Arab Jews: The Odd Man Out in the Israeli-Palestinian Equation

Edited by
Susanna Sinigaglia
Presentation by
Wasim Dahmash

Abstract

Often, Western and Israeli analysts/activists fail to mention the role played in
the Israeli-Palestinian question by the overall Middle East socio-political
situation.

Who are the true actors in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and why is the ―Two
People-Two State‖ solution impossible?
Why did the parties never reach a peace agreement on the ultimate territorial
division of historical Palestine?
What kind of regime does Israel have and who are its leaders?
Do the pervasive effects of the Israeli occupation touch only the Palestinian
people, or are they felt throughout the region?
And finally, what is the larger Israeli policy beyond the dispossession of
territories and cultures?

The authors in this collection bring some previously unpublished answers to a

complex unresolved conflict that has been affecting the entire Middle East for
decades. Paradoxically, as they point out, the attack against the Palestinian
people is also an indirect assault on both the suffering and impatient Israeli
populations.
 Forward

The title of this book uses the term Arab Jews instead of Mizrahi, which
would be the correct term, because it is unfamiliar to most readers. However,
except when the author disagrees, in the texts we have chosen the former, since
the glossary contains an exhaustive definition.
Special terms used more than once are in alphabetical order in the
glossary, while those mentioned only once are explained in notes at the bottom
of the page.
These notes were all written by the editor, while the notes at the end of
each article are by the respective authors.
In the opening article, omissions with respect to the original text are in bloc
parentheses.

Forward, Abstract, Presentation, Glossary, Introduction have been

translated from Italian into English by Deena Stryker
 Presentation by Wasim Damash

For readers familiar with the Western Zionist narrative of the Israeli-Arab
conflict, it may seem strange that it should be a Palestinian to present a
collection of essays on the condition of the Mizrahim, Jewish Israelis of Arab
origin.
Normally, obscured by Western historiography, all Israelis are seen as
survivors of European pogroms and the Holocaust, who returned legitimately to
their ancestral homeland, only to be set upon by more or less barbarian Arabs.
Here, in the land they occupy by Divine right, they are victims of the hatred of
Islamist fanatics and murderers.
However we believe that the question should be part of the
historiographical debate concerning the relationship between ‗Christianity’, now
referred to as ‗the West’, and the Arab-Islamic world.
Until recently, in a centuries old tradition, the elites ruling the emerging
European powers developed their policies toward the Arab Ottoman world
according to a colonial vision of international relations in which each political,
diplomatic, military, commercial or cultural action is undertaken for the purpose
of weakening the adversary in order to gain advantages within the context of a
policy of piracy and plunder.
This colonial concept survives today in the relations between the Euro-
American elite and formerly colonized countries. With respect to the Islamic
world, it has the advantage of an even greater ideological motivations based on
the medieval struggle to contain Islam. These motivations are presently now
wrapped in theories about ‗the shock of civilizations’, and concretized in the ‗fight
against terrorism’. Terrorism is at times merely suggested, but often it is
explicitly attributed to Arabs, or the so-called Islamists, and presented as part of
a phenomenon defined as ‗Islamic terrorism’.
Mainly during the nineteenth century, the European powers, especially
Great Britain, France and Russia, worked to demolish the enemy known as the
‗sick man of Europe’, i.e, the Ottoman Empire, in order to share its spoils. The
colonial powers would identify those who could play the part of collaborators, a
sort of local lobby within the territory of the Ottoman Empire. To reach the
desired outcome, they recruited minority Jews and Christians, offering them

1
 2

economic advantages and social status. That explains why they offered French or
British citizenship to their local collaborators, who took advantage of the
sixteenth century regime of ‗Capitalization’ to become foreign citizens.
Under this regime, which was applied to Europeans in Ottoman lands, the
Empire offered protection, rights and privileges to citizens of the corresponding
contracting countries. Begun as treaties ensuring the protection of pilgrims, the
Capitalizations became an instrument of penetration, resulting not only in the
break-up of the Ottoman state but also of its multi-confessional regime, that
cooperative living together of the various religions which was the hallmark of
Arab-Islamic civilization.
Military intervention and the creation of the lobby went hand in hand
reinforcing each other. The work done to attract the Christian and Jewish
communities of the Eastern Arab countries began to bear fruit after Napoleon’s
‗oriental’ expedition: the retreating troops were joined by eminent members of
the Christian community in Galilee, as was the case for the brothers Mikhail and
Abbud Sabbagh, who went to France and became French citizens. This was
common between 1840 and 1860.
In Lebanon the clashes between the Druze community (an offshoot of
Shi’ism), and the Maronite Christian community (belonging to the Church of
Rome) gave France the opportunity to intervene for the first time on the Syrian
coast, proclaiming itself ‗Protector of the Eastern Catholics’.
Even Czarist Russia tried to have its own lobby, proclaiming itself ‗Protector
of the Orthodox Christians’, while the only option left to Great Britain was to
proclaim itself ‗Protector of the Jews of Orient‖!
In the Maghreb, the French treated the Jewish communities as a separate
entity from the indigenous community in order to encourage their collaboration,
using them as a sort of fifth column against the rest of the population. France’s
military occupation of Algeria in 1831 is an eloquent example of how
indispensable an internal ‗lobby’ is for colonial control. For many years Algerian
resistance prevented the occupying power from gaining full control of the
interior. To maintain the occupation France had to break the internal unity of the
Algerian population.
 3

In 1870, Adolphe Isaac Moise Cremieux, the French Minister of Justice,

imposed French citizenship on all Algerian Jews and from 1881, the ‗Indigenous
Code’ distinguished between ‗metropolitan’ Algerian citizens (the French and the
Algerian Jews), and the Muslim majority, which had no rights. In other words
colonial power uses an indigenous community in order to make its own
occupation more effective.
However, the entire Jewish community did not join the occupiers: there are
many examples of Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan Jews who joined the
resistance. Some, like the Tunisian George Adda or the Maroccan Abraham
Sarfati, became national leaders in the fight for independence. Not to mention
the many Egyptian and Iraqi Jews who joined the social struggle and the fight for
liberation in their respective countries. However, the fact remains that colonial
interventions in furtherance of the European powers’ interests used minorities
which in many cases belonged to religious communities - Jewish or Christian - or
social groups such as nomadic pastors, as picklocks, in order to disassemble,
destroy and weaken the resistance of Arab societies.
On the other hand, monolinguistic, uniconfessional post-Medieval European
nation states involving one ethnicity were built up around central institutions -
ruling houses whose legitimacy was derived from a divine mandate, under a
unique ‗true religion’. Whereas the Islamic model of society, which was multi-
linguistic, multi-confessional and multi-ethnic, so much so that often members of
the same family were of different faiths - was viewed by the Europeans as a
threat to the only acceptable social organizational model: theirs.
The neo-colonial powers continue to do everything they can to impose the
model of a monocultural and monolithic nation-state, as happened in the Muslim
countries. In other words the Christian and Jewish communities in the Arab
countries are encouraged in every way to separate themselves from the
‗indigenous populations’, and in places with a persistent, active colonial
presence, they are persuaded to collaborate or to leave.
As a result of these policies, all this happens with the consent of the
population of the colonial powers. This consensus is strongly anchored to the
already mentioned Eurocentrism, in which the only acceptable model of society
 4

has an ethno-religious base, is motivated by the need to preserve the ‗national’

interest, and is more broadly reinforced by the global capitalist logic.
Zionism was born in Europe, with stated colonial intentions, and the ideas
that nourish it are inspired by colonialism. It can only imagine a society in which
―urban‖ citizens have rights which are denied to the indigenous population.
These colonial ideas, interpreted according to mythological frameworks,
legitimate ancient beliefs concerning the superiority of the God of one’s own
tribe, who can conquer and exterminate the others in his name. This involves a
hierarchical scale in which the assimilated ―almost indigenous‖ populations - the
Mizrahim in the case of Israel - are necessarily located on the last rung of the
ladder, together with the other indigenous tribes to be eliminated as soon as
possible.
After the most dramatic phase of the great ethnic cleansing of the
Palestinian territory, around 1948, the Zionists had to repopulate with Jews the
land they had conquered and cleansed. In order to achieve this they used every
means to force the Arab Jews to immigrate to the new Israeli state. They didn’t
have to dust off the mythology of the ‗Promised Land’; these people had always
had it within reach - they had only to travel to get there. But notwithstanding
the fact that they had no interest in leaving their native countries, the on-going
tense situation that arose in the region with the creation of the new state
persuaded them to emigrate.
The ways in which they were persuaded by the Zionists were expeditious:
bombs in the synagogues of Baghdad, Alexandria and Cairo, for example. The
Arab Jews also constituted a means of exchange between the Israeli government
and those of Iraq and Yemen. And being merchandise, they were treated as
such: the Iraqi Jew Naim Giladi tells of his arrival in Israel together with about
twenty young couples. I quote his testimony from an article by Vera Pegna, who
got it from the 6th issue of ―Perspectives judéo-arabes (Arab-Jewish Perspectives)‖:
―Our departure was set for May 14th, 1950. We wore our best European
style clothes, and the women dressed up like brides to celebrate the event.‖ But
disembarking from the plane, they were surprised and humiliated: ―We saw two
hefty men carrying an enormous pump on wheels. They rushed toward us, and
before we could react, they took of our clothes and began to dust us with a
 5

powder... The pregnant women vomited....There followed a furious set to, and
an employee from the Jewish agency said: ‗What’s the matter, why are you
angry? You’ve come from a backward country full of epidemics!...’ DDT was the
first humiliation inflicted on us by our country.‖
Not to mention the lies about the place where they were to live. It was
supposed to be nearby, but they ended up after hours of travel in the desert
without food or water, in a place with only tents. ―We refused to get down... the
driver turned the truck bed upside down and we fell out one on top of the other,
on beds and bags, men, pregnant women, children and old folks.‖
In the Zionist racial scale, Arab Jews were referred to as ‗savages’ by Ben
Gurion. However they continue to be privileged in comparison to indigenous
peoples of other religions. Here are some of the names the Palestinians are
called: ―two-legged animals‖, by Begin, ―cockroaches‖, by Eytan and Sharon,
―crocodiles‖, by Ehud Barak...
 Glossary

Aliya: the Hebrew term used to designate immigration to Israel.

Ashkenazi: Comes from Ashkenaz, the biblical name found in Genesis that
refers to Noah’s descendants by the name of his great nephew. The Jews who
settled in the Rhineland in the ninth century called themselves by this name.
From there they spread to other countries of Central and Eastern Europe and
created the Yiddish language. Today the term is mainly used to denote both
Zionist and post-Zionist Israelis of European origin, who comprise the country’s
elite.
Black Panthers: The Israeli Black Panthers were founded in 1971 by several
young Israelis from the Middle East in response to the inequality and
discrimination they encountered, borrowing from the American Black Panthers
whose leader Angela Davis had visited Israel early that year. The protest began
in the poor neighborhoods of Jerusalem, then spread to other Israeli cities.
Development Town: Small urban communities created in the fifties and
sixties, mainly to house immigrants from Arab countries, and mainly located in
peripheral parts of Israel.
Green Line: The border which in 1967 was supposed to separate Israeli
territory from occupied Palestine and the future Palestinian state.
Gush Emunim: Loyalist block. This is the main Israeli religious organization
in the West Bank (occupied territory). It fully supports the settling of Jews in
occupied Palestinian lands and the military occupation of these settlements
according to a divine imperative which would require the Jews to occupy every
inch of the Promised Land.
IDF: Israeli Defense Forces is the name of the Israeli army.
Kibbutz: A voluntary association of workers based on strictly egalitarian
rules and collective property. In the beginning, the Kibbutz were mainly
agricultural, in part due to the fact that in many European countries Jews could
not own or work the land, as many would have desired. Later the kibbutz added
industries. Kibbutz type associations first appeared in in 1909 with the
foundation of Dagania, south of Lake Tiberiad. The kibbutz movement was
fundamental to Israel‗s development, but after the founding of the state it
declined.

