Politics of Jewish divisions

Binyamin and Sara Netanyah patronise the Moroccan Mimouna celebration, April 14, 2012. Mimouna, origin Morocco, is one of those religious/pagan festivals, like Easter and Pesach – it marks the end of Passover and the start of spring. Photo by GPO

Israel: Where do the Mizrahim fit in? (Part 1)

By Ran Greenstein, Jadaliyya
August 25, 2015

Many people are unaware that the majority of the Israeli population belongs to one of the two groups that cut across the conventional divide between settlers and natives. These are Palestinian citizens, comprising twenty percent of the population, and Mizrahim, Jews whose origins go back a generation or two to the Middle East and North Africa, and who comprise approximately forty to forty-five percent of the population. Jointly they outnumber Ashkenazim, Jews with origins in Eastern and Central Europe, who have been the dominant group in Israel, socially, culturally and politically.

The two groups stand in opposite relations to the Israeli regime: Palestinians are citizens who formally enjoy equal rights, but in the ‘”Jewish democratic state” suffer disadvantages as an excluded minority. Their links to other Palestinians – living under occupation and in the Diaspora – make them politically suspect and “security risks” in the eyes of the Jewish majority. In contrast, Mizrahim are part of that Jewish majority that excludes Palestinians socially and politically, although they have some cultural affinities with them. Their own social and cultural marginalization in Israel generally has not resulted in political dissent based on a sense of shared fate with Palestinians or nostalgia for their shared Arab heritage.

The notion of a numerical majority of non-European citizens is a demographic reality but politically problematic, then. It combines people who share no national or religious identification, have radically different political priorities, and rarely co-operate with each other. And yet, this state of affairs was neither inevitable nor immutable. It emerged recently (in historical terms) in the course of struggles over identity formation that involved political manipulations, material processes, cultural adaptations and discursive contestations over meanings and implications of social positions. Since it was constructed over time it could be de-constructed, both in the sense of seeking to understand the process by examining how its conceptual ingredients were put together, and in the sense that what was built could potentially be dismantled and re-built.

In essence, what we are considering here is a political paradox, perhaps the most important of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli Jews who are closest to Palestinians culturally and socially tend to be the most remote from them, according to conventional understandings of the Israeli political spectrum. Israeli Jews closer to Palestinians politically – supporters of liberal-left movements – tend to be remote from Palestinians culturally and socially. There are exceptions to these generalizations but the statements above are widely accepted as valid for Israeli society for most of its existence.

The Historical Context

Why is that the case? To answer this we need to look briefly at the historical context. Before the rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism in the twentieth century, Middle Eastern Jews lived as religious minorities alongside Christians and Muslims, in a relatively tolerant environment (compared to contemporary Europe, especially Eastern Europe). In a society organized on the basis of communal-religious affiliations, Jews were an essential part of the social landscape, distinct yet culturally integrated. Generally, that was the case for North Africa as well, though the spread of colonial rule in the region complicated things by granting French citizenship to Algerian Jews, thereby aligning them with settler society. In other countries – Morocco, Tunisia, Libya – Jews retained the same political status as their Muslim neighbors even if many of them went through European acculturation.

The demise of the Ottoman Empire changed that picture. Old communal identities retained the loyalty of the majority of the population but they were gradually joined by new pan-Arab identification. The rise of Zionism at the same time created an alternative focus for Jewish identity. While it had limited impact on Jewish communities initially, Zionism tainted them by association later on, with the growing threat it posed to the Arabs of Palestine from the 1930s onwards. Local Jews communicated in Arabic (or Kurdish and Berber, depending on location), and shared daily culture with their non-Jewish neighbors, but only relatively a small group of writers and activists, primarily in Iraq and Egypt, took active part in the native intellectual life that was at the heart of pan-Arab nationalism and left-wing politics. The broad Jewish communities rarely participated in mass mobilization and struggle against colonial rule.

