav.

So, it wasn’t the diplomatic-security issue that won the election. It wasn’t Iran that determined voting patterns. Nor were socioeconomic issues the key. It was all about ethnicity, and revenge was served up cold at the ballot

Notes and Links
* There was severe overcrowding and lack of sanitation in the ma’abarot – unlike the facilities provided by the Jewish agency and Ministry for Absorption for Ashkenazi immigrants from Europe (though conditions for all early impoverished immigrants were difficult). While Israel (with help from the US and UK) felt obliged to airlift Yemeni Jews to Israel in 1949-50, and also to accept an influx of Iraqi Jews after similar anti-Jewish displays, the country had actively persuaded Sephardi Jews from North west Africa to come to Israel because, as those Jews then bitterly complained, Israel needed them as proof of its claim that it was the home for all Jews. In fact, in its Eurocentric blinkers, Israel neither wanted nor respected these North Africans as ‘real Jews’.

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