1
 2

Labor Party: Founded in 1968, it was the direct descendent of the Mapai
(Mifleget Paolei Eretz Israel, the party of the Israeli workers of the land), the
Socialist/Zionist party which constituted the main political force of the Zionist
Movement, and as such, ―father‖ of the Israeli state. Traditionally seen as a left
wing party - Israel’s historical left party, it entered a crisis in 1965, and its label
is now in doubt, as seen by the various articles.
Likud: Currently the ruling Israeli party, until 1977 it was the main
opposition to Israeli’s ruling Labor Party. It was founded in 1973 by Menachem
Begin, who won a historic victory in 1977, sending the Labor Party into
opposition for the first time. The Likud list included several Mizrahi candidates,
and its rise was attributed in part to Mizrahi support, in reaction to the way
Mizrahis were treated by the Labor Party.
Meretz: Founded in 1992 after the dissolution of the Marxist party Mapam.
In 2002 it merged with two other small parties and became Meretz-Yashad, a
Zionist, secular social-democratic party.
Mishkan Ohalim: A non-profit organization founded by Rabbi Meshulam in
the nineties in order to draw attention to kidnapped Yemeni children and to
demand the formation of a government commission of inquiry.
Mizrahi (pl. Mizrahim): Meaning ―people who come from the East‖. In Israel
the term was used to designate Jews from the Middle East or North Africa, where
the dominant culture was Arab. They have also been incorrectly referred to as
―Sephardim‖ (see below) the word often used in English. Now it tends to be
applied to all non-Western Israelis, but here we prefer to use it in the original
sense to emphasize the role played unwittingly by the first wave of Middle
Eastern immigrants in the building of Israeli society. In reality, each wave of
immigrants has had its own story, which deserves to be told. However, what we
want to do here is shed light on the way in which the political structure behind
the system of Israel’s domination of Palestine was and continues to be built.
Moshav: This word means settlement, or village. It refers to a type of
agricultural cooperative made up of various farms founded by socialist Zionists
during the second aliya of the early XXth century. Unlike the kibbutz, the
moshav farms were usually privately owned, but were of equal size. The workers

2
 3

individually or in groups produced food and other items, which they could use for
themselves or sell.
Nakba: ―Catastrophe‖. This is the name given by the Arab world to the
forced exodus of the Palestinians during and after the 1948 war.
Sephardi: This term comes from the Hebrew word designating an inhabitant
Spain. It is one of the most often-debated terms in Israeli sociology. The
Sephardim are descendants of the Jews that were expelled from Spain in 1492,
and are one of the largest Mizrahi groups. In reality, Jews of Spanish origin
referred to themselves as ―of pure Sephardic blood‖ (Sephardim tahor), and
considered them-selves a separate group, above the Israeli Jews who
immigrated from Arabic Muslim countries.
Shas: From its founding in 1983 by Rabbi Obadia Yosef, former chief rabbi
of Israel who today remains a spiritual leader, Shas has defined itself as
―Sephardic‖. A stable and increasingly influential presence in Israeli society and
politics, although it has a religious foundation, it is very different from the
Ashkenazi religious parties and until now has attracted the most Mizrahim.
Shin Bet: The Israeli internal intelligence agency. The official name Shabak
is an acronym of Sherut Bitahon, which means ―general security service‖, and
corresponds to its first two Hebrew initials, Shin Bet. The other two principal
Israeli espionage agencies are Aman (military intelligence) and Mossad (foreign
intelligence).
Wadi Salib: A neighborhood of Haifa. In July 1959 its Mizrahi population
initiated violent clashes with the police that spread to Tiberiade and Bersheba.
 Arab Jews: The Odd Man Out in the Israeli-Palestinian Equation

Introduction

Susanna Sinigaglia

Preliminary Remarks

The purpose of this collection is not so much to rehearse once again the

stages of the process that led to the current phase of the Israeli-Palestinian

conflict, but to draw the attention of activists and intellectuals who for years

have taken it to heart, to little known materials that widen the perspective and

throw light on an element that could explain the otherwise inexplicable

perpetuation of the conflict. Close scrutiny by the West - and often by Israel and

many Arab countries as well - often overlooks the fact that the socio/political

mechanisms of the entire region are relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The continuation/intensification of the status quo is in fact a function of the

control of territories and populations, both by Israeli and Arab leaderships, under

the close supervision of colonial and neo-colonial powers ever determined to

access their resources (oil, etc.) and to share world power between them.

However it is ever more urgent to disclose and reveal these mechanisms,

both in the light of the transformations under way in the countries of the Middle

East, and taking into account the fact that, in order to deal with the potentially

explosive social conditions in the territories on both sides of the Green Line –

which have recently been affected by the upheavals of the Arab Spring –, Israel’s

leaders have relied on a massive and continuous use of force, especially in Gaza,

all the while stoking fears of a possible war with Iran. Paradoxically, as many of

the articles make clear, the attack against the Palestinians is also, even if

vicariously, an attack on both suffering and impatient Israelis.

The Collection

The materials translated in this book are organized around five themes:

1
 2

1) The politics of ethnic/territorial divisions, and resulting social, cultural

and sexual discrimination: Oren Yiftachel, ―’Ethnocracy’: The Politics of Judaizing

Israel/Palestine‖; Smadar Lavie, ―Mizrahi Feminism and the Question of

Palestine‖.

2) Historical/cultural roots of the Mizrahi question: Ammiel Alcalay,

―Exploding Identities: Notes On Ethnicity & Literary History‖; Ella Shohat,

―Rupture And Return: A Mizrahi Perspective On The Zionist Discourse‖;

a) the kidnapping of Yemenite children: Yechiel Mann, ―Swept Under the

Magic Carpet‖; Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber, ―Whitewashing History: Israeli Media

and the Yemenite Babies Affair‖;

b) the case of the ―Ringworm Children‖: David Shasha, ―Zionism From the

Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims‖.

3) The Israeli left and right, Mizrahi question and Occupation: Yehouda

Shenhav, ―The Occupation Doesn’t Stop at the Checkpoint‖; Omar Kamil, ―The

Synagogue as the Civil Society, or How We Can Understand the Shas Party‖.

4) Palestinians and Mizrahim: Yehouda Shenhav, ―What Is There Between

the Mizrahi Issue and Palestinian Nationalism‖; ―Hitching a Ride On the Magic

Carpet‖; Shiko Behar, “Time to Meet the Mizrahim?‖; Reuven Abarjel, Smadar

Lavie, “A Year Into the Lebanon 2 War: NGO-ing Mizrahi-Arab Paradoxes, and a

One State Vision For Palestine/Israel‖; Sergio Yahni, ―Israelis and the Israeli War

On Gaza‖.

5) Social complexity, organization, struggle and testimonies: Eretz Tzfadia,

Oren Yiftachel, ―Between Urban and National: Political Mobilization among

Mizrahim in Israel’s ‗Development Towns’‖; Yair Sheleg, ―Soul-searching In the

Mizrahi Movement‖.

At the end of the collection there are three appendices. The first lists the

papers that can be found on the web, which are useful in order to expand on the

five themes grouped in their corresponding order. The second mentions other
 3

papers available on the web and also one in book form, in French, which are not

directly related to the themes, but delve deeper into elements that contribute to

a better understanding of the context.

The third includes two letters which are extremely timely: those that a

group of Mizrahi Jews wrote in the summer of 2011 to participants in the Arab

revolts, and one written in 2008 by Ami Meshulam, the son of rabbi Meshulam

(Madmoni-Gerber, Part 2a), describing the conditions he and his father were

living under. Today this letter takes on an even more dramatic aspect since

Meshulam junior, having fled to Canada at the time the letter was written, has

again issued a desperate call, after his asylum application was rejected by the

Canadian authorities, forcing him to leave the country with nowhere to go.

A State of Affairs Being Systematically Ignored

When the events that led to the creation of the state of Israel are

mentioned, what is inevitably emphasized is the Palestinian catastrophe upon

which it was built. But what goes unmentioned is that the Palestinian exodus was

accompanied by the importation – not always voluntary – of Jews from the Arab

world, for example Iraq, to make up the necessary workforce (Shohat, Part 2;

Shenhav, ―What Is There Between the Mizrahi Issue and Palestinian

Nationalism?‖, Part 4). Hence we are confronted with two related movements

going in opposite directions: The expulsion of Arab Palestinian populations and

the importation of Arab Jewish populations. The flows took place over and over

again mainly in connection with the international crises that occurred during the

first twenty years of Israel’s existence, in particular the Suez Crisis in 1956 and

the Six Day War in 1967. And yet it is still widely assumed that there are only

two actors in the conflict, the Israelis and the Palestinians, where the term

―Israelis‖ refers to direct descendants of the Central and Eastern European Jews

who luckily escaped the pogroms and later the concentration camps.

3
 4

As a consequence of this approach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the

Palestinian tragedy are envisaged as an almost personal issue by Western Jews

and the West in general, and public opinion has been encouraged to support

Israel come hell or high water, every act and deed justified under the pretext of

―security‖ even when those acts and deeds are clearly war crimes and crimes

against humanity. Only a minority defends the right of the Palestinian people to

combat the crimes committed in their name, but unfortunately it does so within

the near-sighted logic of two opposing blocks.

Although it is indisputable that the determining factor in the birth of Israel

was the emotional impetus throughout Europe after the Holocaust, which fed the

idea of the division of mandate Palestine and later of ―two states for two

peoples‖, it is also true that since that time the socio-political and morphological

characteristics of the region have changed dramatically. Not only the

composition of the Jewish population, but also the geography of the area upon

which the two states should be built have changed so radically that this solution

has ever less meaning, and the peace process through which it was to be

achieved has become a trap that has turned the conflict into the principal

structural element of Israel’s domination of the entire territory. This falsely

egalitarian vision also accentuates the inequality between the two protagonists,

with the result that the Palestinians are ever more thoroughly dominated by

Israel’s ever more powerful political-military machine.

However, a close analysis of the reasons behind the choice of Israel’s

successive governments reveals other volitions, other subjects and other

strategies. For example, shortly before Barack Obama became the American

President the Israeli government decided to launch a violent offensive against

Gaza that resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths. That operation was not only

related to the coming Israeli elections. We believe it was intended, among other

things, to send a clear message to the as yet not sworn in President:

 5

1. We are in charge in Palestine;

2. There will never be an equal Palestinian state bordering Israel, but at

most an ever more toothless national authority.

3. Israel’s determination to maintain a permanent low-level conflict that

could easily be managed and manipulated both for internal as well as

international purposes.

Something similar had already happened in the summer of 2006 with the

Second Lebanon War, in which IDF commandos savagely attacked the civilian

population in the south, with derisory military results. However, we can assume

that it is not so much the result that counts for Israel but the need to constantly

direct domestic public opinion towards ―the enemy‖, and the ―danger‖ it

represents, drawing attention away from the unresolved issues and latent

internal conflicts which the leadership fears would explode if peace were made

with the Palestinians and the surrounding Arab world. When economic crises and

political contingencies risk revealing or sharpening contradictions or social

divisions, the Israeli government resorts to war, in the timeless yet crude logic

that one nail chases the other (Yahni, Part 4). Hence, Israel’s opposition to any

initiative that would tend to bring the two Arab populations closer and link their

respective demands. Unfortunately and for different reasons, with few excellent

exceptions such as Edward Said, Israeli hostility has been met with suspicion if

not equal hostility in the Arab world (Behar, Part 4).

Finally, to these two attitudes we must add a difficult to explain, and in

many ways deplorable, obstructionism by the radical Israeli left, which has

separated the Palestinian question from the ―social‖ question. They have

theorized a first stage, a ―before‖ in which it would be necessary to fight for the

two state solution and a second one, an ―after‖, that would address pending

social issues. Meanwhile the ―solution‖ has melted away before our very eyes,

and the social question has been taken hostage by ultra-orthodox religious

5
 6

organizations, or, more recently, by non-profits such as the New Israel Fund

whose ambiguous function is analyzed by Smadar Lavie in Part 1. They left draw

a line between an ―outside‖ (the West Bank with its settlements and Gaza), from

an ―inside‖ (the area within the Green Line), resulting in an ever more impotent

socio-political isolation (Lavie, Part 1, and the two essays by Shenhav, Part 4).

A Different Theoretical Approach

The essay by Oren Yiftachel with which we have chosen to open this

collection focuses on the issue according to the theoretical model of the

interpretation of ethnocratic regimes, and provides a paradigm different from the

usual one which sees only a face-to-face confrontation with no side exit in the

Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As all the essays in this collection emphasize to a greater or lesser degree,

the process of de-Arabization and Judaization of the territory did not and does

not involve only Arab Palestinians but also Arab Jews, in a sort of internal Israeli

ethnic cleansing, clearly a key means of fomenting an ethnic version of the

struggle among the poor (Abarjel, Lavie, Part 4). But this is not its only or most

important aspect. The violent expropriation of identities carried out by the

Ashkenazi leadership towards the Mizrahim (Part 2, a and b), has been the key

element in the building of nationhood, the nucleus around which what Oren

Yiftachel calls an ―ethnocracy‖ has been built. And after 1967, this social system

acquired increasingly precise contours taking up distinctive colonizing traits

under a democratic garb, using more or less veiled discrimination towards an

internal majority (in this case the Mizrahim), to justify more obvious

discrimination towards an internal minority (Palestinians1 who are Israeli citizens,

and more recently immigrants from Asia and Africa), to maintain its domination

1
The term ‗Palestinian’ also refers here to other minorities suffering
discrimination, such as the Bedouins and the Druze (Oren Yiftachel,
Appendix 2.)
 7

over ―external‖ peoples and territories (the Palestinians of the West Bank), via

measures referred to as necessary ―to defend the State‖, or rather the minority

in power (the Ashkenazim).