The case of Jews in Palestine was somewhat different. The old pre-Zionist community was not quick to change. This was true both for Ashkenazi communities which opposed the new Jewish nationalism in the name of religious orthodoxy and for Sephardi/Mizrahi communities attached to the Ottoman traditional boundaries that allowed peaceful communal coexistence. Those who became involved with the Zionist project usually tried to act as a bridge between recently-arrived Ashkenazi settlers and indigenous Arabs. Their familiarity with local society, culture, and language made them useful for the Zionist movement, though their advocacy of moderation, cultural respect and fitting into rather than breaking up existing social relations was less welcome. As studies by Michelle Campos and Abigail Jacobson show, indigenous Jews were less eager than Ashkenazi immigrants to support confrontational policies opposed by local Arabs and more willing to reach an accommodation with them on an amicable basis.

With the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the British Mandate, the Zionist movement was given an official role in facilitating the Jewish National Home and representing the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine. Under these circumstances, it became very difficult for Jewish dissidents to challenge the dominance of Zionism from within. Most local Jews, Mizrahim included, accepted the new situation without seeking to form alternative institutions. But even then, neither their intellectual elites nor the rank-and-file distinguished themselves by expressing militant nationalist sentiments, anti-Arab hostility, or right-wing zealotry of the kind associated with them today. Before 1948, such attitudes were reserved for radical Zionist activists of Ashkenazi origins.

1948 and After

As in many other respects, 1948 was the crucial turning point. Against the background of the Nakba, mass Jewish immigration transformed the demography of the country. Alongside large numbers of Eastern European immigrants, hundreds of thousands moved into the country from Iraq, Yemen and North Africa as a result of informal collusion between Arab states and Zionist institutions. The Arab regimes used local Jews as scapegoats for their failure to protect Palestine, to divert attention from their own incompetence and corruption. Israel required large number of immigrants to replace Palestinians and prevent their return, by serving as a physical barrier along the borders, as cannon fodder and, later on, as a cheap and docile labour force to meet new economic development goals.

The 1950s were a period of consolidation of a divide between Ashkenazi and “Oriental” Jews (officially referred to in Hebrew as “Edot ha-Mizrah,”: the oriental communities). Distinctions between the two groups were not new but before then they had not acquired an institutionalized state-sanctioned form. The original Zionist vision included mass immigration of Jews into the Land of Israel. With Ashkenazi Jews comprising ninety percent of world Jewry, the role and potential impact of “Oriental” Jews were a minor issue. But mass immigration to the United States and other destinations, the closing-off of Soviet borders, and the Holocaust left non-European Jews as the biggest human reserve for the Zionist project. Hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern and North African immigrants moved to the new state during its first two decades of existence, making them approximately half of the Jewish population.

This development posed a dilemma for the leadership of the new state. It had to resolve a contradiction: how to bolster the Jewish nature of the state at the expense of departing and remaining Palestinians, while retaining Israel’s image as a Western, technologically-advanced, modern society, free of the religious and ethnic legacies and mentalities of Diaspora Judaism? The solution combined three related components: (1) incorporating new immigrants as full citizens – legally, politically and militarily, and (2) marginalizing them culturally and socially by demanding adaptation to norms set by the Ashkenazi establishment. This was facilitated by (3) creating growing distance between their new Israeli identities and their Arab/Islamic past.

Mizrahi activists protest outside Finance Minister Yair Lapid’s house, north Tel Aviv, February 2015. Photo by Yotam Ronen/Activestills.org

Mizrahi identity was born in that period through encounters between people who came from different countries and backgrounds, but shared the experience of incorporation/exclusion in Israel. They became members of the dominant Jewish group vis-à-vis Palestinians although they continued to occupy a subordinate position vis-à-vis Ashkenazim. The term Mizrahim conveyed a new sense of unity that was created over time and matured politically towards the late 1970s. It never replaced the original diversity of its members but rather supplemented it with a common political purpose.

This emerging Mizrahi identity located itself within Jewish tradition and rejected attempts to dilute it through alliances with universal forces such as modernity, socialism, liberal principles and so on. Positioned in contrast to what it regarded as Ashkenazi elitism, it combined loyalty to the Jewish state with “traditional” – not orthodox religious Ashkenazi – values, seen as key to unifying the people – Jews in Israel and elsewhere – under a re-invigorated nationalist hegemony. Overall, this amounted to rejecting secular civic Israeli identity and affirming ethnicity and religion as forces that shape Israel openly and unapologetically.

Of course, Israel never was a civic state. From its inception it was defined as Jewish, and it made distinctions between its citizens on the basis of their ‘nationality’ (le’om in Hebrew, milla in Arabic), a concept indicating ethno-religious origins. It put in place a variety of formal and informal mechanisms to ensure Jewish control over land and natural resources, security matters, symbols and public life. The rise of the Mizrahim as a political force did not change any of this but added another dimension to the debate over the nature of the Israeli state: it re-framed it as a conflict between the popular masses, with clear Mizrahi majority, and the elites, predominantly Ashkenazi in composition.

Elites and Masses

These elites, holding political power until 1977, but retaining a dominant position long after that in the fields of business, media, education and law, were deemed responsible for the historical marginalization of the Mizrahim. Aligned with the Labour Party establishment, they urged immigrants to leave their “backward” culture and habits behind, and embrace Western modernity. Taking advantage of the limited assets and capacities of Mizrahi immigrants, these elites sent them to border areas and poor neighborhoods and towns emptied of their original Palestinian inhabitants in 1948. They thus became dependent on state-created jobs, housing and service provision, and welfare allocations. Access to good quality education was limited as were opportunities for economic and geographical mobility.

In all these respects Mizrahim were pushed into an inferior position in the socio-economic hierarchy. Immigrants arriving at the same period from Eastern Europe also experienced difficulties initially, but family connections to veteran residents and cultural affinities with establishment officials allowed many of them to extricate themselves from the periphery earlier and more easily, while Mizrahim tended to remain stuck there.

Beyond these disadvantages there was a bigger issue. Mizrahim came from an Arab cultural background into a society that was defined and shaped by its exclusion of Arabs, politically and physically. Although indisputably Jewish in religion, they adhered to cultural and social norms that were similar to those of the Palestinians, who had been either ethnically cleansed from the territory just a few years before that or were confined to areas placed under military rule. From the state’s perspective there was no real danger of a political alliance between the two groups based on cultural affinities, but no chances were taken. One crucial task during the absorption process was to ensure that Mizrahim were de-Arabized and inserted into “Western” culture under Ashkenazi hegemony. Little more than folkloric traces were supposed to survive this process.

The success of this effort required both carrots (citizenship rights, recognition as full-fledged Jews), and sticks (suppression of dissent, persecution of trouble makers, social stigma). Military service played a dual role: it was a right and a duty, a tedious and dangerous chore, which initially reinforced the inferior position of Mizrahi recruits but also could open up career opportunities and give people a sense of belonging. Above all it created a solid barrier between Mizrahim and Palestinians, with the latter not only prevented from bearing arms but frequently becoming the target of “security” operations. From the perspective of Mizrahim, young men in particular, nothing worked better to deflect suspicions of looking and sounding like Arabs (with a large visible Star of David necklace a close second).

We must keep in mind here that before 1967 conflict with the Palestinians did not occupy a central place in Israeli consciousness. Mizrahim were coping with the experiences of dislocation and re-adjustment. The generation that made the transition to life in Israel was too traumatized and incapacitated by the transition to pose a real challenge to Labour political domination and Ashkenazi cultural hegemony. But, with the renewed visibility of the conflict from the late 1960s onwards, and the rise of the next Mizrahi generation – people who grew up in Israel and were no longer scared to confront the establishment – a process of profound change started. There was a focus on using the party-political arena to claim a stake in power and, in doing that, re-positioning themselves within the existing ethnic hierarchy.

Radical Protest

The first manifestation of the new stage of Mizrahi politics was an outlier: the Black Panthers of the early 1970s, helped into existence by left-wing activists affiliated with the Matzpen movement.

Israel Bundak upon being released from prison after serving 18 months in 2011. Former Black Panther and ‘godfather of Mizrahi music radio,’ Israel Bundak, began serving a 50-day prison term on Sunday. His imprisonment will be the conclusion of an unprecedented 18-month prison sentence and NIS 25,000 (nearly $7,000) fine handed down in December 2009, for the establishment and operation of “Kol Hamizrach” (Voice of The East), a pirate radio station that played only Mizrahi music, 24 hours a day.Text from Former Black Panther jailed for running Mizrahi pirate radio, +972, July 2013. Photo from Israel Bundak’s Facebook page

Associating with the radical left pushed the Panthers towards modes of action and analysis sharply at odds with mainstream ethnic politics. While focusing on socio-economic marginalization of Mizrahim, as others have done before them, they were the first dissidents to begin to link it to other types of oppression, that of Palestinians inside Israel and in the recently-occupied territories. The Panthers never made solidarity with Palestinians a core element of their campaign, but merely hinting at such a possibility was sufficient to make them a serious threat in the eyes of the establishment. They were subjected to repression and were delegitimized as a bunch of juvenile delinquents who were interested in political provocation rather than in helping their own people.