On the other hand, the occupation now constitutes the political

management system of the entire country of Israel/Palestine, as illustrated in

Shenhav, Part 32. In particular, he shows the way in which the occupation of the

Territories has created a ―left-Zionist‖ alibi that distinguishes between an ―inside‖

(Israeli territory inhabited by ―good citizens‖) and an ―outside‖ (inhabited by the

bad settlers) in order to veil the injustices and social inequalities of the ‗inside’,

seeing them solely in the ‗outside’ and pretending that the occupation is not

maintained precisely by the ‗good citizens’, who provide its material and ideological

support and benefit from it technologically and economically.

The occupation has also brought about a double-border system: one which

is typically neoliberal, which lowers economic barriers in order to promote the

influx of capital and cheap labor, and raises the political barriers to make it more

difficult to acquire the rights of citizenship); and an ethnocratic one, which

dissolves and melts the borders with the outside – sometimes referred to as the

‗Green Line’, the ‗Separation Belt’, the ‗Enclosing Barrier’, ‗The Wall’, ‗The

Philadelphia Route’ etc.), and strengthens the internal barriers between social

classes and ethnic groups.

From the beginning, the Israeli population has been divided into ―ethno-

classes‖, as Yifchatel calls them, corresponding to specific locations: the Western

Jews, which, as we have seen, are the élite and make up the leadership, are

located in the center of the country, while the Eastern Jews are found in the

2
This way of dividing the territory according to ethnic groups is in fact the
principle behind the ever more brutal policies of the Israeli leadership, as
the West Bank is increasingly colonized, its territory fragmented and
separated from Gaza, whose inhabitants are now treated worse than any
group in the region, crowded into the last circle of hell.

7
 8

peripheral, more dangerous areas exposed to Palestinian guerrilla attacks3.

During the fifties and sixties, development towns were built in these areas (see

especially Tzfadia, Yiftachel, Part 5) to house Mizrahi low paid labor employed in

heavy industries.

These situations led to the ―Mizrahi question‖, which is acknowledged or

denied, depending on the political situation. For example, it has been used

several times to neutralize Palestinian demands for the right of return or

compensation (see Shenhav’s essays in Part 4 and Appendix 1). At the same

time, and with fundamental consequences for Israeli society and its political

parties, many Mizrahim began a soul-searching work after their lost identities,

putting themselves in a double bind with respect to their socio/political and

cultural/religious demands (Tzfadia, Yiftachel, Part 5), and affecting their political

representation (Kamil, Part 3 and Shenhav, ―What Is There Between the Mizrahi

Issue and Palestinian Nationalism?‖, Part 4).

The Mizrahi Political Orientation

Because of the way in which the labor government treated them and with

the decline of the radical emancipation movement of the seventies (Chetrit,

Appendix 1), after the founding of the Likud in 1973, the Mizrahim switched their

vote to this party which, in the words of its founding father, Menachem Begin,

promised a full commitment to their cause. Later, disappointed by the Likud,

most Mizrahim turned towards Shas.

Among other things, Shas has at least recognized the traditional values of

the Mizrahim as well as their religiosity, marginalized by the prevailing Ashkenazi

3
Recently the names of Sderot and Ashkelon, in the south of Israel,
inhabited by Mizrahis, Ethiopian Jews and lower class Russian immigrants,
became familiar as targets of Qassam missile attacks, while similar
populations in northern localities such as Ashdod have been targets of
Hezbollah’s Katiusha missiles.
 9

model, whether religious or secular. It has also been capable of providing the

poorest Mizrahim with a whole series of social services that the Israeli

government does not provide (Kamil, Part 3) . In the occupied Palestinian

territories, however, it’s another story: the government encourages settlement

through subsidies and social services such as schools, transportation, clinics, etc.

We can see how occupation/colonization and Shas are two instruments of

social control and more or less open blackmail. In fact, to go and live in the

Palestinian territories, apart from the immorality of such a choice, can also mean

having to sooner or later abandon everything, and joining Shas is not a free

choice between being observant or secular when one does so because of

economic difficulties and various other local pressures.

This political framework has clearly influenced the Mizrahim to oppose

peace agreements with the Palestinians, for various reasons: because the

Mizrahim consider the Palestinians as their main competitors for scarce goods

(jobs, natural resources, etc); because the burden of the peace accords signed in

the past was born by the Mizrahi population when Israeli factories were

transferred to Egypt and Jordan after the Oslo agreements, with corresponding

loss of jobs; and because the Mizrahi community leaders were never, until now,

invited at any level to bring their priorities and points of view to the peace

process.

As has already been pointed out, not even the pacifist movements, whether

Israeli or international, have taken the questions posed by the Mizrahi

community into account, which is why they are considered with considerable

suspicion. It is difficult, in such a complex situation, for Mizrahi communities to

understand that exorbitant military expenditures, in general and with respect to

the occupation, are part of an overall strategy that prevents investment in public

4 From this point of view the mechanism is similar to that which ensures
the success, electoral and otherwise, of Islamic organizations such as
Hamas or Hezbollah.

9
 10

goods and development, hindering its freedom of choice and the recovery of its

historic and cultural past.

An attempt to provide a different perspective on the Mizrahi question was

undertaken by the pacifist Mizrahi Democracy Rainbow political organization.

Founded in 1997, after the first ten years its activities have sharply declined, due

to the contradictions inherent in the Mizrahi situation (Sheleg, Part 5). However,

it has had the practical merit of winning legal battles (although the sentences

have never been applied), increasing at the same time political awareness of

problems of housing and land distribution. In fact, a burning question in Israel is

that of land and and legal titles over resources, issues which are usually dealt

with by regional rather than local administrations, so that instead of benefitting

from the wealth being produced on its own lands these latter have to depend on

meager state subsidies (Shenhav, Part 3, and Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow texts,

Appendix 1).

The role of Western Culture and of the Jewish Diaspora

The marginalization and poorly dissimulated discrimination towards

Mizrahim, and all that is Arab in Israel, originates and is rooted in the European

colonial cultural strands, as illustrated by the almost total absence of Sephardic

authors in Western culture (Alcalay, Part 2). In fact, given the preponderance of

Zionism and its ideology in the various cultural components of the Jewish

diaspora, folklore predominates (for example with Klezmer music, Ladin songs or

Yiddish theatre). Sephardic literature is little known, yet there are hundreds of

writers who could help provide some equilibrium to a scale tipped exclusively

towards certain characters, the various Grossman, Oz and Yeoshua, etc. This

cultural imbalance also increases the political weight of the Western diaspora as

it influences Israeli choices.

 11

Returning now to Oren Yifchatel, his first essay opens a window onto the

role that certain Jewish agencies, both in Israel and abroad, have consistently

played in the management of the Israeli territory, by participating in the

expropriation of land, throwing a rather sinister light on the usually uncritical

support of Israeli policies by Jewish institutions in the diaspora. Also, in recent

years dormitory towns have been built up around the main Israeli cities for rich

Western Jews, who purchase homes but live in them for only a short time each

year, giving rise to ghost neighborhoods (mentioned in a bulletin of the Jewish

community of Milan in 2008). This speculation has of course made real estate

prices rise exponentially, contributing to the housing crisis affecting the poorer

classes, who are thus induced to take advantage of further expropriations of

Palestinian land by the Jewish state.

Final Remarks

When the Second Intifada began in the year 2000, it became clear that the

Oslo Accords and the so-called peace process had failed dramatically. In 2002 I

joined the newly established ECO network (Jews Against the Occupation) in Italy

and began to delve deeper into the problem. I began to wonder why all of a

sudden, most Israeli Jews supported their government’s violent repression

against the Palestinians, which resulted in an incredible number of victims,

mostly civilian. Of course, this was the period of suicide attacks, also against

civilian objectives, but the reaction of the Israeli government appeared not only

blind and disproportionate, it also provoked an unending spiral of new terrorist

attacks. This led me to the question of the current make-up of Israeli society. In

2005, I met Oren Yiftachel during a conference in Milan; after that, members of

the informal network ―Women in Black‖ put me in touch with Dr. Smadar Lavie,

then living in Tel Aviv, who came of a Mizrahi family and was working on the

very issues I wanted to explore. She sent me some of her work, which led me to

11
 12

seek out other scholarly materials, opening up an entirely new area of inquiry for

me.

This was a painful journey. Added to Israel’s atrocities against the

Palestinians, I now had to recognize the abuse of power towards the Mizrahim,

which, though not as severe, was inspired by the same logic of domination. The

essays in this book try to explore its mechanisms of division, discrimination and

command. Last two summers demonstrations in Israel, when for the first time

people belonging to the most diverse groups came out in the street to demand

more equality, may represent a first timid attempt to break the artificial national

consensus built by the system, the beginning of an alliance between the various

victims of discrimination and inequality in Israeli society, and an awakening to

the fact that the ―class‖ factor is at the root of what appear to be national

conflicts.

If the Arab revolts manage to strengthen their democratic components,

they could constitute a powerful dynamic factor shaking off long-encrusted

stances and leading to new alliances. However, if the new (and old) leaders in

North Africa, the Middle East and beyond are unable to contain the Islamist

advance with effective policies of social solidarity and international dialogue, this

will greatly hinder efforts to break down religious barriers.

 'ETHNOCRACY':
THE POLITICS OF JUDAIZING ISRAEL/PALESTINE

Published in “Constellations”, 1999, Vol. 6: 364-391

‗Ethnocracy’: The Politics of Judaizing Israel/Palestine

Oren Yiftachel1

During Israel’s fiftieth year of independence (1997-98), the country’s High Court
of Justice was grappling with an appeal known as the Katzir case. It was lodged
by an Arab citizen who was prevented from leasing state land in the village of
Katzir on grounds of not being a Jew.2 The court has so far deferred decision on
the case. Its President, Judge Aharon Barak, known widely as a champion of civil
rights, noted that this case has been among the most strenuous in his legal
career.
The fact that in Israel’s fiftieth year, the state’s highest legal authority still
finds it difficult to protect a basic civil right such as equal access to state land
provides a telling starting point for pursuing the goals of this paper. In the pages
below I wish to offer a new conceptual prism through which the formation of
Israel’s regime and its ethnic relations can be explained. A theoretical and
empirical examination of the Israeli regime leads me to argue that it should be
classified as an ―ethnocracy.‖
The paper begins with a theoretical account of ethnocratic regimes, which
are neither authoritarian nor democratic. Such regimes are states which
maintain a relatively open government, yet facilitate a non-democratic seizure of
the country and polity by one ethnic group. A key conceptual distinction is
elaborated in the paper between ethnocratic and democratic regimes.
Ethnocracies, despite exhibiting several democratic features, lack a democratic
structure. As such, they tend to breach key democratic tenets, such as equal
citizenship, the existence of a territorial political community (the demos),
universal suffrage, and protection against the tyranny of the majority.
Following the theoretical discussion, the paper traces the making of the
Israeli ethnocracy, focussing on the major Zionist project of Judaizing
Israel/Palestine. The predominance of the Judaization project has spawned an
institutional and political structure which undermines the common perception

1
that Israel is both Jewish and democratic.3 The Judaization process is also a
major axis along which relations between various Jewish and Arab ethno-classes
can be explained. The empirical sections of the paper elaborate on the
consequences of the ethnocratic Judaization project on three major Israeli
societal cleavages: Arab-Jewish, Ashkenazi-Mizrahi, and secular-orthodox.4
The analysis below places particular emphasis on Israel’s political
geography. This perspective draws attention to the material context of
geographical change, holding that discourse and space constitute one another in
a ceaseless process of social construction.5 The critical political-geographical
perspective problematizes issues often taken for granted among analysts of
Israel, such as settlement, segregation, borders, and sovereignty. As such it
aims to complement other critical analyses of Israeli society.

Theorizing Ethnocracy
The theorization of ethnocracy draws on the main political and historical forces
that have shaped the politics and territory of this regime. It focuses on three
major political-historical processes: (a) the formation of a (colonial) settler
society; (b) the mobilizing power of ethno-nationalism; and (c) the ―ethnic logic‖
of capital. The fusion of the three key forces in Israel/Palestine has resulted in
the establishment of the Israeli ethnocracy and determined its specific features.
But the formation of ethnocracy is not unique to Israel. It is found in other
settings where one ethno-nation attempts to extend or preserve its
disproportional control over contested territories and rival nation(s). This political
system also typically results in the creation of stratified ethno-classes within
each nation. Other notable cases include Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Estonia, Latvia,
Northern Ireland (pre-1972), and Serbia. Let us turn now in brief to the three
structural forces identified above.