Although they never managed to move beyond the political margins, the Panthers succeeded in putting ethnic discrimination against Mizrahim on the agenda, in spheres such as housing, jobs, and education. The main beneficiary of this development, however, was not the Left but the nationalist right headed by Menahem Begin. Why was that the case? Primarily because the Right advanced a notion of Jewish identity in which they could find a place symbolically without feeling apologetic about their legacies of traditionalism, ethnicity, and alternative versions of modernity. They had no need to show their credentials as “pioneers” or fit into the Labour-Zionist Sabra image, based on young Ashkenazi kibbutz and elite military graduates.

Menachim Begin, former Irgun terrorist leader, founder of Herut and Likud- he courted the Mizrahim in a populist campaign for votes and become Prime Minister.

By adhering to the new nationalist norms (reinforced by the 1967 war and occupation) they could free themselves from lingering associations with the Arab enemy – defeated but still threatening – and occupy rather the position of heroic Israelis, sharing in the spoils of victory. And the spoils were not merely symbolic. Numerous Mizrahim moved up the socio-economic scale by becoming contractors of Palestinian labour, middlemen for employers of such labour, officials of the civil and military administrations in the occupied territories, and working with the expanded military and security industries. They were not the only Jews to benefit from the occupation, but they did make the most from the new opportunities that had been unavailable to them before. Familiarity with Arabic and local culture gave them a comparative advantage in these fields.

What did the Panthers offer Mizrahim instead? Not a very appealing prospect: an identity of marginalized victims struggling to assert their place against the resistance of a unified Zionist establishment. In the process they would have tainted themselves politically by the same Arab legacy from which they had distanced themselves in previous decades. Both ideologically and materially, Mizrahim managed to uplift themselves at the expense of occupied Palestinians, and thus acquired an interest in their continued subordination. So did many Ashkenazim, of course, but for them it was an extension of old patterns of domination, not a new opportunity.

The Turn to the Right

The alliance between the majority of Mizrahim and the right-wing Likud had been cemented by 1981, when the party won elections for the second time after its historical victory in 1977. That election campaign, like many others since then, was characterized by acrimonious ethnic conflict that pitted a resurgent Likud enjoying the support of the bulk of Mizrahim, against a Labour Party seeking in vain to return itself to political power by uniting the Ashkenazi elites behind it. Little of the electoral campaign had to do with the positions of the different parties vis-à-vis issues of war and peace, occupation and settlement, or budget allocation. Rather, it revolved around the extent to which the lost honour of the Mizrahim was restored by Likud, and the extent to which Labour sought to reverse that, and re-establish its cultural hegemony. Likud leader Menahem Begin highlighted the nexus between the kibbutzim, liberal elitism, and Mizrahi exclusion, a theme that remained a powerful symbol in years to come.

Much of what followed in Israeli party politics, from the 1980s to the present, has addressed this theme. The historical scars of the first generation of Mizrahi immigrants may have faded over the years but their children and grandchildren still express anger and resentment towards those held responsible for the trauma. There was more to it than just wounded feelings, though. Likud paid more attention – at least rhetorically – to the social needs of marginalized Mizrahi communities, and it was more open to young activists in development towns who wanted to embark on a political career. Other parties, primarily Shas, which focused more directly on religious and ethnic components in Jewish tradition than on nationalism, also benefited from this trend and became central to Mizrahi political transformation.

David Levy
Until 1973 Likud had been an alliance of the right-wing Herut and centrist Liberal parties known as Gahal, which had never had an active role in governing Israel and had always been a weak opposition. Levy distinguished himself as the first of many young working-class members of the party from a Mizrahi background. Until then Herut and the Liberals had been both dominated by right-wing upper-class or upper-middle-class intellectuals, businessmen, agriculturalists, or lawyers. 

Levy’s rise expressed the surging power of the new rebellion of the Mizrahi Israeli. In 1977, Levy became one of the most strident campaigners in Likud leader Menachem Begin’s triumphant campaign that overturned the 30 year domination of Israeli elections by parties of the left. He drove hundreds of thousands of Mizrahi voters to the polls to vote for Begin, whose populist messages struck a chord in their hearts after the three decades of almost completely Ashkenazic Mapai hegemony. from Wikipedia

It is important to realize that this process was not driven by anti-Arab attitudes, as mainstream Ashkenazi liberal intellectuals frequently claim. In fact, until the end of the twentieth century Mizrahi leaders of the Likud were among the least belligerent and most “dovish” – relatively speaking – among its senior officials, including leaders like David Levy, Meir Sheetrit and Moshe Katzav. Meanwhile the worst warmongers and expansionist leaders, as well as most settlers in the 1967 Occupied Territories motivated by religious and nationalist ideology, have been of Ashkenazi origins – including Begin himself of course, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu. At the same time, the rejection of Labour Zionism translated into hostility towards policies and discourses associated with the liberal Ashkenazi elites that retained condescending attitudes towards the Mizrahim. These elites were accused of caring more for non-Jewish outsiders, such as Palestinians, and African asylum seekers, than for their “own” people. Equally, others claimed those elites showed more concern for universal norms such as international law and human rights than for Jewish values.

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PART 2

Fans of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team hold up a banner in Hebrew that reads “Beitar Pure Forever” during a match in Jerusalem on Jan. 26, 2012. The fans, with its hard core La Familia, is notorious for its racism and its fan base of Mizrahi Jews. See below. Photo by AFP/Getty Images

In the first part of the article, I discussed the consolidation of a new Israel-based Mizrahi identity by the 1970s and the rise of radical protest associated above all with Black Panthers movement. Much of dissatisfaction with state policy and social marginalization, however, was channelled into support for the resurgent right-wing Likud, which won elections under Menahem Begin’s leadership in 1977 and 1981.

The main reason for the shift to the Right was the rejection of the Labour Party, which was translated into hostility towards policies and discourses associated with the liberal Ashkenazi elites that retained condescending attitudes towards the Mizrahim. These elites were accused of caring more for non-Jewish outsiders, such as Palestinians, and African asylum seekers, than for their “own” people. Equally, others claimed those elites showed more concern for universal norms such as international law and human rights than for Jewish values.

The Post-1977 Scene

Although the Ashkenazi elites had lost political power in 1977, they were still in control over media, academia, the cultural apparatuses, and the legal system. Transforming these spheres and demoting the old elites became a goal that many Mizrahi activists have come to share with the Right and the post-1967 settler movement, even if they came at the issue from different directions. Reinforcing the Jewish nature of the state, and countering liberal notions of universal human rights, civil equality and Western-style democracy, which threaten to make Israel into a “normal” state, have become ideologically unifying themes in that struggle.

The swing towards the Right was accompanied by a movement in another direction, much smaller but potentially important. It saw Mizrahi activists and intellectuals, including academics, writers, and educators, seeking to restore the link between different types of emancipatory struggles as had been attempted by the Black Panthers before them. The Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow (Ha-Keshet Ha-Democratit Ha-Mizrahit), which operated primarily in the mid-1990s during the heyday of the Oslo peace process, took advantage of the relatively good “security situation” to direct attention to internal social conflicts. It addressed issues of land, housing and education, crucial to the subordination of the Mizrahim during the formative state period. Its campaign to equalize access to public land allocated to agricultural settlements associated with the Labour movement, aimed to provide redress for the exploitation of Mizrahi-populated development towns by their neighbouring kibbutzim (almost entirely Ashkenazi in composition). They also campaigned to transfer ownership of public housing in poor neighbourhoods and towns to their Mizrahi residents, and to address the marginalization of Mizrahim in the education system in physical facilities and curriculum content.
Yossi Dahan, co-founder of the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition and leading intellectual and activist.

The Mizrahi Rainbow included in its ranks leading Israeli intellectuals and chose issues with great visibility, of concern to many people. It achieved some successes but could not sustain its thrust.