A Settler Society. Settler societies, such as the Jewish community in

Israel/Palestine, pursue a deliberate strategy of ethnic migration and settlement
which aims to alter the country’s ethnic structure. Colonial settler societies have
traditionally facilitated European migration into other continents, and legitimized
the exploitation of indigenous land, labor, and natural resources. Other settler
societies, mainly non-European, create internal migration and resettlement in
order to change the demographic balance of specific regions. In all types of

2
settler societies a ―frontier culture‖ develops, glorifying and augmenting the
settlement and expanding the control of the dominant group into neighboring
regions.6
One common type of colonial-settler society has been described as the
―pure settlement colony,‖ which has been shown to be most appropriate to the
Israeli-Zionist case.7 Further studies have shown that ―pure‖ settler societies are
generally marked by a broad stratification into three main ethno-classes: (a) a
founding charter group, such as Protestant-Anglos in North America and
Australia; (b) a group of later migrants, such as southern Europeans in North
America; and (c) dispossessed indigenous groups, such as the Aborigines in
Australia, Maoris in New Zealand, Amerindians in North America, and
Palestinians in Israel/Palestine.8 The charter group establishes the state in its
―own vision,‖ institutionalizes its dominance, and creates a system which
segregates it from the other ethno-classes. But the pattern of control and
segregation is not even, as immigrants are gradually assimilated into the charter
group in a process described by Soysal as ―uneven incorporation.‖9 Such a
system generally reproduces the dominance of the charter group for generations
to come.
The establishment of ―pure‖ settler societies highlights the political and
economic importance of extra-territorial ethnic links which are crucial for the
success of most colonial projects. The links typically connect the settler society
to a co-ethnic metropolitan state or to supportive ethnic diasporas. As
elaborated below, extra-territorial ethnic links are a defining characteristic of
ethnocracies. These regimes rely heavily on support and immigration from
external ethnic sources as a key mechanism in maintaining their dominance over
minority groups.

Ethno-nationalism. Ethno-nationalism, as a set of ideas and practices,

constitutes one of the most powerful forces to have shaped the world’s political
geography in general, and that of Israel/Palestine in particular. Ethno-
nationalism is a political movement which struggles to achieve or preserve ethnic
statehood. It fuses two principles of political order: the post-Westphalian division
of the world into sovereign states, and the principle of ethnic self-
determination.10 The combined application of these two political principles
created the nation-state as the main pillar of today’s world political order.

3
Although the nation-state concept is rarely matched by political reality (as
nations and states rarely overlap), it has become a dominant global model due
to a dual moral bases: popular sovereignty (after centuries of despotic and/or
religious regimes) and ethnic self-determination.
The principle of self-determination is central for our purposes here. In its
simplest form, as enshrined in the 1945 United Nations Charter, it states that
―every people has the right for self-determination.‖ This principle has formed the
political and moral foundation for the establishment of popular sovereignty and
democratic government. Yet most international declarations, including the United
Nations Charter, leave vague the definition of a ―people‖ and the meaning of
―self-determination,‖ although in contemporary political culture it is commonly
accepted as independence in the group’s ―own‖ homeland state. Once such a
state is created, the principle is reified, and issues such as territory and national
survival become inseparable from ethno-national history and culture. This
possesses powerful implications to other facets of social life, most notably male
dominance, militarism and the strategic role of ethnic-religions, although a full
discussion of these important topics must await another paper.
The dominance of the ethno-national concept generates forms of ethnic
territoriality which view control over state territory and its defense as central to
the survival of the group in question, often based on selective and highly
strategic historical, cultural, or religious interpretations. As I argue below, the
application of this principle has been a major bone of contention in the struggle
between Jews and Palestinians and in the formation of the Israeli ethnocracy,
which attempted to Judaize the land in the name of Jewish self-determination.
The global dominance of ethno-nationalism and the nation-state order has
prompted Billig to consider national identities as ―banal.‖11 But despite its
dominance, the political-geography of nation-states is far from stable, as a
pervasive nation-building discourse and material reality continuously remolds the
collective identity of homeland ethnic minorities. Such minorities often develop a
national consciousness of their own that destabilizes political structures with
campaigns for autonomy, regionalism, or sovereignty.12

The Ethnic Logic of Capital. A third structural force to shape the political
geography of Israel/Palestine and the nature of its regime has been associated
with the onset of capitalism, and its ethnic and social consequences. Here the

4
settings of a settler society and ethno-nationalism combine to create a specific
logic of capital flow, development, and class formation on two main levels. First,
labor-markets and development are ethnically segmented, thereby creating an
ethno-class structure which tends to accord with the charter-immigrant-
indigenous hierarchy noted above. Typically, the founding charter group
occupies privileged niches within the labor market, while migrants are
marginalized, at least initially, from the centers of economic power, and thus
occupy the working and petit bourgeois classes. Indigenous people are typically
excluded from access to capital or mobility within the labor market, and thus
virtually ―trapped‖ as an underclass.13
Second, the accelerating globalization of markets and capital have
weakened the state’s economic power. This has been accompanied by the
adoption of neoliberal policies and the subsequent deregulation of economic
activities and privatization of many state functions. Generally, these forces have
widened the socioeconomic gaps between the charter, immigrant, and
indigenous ethno-classes. Yet in the setting of militant ethno-nationalism, as
prevalent in Israel/Palestine, the globalization of capital, and the associated
establishment of supra-national trade organizations, may also subdue ethno-
nationalism and expansionism, previously fuelled by territorial ethnic rivalries.
Particularly significant in this process is the globalization of the leading classes
among the dominant ethno-nation, which increasingly search for opportunities
and mobility within a more open and accessible regional and global economy. A
conspicuous tension between the global and the local thus surfaces, with a
potential to intensify intra-national tensions, but at the same time also to ease
inter-national conflicts, as has recently been illustrated in South Africa, Spain,
and Northern Ireland.14

Ethnocracy
The fusion of the three forces – settler society, ethno-nationalism, and the
ethnic logic of capital – creates a regime-type I have called ―ethnocracy‖.15 An
ethnocracy is a non-democratic regime which attempts to extend or preserve
disproportional ethnic control over a contested multi-ethnic territory. Ethnocracy
develops chiefly when control over territory is challenged, and when a dominant
group is powerful enough to determine unilaterally the nature of the state.
Ethnocracy is thus an unstable regime, with opposite forces of expansionism and

5
resistance in constant conflict.16 An ethnocratic regime is characterized by
several key principles:

(a) Despite several democratic features, ethnicity (and not territorial

citizenship) determines the allocation of rights and privileges; a constant
democratic-ethnocratic tension characterizes politics.
(b) State borders and political boundaries are fuzzy: there is no identifiable
demos, mainly due to the role of ethnic diasporas inside the polity and the
inferior position of ethnic minorities.
(c) A dominant ―charter‖ ethnic group appropriates the state apparatus,
determines most public policies, and segregates itself from other groups.
(d) Political, residential, and economic segregation and stratification occur on
two main levels: ethno-nations and ethno-classes.
(e) The constitutive logic of ethno-national segregation is diffused, enhancing a
process of political ethnicization among sub-groups within each ethno-
nation.
(f) Significant (though partial) civil and political rights are extended to
members of the minority ethno-nation, distinguishing ethnocracies from
Herrenvolk democracies or authoritarian regimes.

Ethnocratic regimes are usually supported by a cultural and ideological

apparatus which legitimizes and reinforces the uneven reality. This is achieved
by constructing a historical narrative which proclaims the dominant ethno-nation
as the rightful owner of the territory in question. Such narrative degrades all
other contenders as historically not entitled, or culturally unworthy, to control
the land or achieve political equality.
A further legitimizing apparatus is the maintenance of selective openness.
Internally, the introduction of democratic institutions is common, especially in
settling societies, as it adds legitimacy to the entire settling project, to the
leadership of the charter ethno-class, and to the incorporation of groups of later
immigrants. But these democratic institutions commonly exclude indigenous or
rival minorities. This is achieved either formally, as was the case in Australia
until 1967, or more subtly, by leaving such groups outside decision-making
circles, as is the case in Sri Lanka.17 Externally, selective openness is established
as a principle of foreign relations and membership in international organizations.

6
This has become particularly important with the increasing opening of the world
economy and the establishment of supranational organizations, such as the EU
and NAFTA. Membership in such organizations often requires at least the
appearance of open regimes, and most ethnocracies comply with this
requirement.
Given these powerful legitimizing forces, ethnocratic projects usually enjoy
a hegemonic status which originates among the charter group and is successfully
diffused among the populace. The hegemonic moment, as convincingly
formulated by Gramsci, is marked by a distorted but widely accepted fusion of a
given set of principles and practices. It is an order in which a certain social
structure is dominant, with its own concept of reality determining most tastes,
morality, customs, and political principles. Given the economic, political, and
cultural power of the elites, a hegemonic order is likely to be reproduced unless
severe contradictions with ―stubborn realities‖ generate counter-hegemonic
mobilizations.18

Ethnocracy in the Making: The Judaization of Israel/Palestine

The analysis of the Israeli regime in this paper covers the entire territory and
population under Israeli rule. Prior to 1967, then, it is limited to the area within
the Green Line (the 1949 armistice lines), but after that date it covers all of
Israel/Palestine, or what Kimmerling has called the ―Israeli control system‖
(Figure 1).19 While the occupied territories are often treated in studies of Israel
as an external and temporary aberration, they are considered here as an integral
part of the Israeli regime, simply because Israel governs these areas. This
appears to be the situation even following the 1993 Oslo agreement, because
the areas under limited Palestinian self-rule are still under overall Jewish
control.20 The appropriate political-geographical framework for the analysis of
Israel/Palestine since 1967 is thus: one ethnocracy, two ethno-nations, and
several Jewish and Palestinian ethno-classes.
Jews account for about 80% of Israel’s 5.9 million citizens and Palestinian-
Arabs about 17% (the rest being non-Jewish and non-Arab). An additional 2.7
million Palestinians reside in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. Hence, the population of the entire contested ―Land of Israel‖ (Palestine)
is roughly 55% Jewish and 43% Palestinian-Arab.21

7
 Ethnic and religious division is also marked within each national
community. About 41% of Jews are Ashkenazi and about 43% Mizrahi. The rest
are mainly recent Russian-speaking immigrants, mostly of European origin, who
form a distinct ethno-cultural group, at least in the short-term. Of the
Palestinian-Arabs in Israel, 77% are Muslims (a fifth of whom are Bedouin), 13%
are Christian, and 10% Druze. In the occupied territories, 95% are Muslim and
4% Christian. In both the Jewish and Muslim communities, a major cultural
division has also developed between orthodox and secular groups. About 20% of
Jews are orthodox, as are about 30% of Muslims on both sides of the Green
Line.22
Zionism has been a settler movement, and Israel a settler state, whose
territory was previously inhabited by Palestinian-Arabs. Despite notable
differences with other colonial movements, the actual process of European
settlement classifies Zionism (both before and after 1948) as a ―pure‖ colonial
settler movement.23 After independence and following the mass entry of Jewish
refugees and migrants, conspicuous social stratification emerged. In broad
terms, the Ashkenazim have constituted the charter group and have occupied
the upper echelons of society in most spheres, including politics, the military, the
labor market, and culture. The Mizrahim have been the main group of later
immigrants, recently accompanied by a group of Russian-speakers and a small
group of Ethiopean Jews. These groups are placed in a middle position, lagging
behind the Ashkenazim, but above the indigenous Palestinian-Arabs. Strikingly,
and despite an official ideology of integration and equality towards the Mizrahim,
a persistent socioeconomic gap has remained between them and the Ashkenazi
group.24
As is typical in settler societies, Israel’s indigenous Arab minority has
occupied from the outset the lowest strata in most spheres of Israeli life, and
has been virtually excluded from the political, cultural, and economic centers of
society. Following the conquest of the occupied territories in 1967, their
Palestinian residents became partially incorporated into Israeli economy, mainly
as day-laborers, but were denied political and civil rights.25

A Jewish State
Israel was announced a ―Jewish state‖ upon declaring its independence 1948. In
some ways, the declaration of Independence was quite liberal, promising non-

8
Jews ―full and equal citizenship‖ and banning discrimination on grounds of
religion, ethnic origin, gender, or creed. The central political institutions of the
new state were established as democratic, including a representative parliament
(the Knesset), periodic elections, an independent judiciary, and relatively free
media.
During the following years, however, a series of incremental laws
enshrined the ethnic and partially religious Jewish character of the state (rather
than its Israeli character, as accepted international standards of self-
determination would require). Chief among these have been the state’s
immigration statutes (Laws of Return and Citizenship), which made every Jew in
the world a potential citizen, while denying this possibility to many Palestinians
born in the country. Other laws further anchored the Jewish character of the
state not only in the symbolic realm, but also as a concrete and deepening
reality covering areas such as citizenship, education, communication, and land
ownership. As the Israeli High Court declared in 1964, in what became known as
the Yerdor case, ―the Jewishness of Israel is a constitutional given.‖26 In 1985,
revisions made to the Basic Law on the Knesset added that no party would be
allowed to run if it rejected Israel’s definition as a state of the Jewish people.27
The combination of these laws created a structure nearly immune against
democratic attempts to change its Zionist character.
During the early 1990s two Knesset basic laws defined the state as
―Jewish and democratic,‖ thereby further enshrining the state’s Jewish character,
but also coupling it with a democratic commitment. As argued below, this
coupling is problematic not as an abstract principle, but against the on-going
reality of Judaization, which has unilaterally restructured the nature of the state
through immigration and land policies. This transformation was supported by the
uni-ethnic arms of the state, including army, police, courts, economic
institutions, development agencies, and most decision-making forums.
Hence, a main obstacle to Israeli democracy does not necessarily lie in the
declaration of Israel as ―Jewish,‖ which may be akin to the legal status of Finland
as a ―Lutheran state‖ or England as ―Anglican.‖ The main problem lies in the
mirror processes of Judaization and de-Arabization (that is, the dispossession of
Palestinian-Arabs) facilitated and legitimized by the declaration of Israel as
―Jewish,‖ and by the ethnocratic legal and political structures resulting from this

9
declaration.28 Let us turn now to some detail and explore the dynamic political
geography behind the establishment of the Israeli ethnocracy.