In contrast to the Black Panthers before them, its activists could not be dismissed as no-good troublemakers. But, like the Panthers, once they attempted to link Mizrahi social justice issues to Palestinian rights and celebrate the Jewish-Arab cultural heritage as a model of coexistence, even if in a tentative and hesitant manner, they became politically tainted. The fear that its constituency would turn away from it if “security” issues – as anything to do with Palestinians is defined in Israeli discourse –were incorporated into its programme hampered the ability of the Rainbow to leave the mainstream. As a result, they could not deal effectively with the fact that the land it sought to redistribute equally between Jews of different ethnic origins had belonged to Palestinians displaced in the 1948 Nakba, as was the case for many poor urban areas in which the Mizrahim settled. Sharing the spoils equally among Jews would have done nothing to redress Palestinian dispossession and might have entrenched it further.

The Rainbow was unable to tackle core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and on that basis seek mass support. Still, it made an important intellectual contribution by challenging Eurocentric analysis and dominant cultural norms from a position of confidence, one that was then rare in local exchanges. It attacked the sense of superiority of the Ashkenazi-dominated academic establishment, played an important role in encouraging a move beyond taken-for-granted approaches, and explored the meanings and implications of post-colonial theory and the critique of Orientalist assumptions for the analysis of Israeli society. It sought to combine theory and political practice, though ultimately proved much stronger on the former front than the latter one.

Debates in the 2000s

As was the case for other critical voices, progressive Mizrahi activists found it difficult to survive the second Intifada of the early 2000s intact. The drift of Israeli Jewish society towards ever-growing segregation from Palestinians, without relaxing its domination over them, and the “no-partner” mantra, formulated by Ehud Barak and adopted by all subsequent Prime Ministers, gave a huge boost to the Right. Without taking a clear stand against this trend, a socially-progressive agenda stood no chance. The obsession with enhancing “security” by using military force as the only response to Palestinian resistance has led to the violent suppression of the uprising, the second Lebanon war and the repeated brutal attacks on the Gaza Strip. In this environment, those resisting the trend were marginalized politically and those going along with it could offer no alternative to mainstream politics. Effectively they became the “social” wing of right-wing parties. This divide, which reflects the dual legacy of the Mizrahi Rainbow as both an ethnic-particularist and a universalist movement, has shaped radical Mizrahi discourse in recent years.

Some experienced activists with background in left-wing politics continued to advocate a link between Mizrahi struggles and other social justice causes. The marginalization of Mizrahim due to their origins in Arab culture and society, and the treatment of Palestinians, obviously are connected. To speak about that openly requires political courage, though, as displayed by Orly Noy in a Nakba Day 2015 address:

As someone who is of this region, I reject the colonialist mentality of barricading ourselves in Ehud Barak’s imaginary ‘villa in the Jungle.’ I know that a solution to the problem of ’67 — that is, a return to the Green Line — will not change a thing if we do not gain the courage to take apart the human food chain that has become established here since ’48. One that classifies the sons and daughters of this land to supreme or inferior, all the while setting them against one another. This is my moral call and political obligation as a Mizrahi, as a Jew and as a person who comes from this region.

Noting the pioneering role of the Black Panthers, she added: “It took me many years to understand that the privileges granted to me as a Jew were part of the same mechanism that oppresses me as a Mizrahi who hails from this region.”

At the same time, another approach has shifted away from any association with Palestinians and re-directed attention to relations within Israeli-Jewish society. It identifies Ashkenazi cultural hegemony as the enemy, but not the hegemony of the old political establishment. Rather, liberal-left academics, public intellectuals, artists, journalists, NGOs and human rights activists have been targeted as the worst perpetrators of ethnic supremacy and cultural arrogance. Adherents of this approach direct their ire at Jews to the left of the Labour Party, such as Meretz supporters, advocates of humane policies towards African asylum seekers and refugees, and those expressing solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. The charge against them is hypocrisy: they flaunt their progressive and humanist credentials in order to disguise their historical and racist attitudes and practices against Mizrahim.

A demonstration against the decision of the Bank of Israel to distribute new bank notes which only commemorate prominent Ashkenazi (European Jewish) poets. When asked why Mizrahi (Arab Jewish) writers were excluded, the committee claimed that they did not know of any renowned Mizrahi poets. The protesters called for an end to discrimination against the Mizrahi population in Israel. Tel Aviv, Israel, May 2, 2013. (Photo by: Keren Manor/Activestills.org)

What is the logic used here? Two conceptual moves are central to it: (1) the Ashkenazi Left remains guilty for the deeds of its parents/grandparents because it does not acknowledge and take action to redress them, and (2) its involvement in rights-oriented campaigns for the sake of “outsiders” is a conscious strategy to escape accountability for its privileged position in its own society in relation to its own – Jewish – people.

And so the argument goes: it is easy to fight for the rights of African refugees to stay and find work in poor neighbourhoods in southern Tel Aviv, whose Jewish residents are usually marginalized Mizrahi people, rather than to accommodate them in the Ashkenazi-dominated wealthy northern neighbourhoods or kibbutzim. It is easy to fight for the rights of Palestinians in the 1967 Occupied Territories because there is no danger they would come and stay next to where Ashkenazi leftists live. It is difficult for these leftists to support the Mizrahi struggle because they cannot distance themselves from its consequences. They do not determine the agenda and cannot maintain a paternalistic detachment in their safe spaces. Better housing, better educational facilities and greater access to lucrative jobs and cultural expression for Mizrahim would deprive Ashkenazim of their sense of historical superiority by exposing them to competition. Hence, their need to undermine that struggle and denounce it as divisive and as motivated by resentment and hate rather than by emancipatory social and cultural agenda.

This criticism addresses attitudes prevalent among sections of the Ashkenazi liberal public, as found frequently in expressions of disdain towards Mizrahi popular culture by writers such as Nathan Zach, Igal Sarna and others. But, it ignores two crucial dimensions. First, the social and cultural marginalization of the Mizrahim was a state project undertaken by the leadership of the Labour Party in the context of the conflict with the Palestinians and the Arab world. It was continued by the right wing in power since 1977. While Likud used a different rhetoric, its social, economic and “security” policies exacerbated inequalities and deepened the poverty of vulnerable groups, including many Mizrahim, Russian and Ethiopian immigrants, and Palestinians. With its focus on culture and identity, the material aspect of ethnic relations, the ongoing role of the state and the impact of militarization and national conflict are absent from this discourse.

Second, in its attack on the “Ashkenazi Left” (as if there were such a unified entity), this critique uses scattered utterances by people with only a vague association, if any, to organized movements and political activism. It may be a phrase used by an artist in an election rally, a sentence by an actress in an interview, a Facebook post by a journalist, an expression by a theatre director in an appeal to government, and so on. This is common practice in discourse analysis but it provides a weak basis for a political critique and no basis for action. There is no attempt to outline an alternative course of action for the Left and no attempt to reach out beyond the Mizrahim. Alliances that challenge the boundaries of the Jewish public are out of the question.

Putting the two together, what we are left with in this approach is a critique of cultural prejudice by Ashkenazim that is removed from social and political grounding. It can only be countered, from this perspective, by an alternative cultural discourse, that of Mizrahi ethnic pride and defiance in the face of adversity. It is not surprising that writers have played a leading role in this trend. The group ‘Ars Poetica stands out in this respect (a pun based on the word ‘Ars, literally a pimp in Hebrew/Arabic slang, which became a derogatory term applied to aggressive, vulgar Mizrahi youth, and by extension to Mizrahim in general).

This critical discourse, then, despite the intentions of many of its adherents, runs the danger of reinforcing the state-sponsored attack on “The Left” as not Jewish enough, too remote from the real concerns of people (meaning Jews), following a “foreign” agenda determined by hostile human rights NGOs and donors. This is reflected in some Mizrahi activists expressing support for right-wing politicians of partial Mizrahi origins if they make occasional noises about liberal elitism in the cultural and legal spheres, even when their own agenda clearly is oppressive and anti-Palestinian. Some examples include Miri Regev and Ayelet Shaked. Other manifestations include condoning anti-Arab sentiments and hostility to refugees as expressions of authentic popular feelings, rejecting protests against attacks on Gaza because they alienate the common people, and so on.

The most blatant illustration of this approach is a recent series of documentary clips featuring monologues by activists, with one of them telling an apocryphal story about her grandmother who used to sit at the end of the work day together with an Arab colleague, the grandmother saying “death to the Arabs” in Hebrew, the colleague responding with “kill the Jews” in Arabic, and both continuing to drink their tea together. The point of the story apparently is to dismiss verbal expressions of racism by Mizrahim as one of life’s happy little routines. This is supported by a reference to a famous statement by Jamal Zahalka (MP for the Joint List and leader of Balad): “It is the Ashkenazim who took Palestine from us, not the Mizrahim. It is not those who call ‘death to the Arabs’ who took our land. Those who sing ‘we brought you peace’ (Hevenu Shalom Aleikhem) did that.”