Judaizing the Homeland

Following independence, Israel entered a radical stage of territorial
restructuring. Some policies and initiatives were an extension of earlier Jewish
approaches, but the tactics, strategies, and ethnocentric cultural construction of
the pre-1948 Jewish Yeshuv (community) were significantly intensified. This was
enabled with the aid of the newly acquired state apparatus, armed forces, and
the international legitimacy attached to national sovereignty.
The territorial restructuring of the land has centered around a combined
and expansionist Judaization and de-Arabization program adopted by the
nascent Israeli state. This began with the flight and expulsion of approximately
750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 war. Israel prevented the return of the
refugees to their villages, which were rapidly demolished.29 The authorities were
quick to fill the ―gaps‖ created by this involuntary exodus with Jewish
settlements inhabited by migrants and refugees who entered the country en
masse during the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The Judaization program was premised on a hegemonic myth cultivated
since the rise of Zionism, namely that ―the land‖ (Haaretz) belongs to the Jewish
people, and only to the Jewish people. An exclusive form of settling ethno-
nationalism developed in order quickly to ―indigenize‖ immigrant Jews, and to
conceal, trivialize, or marginalize the Palestinian past.
The ―frontier‖ became a central icon, and its settlement was considered
one of the highest achievements of any Zionist. The frontier kibbutzim (collective
rural villages) provided a model, and the reviving Hebrew language was filled
with positive images such as aliya lakaraka (literally ―ascent to the land,‖ i.e..
settlement), ge’ulat karka (land redemption), hityashvut, hitnahalut (positive
biblical terms for Jewish settlement), kibbush hashmama (conquest of the
desert), and hagshama (literally ―fulfillment‖ but denoting the settling of the
frontier). The glorification of the frontier thus assisted both in the construction of
national-Jewish identity, and in capturing physical space on which this identity
could be territorially constructed.
Such sentiments were translated into a pervasive program of Jewish-
Zionist territorial socialization, expressed in school curricula, literature, political

10
speech, popular music, and other spheres of public discourse. Settlement thus
continued to be a cornerstone of Zionist nation-building, even after the
establishment of a sovereign Jewish state. To be sure, the ―return‖ of Jews to
their ancestors’ mythical land, and the perception of this land as a safe haven
after generations of persecution had a powerful liberating meaning. Yet the
darker sides of this project were nearly totally absent from the construction of
an unproblematic ―return‖ of Jews to their biblical promised land. Very few
dissenting voices were heard against these Judaizing discourses, policies, or
practices. If such dissent did emerge, the national-Jewish elites found effective
ways to marginalize, co-opt, or gag most challengers.30
Therefore, 1948 should be regarded as a major political turning point, not
only due to the establishment of a state pronouncing a democratic regime, but
also as the beginning of a state-orchestrated, and essentially non-democratic
Judaization project. Two parallel processes have thus developed on the same
land: the visible establishment of democratic institutions and procedures, and a
more concealed, yet systematic and coercive, seizure of the territory by the
dominant ethnic group. The contradiction between the two processes casts doubt
on the pervasive classification of Israel in the academic literature as a
democracy, a point to which we return later.
The perception of the land as only Jewish was premised on a distorted
national discourse of a ―forced exile‖ and subsequent ―return.‖31 A parallel
discourse developed in reaction to the Arab-Jewish conflict (and Arab
rejectionism), elevating the exigencies of national security onto a level of
unquestioned gospel. These discourses blinded most Jews to a range of
discriminatory policies imposed against the state’s Palestinian citizens, including
the imposition of military rule, lack of economic or social development, political
surveillance and under-representation, and – most important for this essay –
large-scale confiscation of Palestinian land.32
Prior to 1948, only about 7-8 percent of the country was in Jewish hands,
and about 10 percent was vested with the representative of the British Mandate.
The Israeli state, however, quickly expanded its land holdings, and it currently
owns or controls 93 percent of the area within the Green Line. The lion’s share of
this land transfer was based on expropriation of Palestinian refugee property,
but about two-thirds of the land belonging to Palestinians who remained as
Israeli citizens were also expropriated. At present, Palestinian-Arabs, who

11
constitute around 17 percent of Israel’s population, own only around three
percent of its land, while their local government areas cover 2.5 percent of the
country (Figure 1).
A central aspect of land transfer was its legal unidirectionality. Israel
created an institutional and legal land system under which confiscated land could
not be sold. Further, such land did not merely become state land, but a joint
possession of the state and the entire Jewish people. This was achieved by
granting extraterritorial organizations, such as the Jewish National Fund, the
Jewish Agency, and the Zionist Federation, a share of the state’s sovereign
powers and significant authority in the areas of land, development, and
settlement. The transfer of land to the hands of unaccountable bodies
representing the ―Jewish people‖ can be likened to a ‗black hole’, into which Arab
land enters but can never be retrieved. This structure ensures the unidirectional
character of all land transfers: from Palestinians to Jewish hands, and never vice
versa. A stark expression of this legal and institutional setting is that Israel’s
Arab citizens are currently prevented from purchasing, leasing, or using land in
around 80 percent of the country.33 It can be reasonably assumed that the
constitutions of most democratic countries would make such a blatant breach of
equal civil rights illegal. But Israel’s character as a Judaizing state has so far
prevented the enactment of a constitution which would guarantee such rights.
During the 1950s and 1960s, and following the transfer of land to the
state, over 600 Jewish settlements were constructed in all parts of the land. This
created the infrastructure for the housing of Jewish refugees and immigrants
who continue to pour into the country. The upshot was the penetration of Jews
into most Arab areas, the encirclement of most Arab villages by exclusively
Jewish settlements (where non-Jews are not permitted to purchase housing),
and the virtual ghettoization of the Arab minority (Figure 1).
[Figure 1 around here]

Settlement and Intra-Jewish Segregation

Let us turn now to the issue of ethno-classes. Beyond the obvious consequences
of the Jewish settlement project on the ethno-national level, it also caused
processes of segregation and stratification between Jewish ethno-classes. This
aspect is central for the understanding of relations between the various Jewish
ethno-classes, and especially Ashkenazim and Mizrahim. Notably, it is not

12
argued that relations between Jewish ethnic groups are non-democratic, but
rather that the ethnocratic-settling nature of Jewish-Palestinian relations has
adversely affected intra-Jewish relations. To illustrate the geography of these
processes, let us outline in more detail the social and ethnic nature of the Jewish
settlement project, which advanced in three main waves.
During the first wave, between 1949 and 1952, some 240 communal
villages (kibbutzim and moshavim) were built, mainly along the Green Line.
During the second wave, from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s, 27
―development towns‖ and a further 56 villages were built. These were mainly
populated, usually by coercion, by North-African Jewish refugees and
immigrants. During the same period large groups of Mizrahim were also housed
in ―frontier‖ urban neighborhoods, which were either previously Palestinian or
adjacent to Palestinian areas. Given the low socioeconomic resources of most
Mizrahim, their mainly enemy-affiliated Arab culture, and lack of ties to Israeli
elites, the development towns and ―the neighborhoods‖ quickly became, and
have remained to date, distinct concentrations of segregated, poor, and deprived
Mizrahi populations.34 This geography of dependence, achieved in the name of
Judaizing the country, has underlain the evolution of Ashkenazi-Mizrahi relations
to the present day.
The third wave, during the last two decades, saw the establishment of
over 150 small non-urban settlements known as ―community‖ or ―private‖
settlements (yeshuvim kehilatiyim) on both sides of the Green Line. These are
small suburban-like neighborhoods, located in the heart of areas on both sides of
the Green Line (Figure 1). Their establishment was presented to the public as a
renewed effort to Judaize Israel’s hostile frontiers, using the typical rhetoric of
national security, the Arab threat to state lands, or the possible emergence of
Arab secessionism. In the occupied territories, additional rationales for Jewish
settlement referred to the return of Jews to ancient biblical sites, and to the
creation of ―strategic depth.‖ But, despite the continuation of a similar Zionist
discourse, a major difference characterized these settlements. They ruptured,
for the first time, Israel’s internationally recognized borders, a point to which I
return below.
From a social perspective, the people migrating into most of these high
quality residential localities were mainly middle-class Ashkenazi suburbanites,
seeking to improve their housing and social status. In recent years, urban Jewish

13
settlement in the West Bank accompanied the on-going construction and
expansion of small kehilatti settlements. These towns have increasingly
accommodated religious-national and ultra-orthodox Jews.35
Notably, the different waves of settlement were marked by social and
institutional segregation sanctioned and augmented by state policies. A whole
range of mechanisms was devised and implemented not only to maintain nearly
impregnable patterns of segregation between Arabs and Jews, but also to erect
fairly rigid lines of separation between various Jewish ethno-classes. Segregation
mechanisms included the demarcation of local government and education district
boundaries, the provision of separate and unequal government services
(especially education and housing), the development of largely separate
economies, the organization of different types of localities in different state-wide
―settlement movements,‖ and the uneven allocation of land on a sectoral basis.36
As a result, ―layered‖ and differentiated Jewish spaces were created, with
low levels of contact between the various ethno-classes. This has worked to
reproduce inequalities and competing collective identities. Movement across
boundaries has been restricted by allowing most new Jewish settlements (built
on state land!) to screen their residents by applying tests of ―resident
suitability.‖ This practice has predictably produced communities dominated by
middle-class Ashkenazim. At least part of the ethno-class fragmentation and
hostility currently evident in Israeli society can thus be traced to the Judaizing
settlement system and its institutionalized segregation. In this process we can
also note the working of the ethnic logic of capital, noted earlier as a major force
shaping social relations in ethnocracies. Development closely followed the ethno-
class pattern prevalent in Israeli society. This created spatial circumstances for
the reproduction of the ―ethnic gap‖ between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, through
location-based mechanisms such as education, land control, housing, social
networks, local stigmas, and accessibility to facilities and opportunities.

Democracy or Ethnocracy?
As we have seen, the politico-geographic analysis of Jewish land and settlement
policies highlights three key factors, often neglected in other interpretations of
Israeli society: (a) The Israeli regime has facilitated a constant process of
expanding Jewish control over the territory of Israel/Palestine. (b) Israel is a
state and polity without clear borders. (c) The country’s organization of social

14
space is based on pervasive and uneven ethnic segregation. An elaboration of
these assertions leads me to question the taken-for-granted notion that Israel is
a democracy.37 Instead, I would argue that the polity is governed by an
ethnocratic regime, as defined earlier. It is a rule for and by an expanding ethnic
group, within the state and beyond its boundaries, which is neither democratic
nor authoritarian.38
Democracy, on the other hand, is a regime which follows several main
principles, including equal and substantial civil rights, inclusive citizenship,
periodic and free elections, universal suffrage, separation between arms of
government, protection of individuals and minorities against the majority, and
an appropriate level of government openness and public ethics.39 A factor often
taken for granted by regime analysts (but far from obvious in the Israeli case) is
the existence of clear boundaries to state territory and its political community.
The establishment of a state as a territorial-legal entity is premised on the
existence of such boundaries, without which the law of the land and the activity
of democratic institutions cannot be imposed universally, thus undermining the
operation of inclusive and equal democratic procedures.
This brings us back to the question of Israeli boundaries and borders. As
shown above, the Jewish system of land ownership and development, as well as
the geography of frontier settlement, have undermined the territorial-legal
nature of the state. Organizations based in the Jewish Diaspora possess
statutory powers within Israel/Palestine. World Jewry is also involved in Israeli
politics in other significant ways, including major donations to Jewish parties and
politicians, open and public influence over policy-making and agenda-setting, as
well as lobbying on behalf of Israeli politicians in international fora, especially in
the US.40 Hence, extraterritorial (non-citizen) Jewish groups have amassed
political power in Israel to an extent unmatched by any democratic state. This is
an undemocratic structural factor consistent with the properties of ethnocratic
regimes.
As mentioned, Jewish settlement in the occupied territories has also
ruptured the Green Line (Israel’s pre-1967 internationally recognized borders) as
a meaningful border. At the time of writing, some 340,000 Israeli Jews resided
in the territories (including al-Quds, or East Jerusalem), and Israeli law has been
41
unilaterally extended to each of these settlements. The Green Line has been

15
transformed into a geographical mechanism of separating (citizen from non-
citizen) Palestinians, but not Jews.42
The combination of the two factors mean that ―Israel,‖ as a definable
democratic-political entity, simply does not exist. The legal and political power of
extraterritorial (Jewish) bodies and the breaching of state borders empty the
notion of Israel from the broadly accepted meaning of a state as a territorial-
legal institution. Hence, the unproblematic acceptance of ―Israel proper‖ in most
social science writings (including some of my own previous work) and in the
public media has been based on a misnomer.43
Given this reality, Israel simply does not comply with a basic requirement
of democracy – the existence of a demos. The demos, as defined in ancient
Greece, denotes an inclusive body of citizens within given borders. It is a
competing organizing principle to the ethnos, which denotes common origin. The
term ―democracy‖ therefore means the rule of the demos, and its modern
application points to an overlap between permanent residency in the polity and
equal political rights as a necessary democratic condition.
As we have seen, Israel’s political structure and settlement activity have
ruled out the relevance of such boundaries, and in effect undermined the
existence of universal suffrage (as settlers can vote to the parliament that
governs them, but not their Palestinian neighbors). The significance of this
observation is clear from Israel’s 1996 elections: counting only the results within
―Israel proper,‖ Shimon Peres would have beaten Benjamin Netanyahu by a
margin of over five percent. Netanyahu’s victory was thus based on the votes of
Jews in the Occupied Territories (that is, outside Israel), as were the previous
successes of the Likud camp in 1981, 1984 and 1988. The involvement of the
settlers in Israeli politics is of course far deeper than simply electoral. They are
represented by 18 Knesset members (out of 120), four government ministers,
and hold a host of key positions in politics, the armed forces, and academia.
Hence, a basic requirement for the democratization of the Israeli polity is
not only to turn it into a state of all its citizens (as most non-Zionist groups
demand), but to a state of all its resident-citizens, and only them. This is the
only way to ensure that extra-territorial and politically unaccountable bodies,
such as the Jewish Agency, the Jewish National Fund, and Jewish settlers in
occupied territories, do not unduly affect the state’s sovereign territory. This

16
principle would thus lay appropriate foundations for a democratic rule, for and by
the state’s political demos.
Beyond the critical issue of borders, several other major impediments to
the establishment of sound democratic regime have existed throughout Israel’s
political history. These have included a very high level of regime centrality,
relative lack of political accountability, weakness of judiciary, pervasive
militarism, male dominance and associated discrimination against women in
most walks of life and the inseparability of religion and state. Lack of space
prevents discussion on all but the last of these issues, to which we now turn.

Ethnocracy or Theocracy?
Some scholars claim that a growing influence of orthodox Jewish groups on
Israeli politics is leading Israel towards theocratic, and not ethnocratic, rule.44
Yet the orthodox agenda appears compatible with the Jewish ethnocratic project,
as orthodox groups take the rule of the Jewish ethnos as a given point of
departure, and chiefly aim to deepen its religiosity. As such, their campaign is
geared to change the nature of the Israeli ethnocracy without challenging its
very existence or the ethnic boundaries of its membership.
Yet, the orthodox agenda in Israeli politics is indeed significant, as it, too,
challenges the prevalent perception of Israel as ―Jewish and democratic.‖
Despite significant differences, all orthodox parties support the increasing
imposition of religious rule in Israel (Halacha), as stated by the late leader of the
National Religious Party, Z. Hammer, who was considered a moderate: ―I
genuinely wish that Israel would be shaped according to the spirit of Tora and
Halacha ... the democratic system is not sacred for me.…‖45 Likewise, one of the
leaders of Shas, often considered a relatively moderate orthodox party, declared
recently: ―We work for creating a Halacha state ... such as state would
guarantee religious freedom, but the courts will enforce Jewish law ... we have
the sacred Tora which has a moral set of laws, why should anyone be
worried?‖46 Although the initiatives taken in recent times by these bodies
attempt to mainly influence the character of public (and not private) spheres,
there exists a fundamental contradiction between the orthodox agenda and
several basic features of democracy, such as the rule of law, individual liberty
and autonomy, civil equality, and popular sovereignty.47

17
 This challenge is somewhat obscured by the duality in the interpretation of
Judaism as ethnic and/or religious. The secular interpretation of Judaism treats it
as mainly ethnic or cultural, while orthodox and ultra-orthodox groups interpret
it as an inseparable whole (that is, both ethnicity and religion). This unresolved
duality is at the heart of the tension between the secular and orthodox Jewish
camps: if the meaning of ―Jewish‖ is unresolved, how can the nature of the
―Jewish state‖ be determined?
The challenge to democracy from the orthodox agenda has become more
acute, because the orthodox political camp has grown stronger in Israeli politics
over the last decade. In the 1996-99 period it held 28 of the Knesset’s 120 seats
(with orthodox parties holding 23 and the rest being orthodox members of other
parties). The orthodox camp has held the parliamentary balance of power for
most of Israel’s history.
Notably for this paper, the rising power of orthodox sectors in Israel is
closely linked to the state’s political-geography, and to the Zionist project of
Judaizing the country. There are four main grounds for this. First, all religious
movements in Israel, and most conspicuously Gush Emunim (―Loyalty Bloc,‖ the
main Jewish religious organization to settle the West Bank), fully support the
settling of Jews in occupied Palestinian territories and the violent military
occupation of these areas. This is often asserted as part of a divine imperative,
based on the eternal Jewish right and duty to settle all parts of the ―promised
land.‖ Such settlement is to be achieved while ignoring the aspirations of
Palestinians in these territories for self-determination or equal civil rights.
Needless to say, this agenda undermines even the possibility of democratic rule
in Israel, and has already caused several waves of intra-Jewish religious-secular
violence, including the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin in 1995.
Second, repeated surveys show that the religious public in Israel is the
most intransigent in its opposition to granting civil equality to Israel’s Arab
citizens. This does not mean that the entire orthodox public opposes democratic
rule, or that it is homogenous in its political views. But nearly all opinion studies,
as well as the platforms of main religious political organizations, rank democratic
values lower than the Jewishness of the state or Jewish control over the entire
Israel/Palestine territory.48
Third, there is a discernible link between the rising power of orthodox
bodies and the rupturing of Israel’s borders. Political analyses and surveys show

18
that as the Judaization of the occupied territories deepened, so have the Jewish
elements in the collective identity of Israeli-Jews at the expense of Israeli
components.49 This trend stems from the confusion in the meaning of ―Israeli,‖
when both state borders and boundaries of the Israeli polity are blurred. In other
words, the breaching of Israeli borders with settlement activity and the
involvement of world Jewry in internal politics have eroded the territorial and
civil meaning of the term ―Israeli,‖ and simultaneously strengthened the (non-
territorial and ethno-religious) Jewish collective identity. This process has grave
implications for democracy, principally because it bypasses the institution of
territorial citizenship, on which a democratic state must be founded. In the
Israeli context it legitimizes the stratification between Jews (with full rights) and
Arabs (second-class citizens), thus denying Arabs much of the status attached to
their ―Israeli‖ affiliation. Only the demarcation of clear Israeli borders, and the
subsequent creation of a territorial political community, can halt the
undemocratic ascendancy of Judaism over Israeliness.
Finally, the Judaization project is perceived by many in the orthodox camp
not only as ethnic-territorial, but also as deepening the religiosity of Israeli Jews.
This is based on interpretation of a central percept: ―all Jews are guarantors for
one another.‖ Here ―guarantee‖ entails ―returning‖ all ―straying‖ non-believers to
God’s way. This mission legitimizes the repeated (if often unsuccessful) attempts
to strengthen the religious character of laws and public spaces. The state’s
religious character is already anchored in a variety of areas: the Jewish Sabbath
is the official Israeli day of rest; public institutions only serve Kosher food; no
import of pork is allowed; all personal laws are governed with the national
rabbinate (which prohibits civil marriage); and most archaeological digs need
approval from religious authorities.
Orthodox parties justify the imposition of these regulations on the secular
public by asserting that they ensure the state’s ethnic-cultural character for
future generations. As such, this would prevent the incorporation of non-Jews
and create a state which ―deserves to be called Israeli... and Jewish.‖50
Accordingly, the theocracy sought by religious parties already presupposes a
Jewish ethnic state (ethnocracy). Their agenda is simply to transform it into a
religious ethnocracy.51 In this light, we should note not only the conflict between
orthodox and secular Jews, but also their long-standing cooperation in the
project of establishing a Jewish ethnocracy.

19
 Hence, the religious challenge to the democratization of Israel and the
relations between orthodox and secular elements in Israeli society cannot be
separated from the political geography of a Jewish and Judaizing state. The
leading Israeli discourse in politics, academia, and the general public tends to
treat separately Arab-Jewish and religious-secular issues. But, as shown above,
the conflicts and agreements between secular and orthodox Jews cannot be
isolated from the concerns, struggles, and rights of Palestinian-Arabs. This is
mainly because at the very heart of the tension between orthodox and secular
Jews lie the drive of Israel’s Arab citizens to transform the state from ethnocracy
to democracy, and to halt and even reverse the ethnocratic Judaization project.

A Segregative Settling Ethnocracy

As we have seen, the project of Judaizing the state, spearheaded by Jewish
immigration and settlement, and buttressed by a set of constitutional laws and a
broad consensus among the Jewish public, has been a major (indeed
constitutive) feature of the Israeli regime. Israel thus fits well the model of an
ethnocratic regime presented earlier in the paper. More specifically, and given
the importance of settlement, it should be called a settling ethnocracy.
But beyond regime definitions, and beyond the fundamental chasm
between Palestinians and Jews, the fusion of ethnocentric principles and the
dynamics of immigration, settlement, and class formation created uneven and
segregated patterns among Jews. This was exacerbated by the geographic
nature of the Jewish settlement project, which was based on the principal unit of
the locality (Yeshuv). The Jewish settlement project advanced by building
localities which were usually ethnically homogeneous, and thus created from the
outset a segregated pattern of development. As noted, this geography still
stands behind much of the remaining tension between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim
in Israel.52 The political, legal, and cultural mechanisms introduced for the
purpose of segregating Jews from Arabs were thus also used to segregate Jewish
elites from other ethno-classes, thereby reinforcing the process of ―ethnicization‖
typical of ethnocratic regimes.
To be sure, these mechanisms were used differently, and more subtly,
among Jews, but the persistent gap between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim cannot
be understood without accounting for the geography of intra-Jewish relations. In
the main, Mizrahim were spatially marginalized by the Israeli settlement project,

20
whether in the isolated periphery or in poor and stigmatized neighborhoods of
Israel’s major cities. This has limited their potential economic, social, and
cultural participation.
There is a clear nexus connecting the de-Arabization of the country with
the marginalization of the Mizrahim, who have been positioned – culturally and
geographically – between Arab and Jew, between Israel and its hostile
neighbors, between a ―backward‖ Eastern past and a ―progressive‖ Western
future. But, we should remember, the depth and extent of discrimination against
Palestinians and Mizrahim has been quite different, with the latter included in
Jewish-Israeli nation-building as active participants in the oppression of the
former.
A similar segregationist logic was also used to legitimize the creation of
segregated neighborhoods and localities for ultra-orthodox and orthodox Jews,
recent Russian immigrants, and Palestinian-Arabs. In other words, the uneven
segregationist logic of the ethnocratic regime has been infused into spatial and
cultural practices, which have worked to further ethnicize Israeli society.
Of course, not all ethnic separation is negative, and voluntary separation
between groups can at times function to reduce ethnic conflict. But in a society
which has declared the ―gathering and integration of the exiles‖ (mizug galuyot)
a major national goal, levels of segregation and stratification between Jewish
ethno-classes have remained remarkably high. Referring back to our theoretical
framework, we can note the fusion of settler-society mechanisms (conquest,
immigration, and settlement) with the power of ethno-nationalism (segregating
Jews from Arabs) and the logic of ethnic capital (distancing upper and lower
ethno-classes), in the creation of Israel’s conflict-riddled contemporary human
geography.
This process, however, is not unidimensional, and must be weighed
against counter-trends, such as growing levels of assimilation between Mizrahim
and Ashkenazim, and increasing formal equality in social rights among all
groups. In addition, solidarity among Jews in the face of a common enemy has
often eased internal tensions and segregation, especially between Mizrahim and
Ashkenazim, as both have merged into a broadening Israel middle class. Here
we can also note that the original Ashkenazi charter group has broadened to
incorporate the Mizrahim, especially among the assimilated middle and upper
classes.53 Yet, the ethnicization trend has also been powerful, as illustrated by