It should be obvious that Zahalka never condoned such calls. He merely pointed out that those who shout “death to the Arabs” – a slogan associated above all with the thuggish Mizrahi supporters of racist football club Betar Jerusalem – talk, while the historical ethnic cleansing of Palestine was carried out by men of action who belonged to the Zionist labour movement. He did not use this difference to exonerate right-wing Mizrahim, let alone praise them as expressing some kind of acceptable modus vivendi. In fact, looking back at his statement, he said recently: “Let’s admit the truth: Mizrahim could have been partners to our vision maybe 50 years ago. Today it is much more difficult to turn back the wheels of history.”

In a 2015 TV elections campaign debate, Zahalka’s colleague in the Joint List, Ayman ‘Odeh, approached the leader of the Mizrahi religious party Shas, Aryeh Der‘i, in a call to form an alliance to fight poverty, given that their constituencies are similarly marginalized in society. But Der‘i declined to accept the offer. This did not deter ‘Odeh from making further gestures towards the Mizrahim. In a speech in Parliament regarding the cultural heritage of Jews from Arab and Islamic countries he had this to say:

Let’s talk about the Jewish and Arabic culture combined, about joint culture. After all, the culture of the Jews in Arab countries wasn’t just the communal traditions of their specific communities: it was also part of the culture of the Arab world as a whole … But unfortunately, the reality of the State of Israel didn’t have room for the richness of this culture. Not only because it was considered inferior, but because it blurred the boundary that the cultural hegemony was doing its best to draw between Jews and Arabs. It was inconceivable to suggest that Jews and Arabs could draw from a common culture. For that very reason we have an obligation, for our own sake and for the sake of our future, to glorify these neglected cultures whose great wealth has been mostly lost.

These words begin to point a way forward. The great task of the Left and progressive forces in general is to help open up cracks within the alliance between the bulk of Mizrahim and the nationalist-religious Right. There is no simple formula for how this could be done. A genuine opening of Arab Islamic and Palestinian arms to embrace the Mizrahim as lost siblings could be a first step. This must not be only a rhetorical gesture but accompanied by concrete action. At the same time, it should be based on recognition of the roots they struck over the years in Israeli culture and identity – there is no going back to a mythical past based on nostalgia and harmony. Both the Mizrahim and their former host societies had changed irrevocably. As Haifa-based Palestinian musician Jowan Safadi shows in his recent video clip “to be an Arab”, this confrontation-reconciliation between the ‘imported’ and ‘local’ Arabs, must take place on the local terrain.

Politically, the actions of the Joint List would be central. For the first time in history there is a solid, unified force that represents Palestinian citizens of Israel. They can play a vanguard role by striving to move beyond “tribal” boundaries to position themselves as a force for change of the entire society. Their strategic location – the only group that can operate in the Palestinian and Israeli political arenas simultaneously – places a great responsibility on their shoulders. But of course, they are a minority on both scenes and must form alliances with other forces.

This is where the Left, especially Mizrahi left activists, could play a role by systematically developing an agenda for social and political mobilization that builds on concerns shared by different groups and potentially unites them in action. Reformulating “sectoral” demands in a universal language of rights, justice and redress that goes beyond the limitations of ethnic and national identities, is a first move in this direction. Ultimately, all these can become effective within an overall framework for change, based on three conditions: a unified Palestinian front, social mobilization from within Israeli society, and a global solidarity movement.

Ran Greenstein is an associate professor of sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. His most recent book is ‘Zionism and its Discontents: A Century of Radical Dissent in Israel/Palestine’ (Pluto, 2014), and his previous books include ‘Genealogies of Conflict: Class, Identity and State in Palestine/Israel and South Africa ‘ (Wesleyan, 1995), and ‘Comparative Perspectives on South Africa’ (Macmillan, 1998). Currently he is working on a manuscript comparing indigenous resistance movements and Communist parties in South Africa and Israel/Palestine.