21
the growing tendency of political entrepreneurs to exploit ―ethnic capital‖ and
draw on ethno-class-religious affiliations as a source of political support. In the
1996 elections such sectoral parties increased their power by 40 percent, and for
the first time in Israel’s history overshadowed the largest two parties, Labor and
Likud, which have traditionally been the most ethnically heterogeneous.
Moreover, the situation has not been static. The strategy of Judaization
and population dispersal has recently slowed, responding to the new neoliberal
agendas of many Israeli elites.54 It has also encountered growing Palestinian-
Arab resistance and Mizrahi grievances, which in turn have reshaped some of the
strategies, mechanisms, and manifestations of Israel’s territorial, planning, and
development policies. Both Arabs and Mizrahim have progressed in their
absolute (if not relative) socioeconomic standards, partially due to Israel’s
development policies. Likewise, Palestinian resistance in the occupied territories,
culminating in the Intifada, has slowed Jewish expansion in several regions,
brought about the Oslo agreement, and achieved a measure of limited
Palestinian self-rule.55 But these changes, important as they are, have still
occurred within the firm boundaries of the dominant, ethnocratic Zionist
discourse, where Jewish settlement and control and the territorial containment
of the Arab population, are undisputed Jewish national goals both within the
Green Line and in large parts of the occupied territories.56

Conclusion: The Enigma of Distorted Structures

In the foregoing I have attempted to probe the nature of the Israeli regime from
a political-geographic perspective. I have showed that three main forces have
shaped the Israeli polity: the establishment of a settler society, the mobilizing
force of ethno-nationalism, and the ethnic logic of capital. The fusion of these
forces has created a regime I have termed ethnocracy, which privileges ethnos
over demos in a contested territory seized by a dominant group. Ethnic relations
in Israel are thus comparable to other ethnocracies, such as Malaysia, Sri Lanka,
Serbia, or Estonia, but not to western liberal democracies, as commonly
suggested in scholarly literature or popular discourse.57
More specifically to Israel, I have shown that the Israeli regime has been
significantly shaped by the ethnocratic project of Judaizing the Land of
Israel/Palestine. This has been legitimized by the need to ―indigenize‖ ―de-
territorialized‖ Jews in order to fulfil a claim for territorial self-determination. The

22
momentum of the Judaization project has subsequently led to the rupture of the
state’s borders, the continuing incorporation of extra-territorial Jewish
organizations into the Israeli government, the persistent and violent military rule
over the occupied Palestinian territories, and the subsequent undermining of
equal citizenship. As shown above, the Judaization project provides a ―genetic
core‖ for understanding the Israeli polity because it did not only shape the
Jewish-Palestinian conflict, but also the relations between Ashkenazim and
Mizrahim as well as between secular and orthodox Jews.58
A key factor in understanding the Israeli regime thus lies in uncovering
the sophisticated institutional setting which presents itself as democratic, but at
the same time facilitates the continuing immigration of Jews (and only Jews) to
Israel, and the uni-directional transfer of land from Arab to Jewish hands. Here
we can observe that the legal and political foundations of the Jewish state have
created a distorted structure which ensured a continuing uni-ethnic seizure of a
bi-ethnic state. Once in place, this structure has become self-referential, reifying
and reinforcing its own logic.
But the dominant view unequivocally treats Israel as a democracy.59 This
view is augmented by the durable operation of many important democratic
features (as distinct from structures), especially competitive politics, generous
civil rights, an autonomous judiciary, and free media. In particular, Israel’s
democratic image has also been promoted in the academy by nearly all scholars
in the social sciences and humanities.
Israeli scholars use a range of definitions for the Israeli regime, including
liberal democracy,60 constitutional democracy,61 consociational democracy,62 and
ethnic democracy.63 The enactment of two new basic laws during the 1990s has
prompted a wave of writing hailing the ―constitutional revolution‖ as a major
move towards legal liberalism.64 Even critical writers such as Azmi Bishara, Yoav
Peled, Yonattan Shapiro, Uri Ben-Eliezer, Shlomo Swirsky, and Uri Ram still treat
―Israel Proper‖ (the imaginary unit within the Green Line) as a democratic,
though seriously flawed, regime.65 Most Palestinian writers have refrained from
analyzing the specific nature of the Israeli regime, although here a number of
significant challenges to the common democratic definition of Israel began to
appear, most notably by Elia Zureik,66 Asad Ghanem and Nadim Rouhana, with
the latter two defining Israel as a non-democratic ―ethnic state.‖67

23
 Yet, none of these works has incorporated seriously the two principal
political-geographical processes shaping the Israeli polity: the on-going
Judaization of the country, and the vagueness of its political borders. Even
critical writers tend to ignore the incongruity between the definition of Israel
within the Green Line, and the residence of people considered as full Israelis in
occupied territories beyond the state’s boundaries. This is not a minor
aberration, but rather a structural condition which undermines the claim for a
democratic regime. ―Israel Proper‖ is a political and territorial entity which has
long ceased to exist, and hence cannot provide an appropriate spatial unit for
analyzing the nature of the polity.
In many ways, the situation resembles the hegemonic moment observed
by Gramsci, when a dominant truth is diffused by powerful elites to all corners of
society, preventing the raising of alternative voices and reproducing prevailing
social and power relations. From the above it appears that this hegemony has
reached even the most enlightened and putatively democratic realms of Israeli-
Jewish society.
How can this enigma be explained? How can enlightened circles who
declare themselves to be democratic square the ―Jewish and democratic‖
account with the continuing process of Judaization? I suggest here a metaphor in
which Israeli-Jewish discourse is analogous to a tilted tower, such as the Tower
of Pisa. Once one enters the tower, it appears straight, since its internal
structural grid is perfectly perpendicular and parallel. This is akin to the
introverted discourse about the Jewish and democratic state: once inside this
discourse, most Jews accept the Jewish character of the state as an
unproblematic point of departure, much like the floor of the tilted tower. From
that perspective, Judaization appears natural and justified – or perhaps does not
appear at all.68
On the basis of this tilted foundation, Israel has added laws and policies
over the years which can be likened to the tower’s walls. Given the tilted
foundation, these walls could only be built on an angle, yet they appear straight
to those observing from the inside. One needs to step outside and away from
the tilted building and measure its coordinates against truly vertical buildings in
order to discern the distortion. In the Israeli case, then, scholars are urged to
step outside the internal Jewish-Israeli discourse and analyze the Israeli regime
systematically against the ―straight‖ principles of a democratic state.69

24
 In this vein, let us explore briefly the principle of self-determination,
which forms the basis of popular sovereignty and thus of democracy itself.
Because the modern state is a legal-territorial entity, and because the fullest
expression of self-determination is the governance of a state, it must be
exercised on a territorial basis. But Israel maintains a placeless entity (the
Jewish people) as the source of its self-determination, and thus defines the state
as ―the state of the Jewish people.‖ This non-territorial definition presents two
serious problems for democratic rule: (a) it prevents the full political inclusion of
non-Jews by degrading the status of (territorial) state citizenship70; and (b) it
reinforces Judaization through the role of world Jewry in immigration and land
transfer.
Returning to the case of Finland may help illustrate the problem: while
that state is declared to be Lutheran, it is also defined as a (territorial) Finnish
political community. As such, it allows non-Lutheran minorities to fully identify
as Finnish. But because the state of Israel is defined (non-territorially) as
Jewish, and Arabs can never become Jewish, their right to equal citizenship is
structurally denied. Hence, a democratic state requires a territorial form of self-
determination which enables the equal inclusion of minorities into the state’s civil
society.71 This recognition casts doubt over the validity of one of the most
significant statements made by the Israeli High Court, which declared in 1988,
that ―Israel’s definition as the state of the Jewish people does not negate its
democratic character, in the same way that the Frenchness of France does not
negate its democratic character.‖72 This statement harbors a conceptual
distortion: if France is French, Israel should be Israeli (and not Jewish). Hence,
stepping outside the internal Israeli-Jewish discourse reveals that the
maintenance of a non-territorial (Jewish) form of self-determination structurally
breaches central tenets of democracy. It constitutes, instead, the foundation of
the Israeli-Jewish ethnocracy.

Epilogue: Ethnocracy and Negev Lands

To conclude, let us return once again to the ―coal face‖ of land control issues in
Israel. Since September 1997, the Israeli government has announced on several
occasions the introduction of new strategies to block the ―Arab invasion‖ into
state lands within the Green Line, and to curtail ―illegal‖ Bedouin dwellings,
construction, and grazing. In most cases, ―illegal dwellings‖ and ―Arab invasion‖

25
are code terms for Bedouin residence on traditional tribal land and resistance to
involuntary concentration in a small number of towns designated by the state in
the Negev and Galilee.73 The recently announced strategy would combine the
development of small Jewish settlements (mainly in the Negev’s north-eastern
hills), the establishment of single-family Jewish farms, the sale of Negev land to
the Jewish Agency and diaspora Jews, and the application of greater pressure on
Bedouins to migrate to the state-planned towns. The initiator of the policy was
the (then) director of the Prime Minister’s office, Avigdor Lieberman, an
immigrant from the former Soviet Union and a resident of a West Bank Jewish
settlement.
A closer look at the latest land control strategy raises several hard
questions: if the Bedouin-Arabs were Israeli citizens, as they are, why would
their use of state land be considered an ―invasion‖? How do other sectors of
Israeli society, such as moshavim and kibbutzim, which regularly build without
planning permission, escape treatment as ―invaders‖? Given that the initiator of
the policy is a West Bank settler (illegal according to international law), who is
actually the invader here? How can a recent immigrant to the country campaign
to evacuate residents who have been on the land for several generations, since
well before the state was established? How can the state lease large tracts of
land to non-citizen (Jewish) organizations and continue to block its own (Arab)
citizens from using it for residential purposes?74
At the end of its first Jubilee, then, Israel’s ethnocratic features keep
surfacing: the on-going Judaization project, the stratification of ethnic rights, the
fuzziness of geographical and political boundaries, and the legal and material
involvement of extra-territorial Jewish organizations. Against this reality,
scholars, students, and activists are called upon to destabilize the hegemonic
Jewish discourse of a ―Jewish and democratic state,‖ and participate in the task
of transforming Israel from ethnocracy to democracy.

NOTES

1
I am grateful for the encouragement and comments received from Uri Ram, and for the useful remarks on
earlier drafts received from Adriana Kemp, Yossi Yona, Michael Shalev, Asa‟d Ghanem, Ian Lustick, Amnon Raz,
and Nira Yuval-Davis. Parts of this paper appeared in my “Ethnocracy or Democracy? Settler Politics in Israel,”
Bulletin of Middle East Report and Information Project (MERIP) 217 (1998): 8-14.
2
Ka’adan v. Israel Land Authority et al.; Bagatz 6698/95
3
Here my work joins previous critiques of the Israeli regime, see, for example: U. Ben-Eliezer, The Emergence of
Israeli Militarism (Tel Aviv: Kibbutz Me‟uhad, 1995) [Hebrew]; B. Kimmerling, “Religion, Nationalism and

26
Democracy in Israel,” Zemanim 56 (1995): 116-131 [Hebrew]; A. Ghanem, “State and Minority in Israel: the Case
of Ethnic State and the Predicament of Its Minority,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21, no. 3 (1998): 428-447; J.
Shapiro, Democracy in Israel (Ramat Gan: Messada, 1977).
4
Ashkenazi Jews (Ashkenazim in plural) are of European origins, while Mizrahi Jews (Mizrahim in plural, also
termed Sepharadim or Oriental Jews) hail from the Muslim world.
5
Following H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).
See Yiftachel and T. Fenster, “Introduction: Frontiers, Planning and Indigenous Peoples,” Progress in Planning
6

47, no. 4 (1997): 251-260.

G. Fredrickson, “Colonialism and Racism: United States and South Africa in Comparative Perspective,” in
7

Fredrickson, ed., The Arrogance of Racism (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1988); G. Shafir, Land,
Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict 1882-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989).
D. Stasiulis and N. Yuval-Davis, “Introduction: Beyond Dichotomies: Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class in
8

Settler Societies,” in D. Stasiulis and N. Yuval-Davis, eds., Unsettling Settler Societies (London: Sage, 1995).
This broad classification fluctuates according to the specific circumstances of each settler society.
9
Y.N. Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1994).
A. Murphy, “The Sovereign State System as a Political-Territorial Ideal: Historical and Contemporary
10

Considerations,” in T. Biersteker and S. Weber, eds., State Sovereignty as Social Construct (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996).
11
M. Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995).
B. Anderson, “Introduction,” in G. Balakrishnan, ed., Mapping the Nation (New York: Verso, 1996); W. Connor,
12

Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); A.D. Smith,
Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity, 1995).
Stasilius and Yuval-Davis. “Beyond Dichotomies.”
13

For the global process, see D. Held, “The Decline of the Nation State,” in S. Hall and M. Jacques, eds., New
14

Times: The Changing Face of Politics in the 1990s (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990); D. Harvey, The
Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989). For its Israeli manifestations, see U. Ram, “Citizens,
Consumers and Believers: The Israeli Public Sphere between Capitalism and Fundamentalism” Israel Studies 3,
no. 1 (1998): 24-44; G. Shafir and Y. Peled, “Citizenship and Stratification in an Ethnic Democracy,” Ethnic and
Racial Studies 21, no. 3 (1998): 408-427.
The term “ethnocracy” has appeared in previous literature (see: J. Linz and A. Stepan, Problems of Democratic
15

Transition and Consolidation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 69; Linz, J. 1975. Totalitarian Vs
Authoritarian Regimes. In F. Greenstein & N. Polsby Eds., Handbook of Political Science (pp. 175-411). Reading:
Addison Wesley.; Mazrui, A. 1975. The Making of Military Ethnocracy. London: Sage; D. Little, Sri Lanka: The
Invention of Emnity (Washington: US Institute of Peace, 1994), 72); However, as far as I am aware, it was
generally used as a derogatory term, and not developed into a model or concept, as formulated here. For an
earlier formulation, see my “Israeli Society and Jewish-Palestinian Reconciliation: „Ethnocracy‟ and Its Territorial
Contradictions,” Middle East Journal 51, no. 4 (1997): 505-519.
16
As noted, ethnocracies have existed for long periods in countries such as Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Northern
Ireland (until 1968), and more recently in Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, and Serbia.
Here the advent of “illiberal democracy” (F. Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” Foreign Affairs 76, no. 6
17

(1997): 22-43) is instrumental, by establishing a regime with formal democratic appearance but with centralizing,
coercive, and authoritarian characteristics. See also Y. Yona, “A State of all Citizens, a Nation-State or a
Multicultural State? Israel and the Boundaries of Liberal Democracy,” Alpayim 16 (1998): 238-263.
A. Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971); see also Lustick‟s
18

illuminating discussion of the notion of hegemony in his Unsettled States, Disputed Lands (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1993).
B. Kimmerling, “Boundaries and Frontiers in the Israeli Control System: Analytical Conclusions,” in B.
19

Kimmerling, ed., The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989).
20
This is supported by repeated statements of Israeli leaders. For example, Prime Minister Netanyahu claimed
that “only one government has and will have sovereign power west of the Jordan” (Maariv, 18 Feb. 1998);
similarly, Minster of Justice Y. Hanegbi claimed on 14 Sept. 1998 (Channel One, Israeli TV) that sovereignty in
Eretz Yisrael will never be divided and will remain Israeli, and Israeli only.”
CBS, Israel‟s Bureau of Statistics, Israel Yearbook (Jereusalem: Government Printers, 1998); figures relate to
21

31 Dec. 1997.
E. Rekhes, “The Moslem Movement in Israel,” in E. Rekhes, ed., The Arab Minority in Israel: Dilemmas of
22

Political Orientation and Social Change (Tel Aviv: Dayan Centre, University of Tel Aviv, 1991).
The differences from “typical” European settler movements include Zionism‟s nature as an ethno-national and
23

not an economic project, the status of most Jews as refugees, the loose organization of diasporic Jewish
communities as opposed to the well-organized metropolitan countries, and the notion of “return” to Zion
enshrined in Jewish traditions.
See, for example, Y. Cohen and Y. Haberfeld, “Second Generation Jewish Immigrants in Israel: Have the
24

Ethnic Gap in Schooling and Earnings Declined?” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21, no. 3 (1998): 507-528; S.M.
Lewi-Epstein and N. Semyonov, “Ethnic Mobility in the Israeli Labor Market,” American Sociological Review, 51
(1986): 342-351.

27
 For the historical evolution of Israel‟s ethnic political economy and labour relations in Israel, see L. Grinberg,
25

Split Corporatism in Israel (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991); M. Shalev, Labour and the Political Economy in Israel
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
26
P. Lahav, Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1997).
27
The 1985 Law also disqualifies parties using a racist platform.
28
See D. Kretzmer, The Legal Status of the Arabs in Israel (Boulder: Westview, 1990); Adalah, Legal Violations
of Arab Rights in Israel (Sehfa‟amre: Adala, 1998).
29
See B. Morris, Israel’s Border Wars, 1949-1956 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
According to Peled and Shafir (“The Roots of Pacemaking: The Dynamics of Citizenship in Israel, 1948-93,”
30

International Journal of Middle East Studies 28 (1996): 391-413), the intensity of the Judaization project has
slowed down recently, in part because of the global orientations of Israeli elites. But despite the decline, the logic
of Judaization is still fundamental to Israeli-Jewish politics and should be treated as the historical “genetic core” of
the Israeli regime.
See U. Ram, “Zionist Historiography and the Invention of Modern Jewish Nationhood: the Case of Ben Zion
31

Dinur,” History and Memory 7, no. 1 (1995): 91-124. Records show that Jews remained in the land of Israel for
centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple, and in most cases emigrated voluntarily.
On policies affecting Palestinian-Arabs in Israel, see also G. Falah, “Israeli Judaisation Policy in Galilee and its
32

Impact on Local Arab Urbanisation,” Political Geography Quarterly 8 (1989): 229-253; I. Lustick, Arabs in the
Jewish State: Israel’s Control over a National Minority (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980); S. Smooha,
“Existing and Alternative Policy Towards the Arabs in Israel,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 5 (1982): 71-98; O.
Yiftachel, Planning a Mixed Region in Israel: the Political Geography of Arab-Jewish Relations in the Galilee
(Aldershot: Avebury, 1992); E.T. Zureik, Palestinians in Israel: a Study of Internal Colonialism (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979).
33
I.e., the area of Israeli regional councils, where world Jewry organizations are part of most land leasing and
ownership arrangments.
See S. Hasson, “Social and Spatial Conflicts: the Settlement Process in Israel During the 1950s,” L’Espace
34

Geographique, 3 (1981): 169-179; Y. Gradus, “The Emergence of Regionalism in a Centralised System: The
Case of Israel,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2 (1984): 87-100; S. Swirski and B. Shoshani,
Development Towns: Toward a Different Tomorrow (Tel Aviv: Brerot, 1985).
See Falah, “Israeli Judaisation Policy in Galilee”; Lustick, Unsettled States, Disputed Lands; D. Newman, “The
35

Territorial Politics of Exurbanisation: Reflections on 25 Years of Jewish Settlement in the West Bank,” Israel
Affairs 3, no. 1 (1996): 61-85; Yiftachel, “Israeli Society and Jewish-Palestinian Reconciliation.”
36
See Yiftachel, ibid.
37
There exists a wide body of literature which debates the characteristics of Israeli democracy, all assuming a
priori that Israel is governed by such a regime. See A. Arian, The Second Republic: Politics in Israel (Tel Aviv:
Zmora-Bitan, 1997); B. Neuberger, Democracy in Israel: Origins and Development (Tel Aviv: Open University,
1998); S. Smooha, “Ethnic Democracy: Israel as an Archetype,” Israel Studies 2, no. 2 (1997): 198-241.
For elaboration of the historical evolution of the Israeli-Jewish “ethnocracy,” see my “Israeli Society and
38

Jewish-Palestinian Reconciliation.” A similar formulation of Israel as an “ethnic state” can be found in N.

Rouhana, Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State: Identities and Conflict (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1997); Ghanem, “State and Minority in Israel.”
39
See D. Held, Models of Democracy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988); Linz and Stepan, Problems of
Democratic Transition and Consolidation. Needless to say, pure democracy is never implemented fully, although
Linz and Stepan list 42 countries which fall over a democratic threshold. We use the democratic model here as
an analytical tool with which the Israeli regime can be examined.
40
A striking example of the involvement of world Jewry was the declaration by ultra-orthodox Australian
millionaire, and major donor to religious parties, David Guttnick, that he would work to “topple the Netanyahu
government” in case it decides to withdraw from occupied territories (Haaretz 14 Aug. 1998).
41
Jewish settlements in the occupied territories were established under military rule; the settlements are closed
to Palestinian-Arabs.
42
For a thorough, ground-breaking analysis of the role of borders in Jewish politics, see A. Kemp, Talking
Boundaries: The Making of Political Territory in Israel 1949-1957, PhD dissertation, Tel Aviv University, 1997
[Hebrew].
43
Most accounts of the Israeli regime, including critical analyses, have continued to treat Israel concurrently as:
(a) the land bounded by the Green Line, and (b) the body of Israeli citizens (including Jewish settlers of the
occupied territories). This contradiction was rarely problematized in the literature. For examples of critical
accounts which take this approach see Y. Peled, “Ethnic Democracy and the Legal Construction of Citizenship:
Arab Citizens of the Jewish State,” The American Political Science Review, 86, no. 2 (1992): 432-443; U. Ram,
“Citizens, Consumers and Believers”; Rouhana, Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State; Smooha, “Ethnic
Democracy.” For earlier debates with this approach, see Kimmerling, “Boundaries and Frontiers in the Israeli
Control System”; J. Migdal, “Society-Formation and the Case of Israel,” in M. Barnett, ed., Israel in Comparative
Perspective (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996).
See Kimmerling, “Religion, Nationalism and Democracy in Israel”; Y. Nevo, “Israel: From Ethnocracy to
44

Theocracy,” paper delivered at conference “The Conflictual Identities Construction in the Middle East,” Van Leer
Institute, Jerusalem, November 1998.

28
45
Quoted in Neurberger, Democracy in Israel, 41.
46
Interview of Rabbi Azran, Globs, 28 Sept. 1998.
Kimmerling, “Religion, Nationalism and Democracy in Israel”; C. Liebman, “Attitudes Towards Democracy
47

among Israeli Religious Leaders,” in E. Kofman, A. Shukri, and R. Rothstein, eds., Democracy, Peace and the
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Boulder: Lynne Reiner Publishers, 1993).
48
See Y. Peres and E. Yuchtman-Yaar, Between Consent and Dissent: Democracy and Peace in the Israeli Mind
(Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute, 1998); S. Smooha, Arabs and Jews in Israel: Change and Continuity in
Mutual Intolerance (Boulder, San Francisco, Oxford: Westview, 1992).
See Migdal, “Society-Formation and the Case of Israel”; Peres and Yuchtman-Yaar, Between Consent and
49

Dissent.
See Stukhammer, “Israel‟s Jubilee and Haredi-Secular Relations from a Haredi Perspective,” Alpayim 16
50

(1998): 219; see also a recent interview with the new leader of the Religious National Party, Rabbi Y. Levi, who
claimed that the main goal of his party is to ensure the Jewishness of the state for future generations (Haaretz,
12 Aug. 1998).
51
As observed by E. Don-Yehiya, the most striking feature of orthodox-secular relations is their cooperation, and
not conflict, as the two groups differ sharply on most values, goals and aspirations. (The Politics of
Accommodation: Settling Conflicts of State and Religion in Israel (Jerusalem: Floresheimer Institute for Policy
Studies, 1997)) I suggest here that the central project of Judaising the country has formed the foundation for this
cooperation.
See E. Shohat, “The Narrative of the Nation and the Discourse of Modernisation: the Case of the Mizrahim,”
52

Critique (spring 1997): 3-18; S. Swirski, Israel: the Oriental Majority (London: Zed, 1989).
T. Bensky, “Testing Melting Pot Theories in the Jewish Israeli Context,” Sociological Papers (Sociological
53

Institute for Community Studies, Bar Ilan University) 2, no. 2 (1993): 34-62.
Peled and Shaifr, “The Roots of Peacemaking.”
54

On protest and resistance in the Israeli peripheries, see my “Israeli Society and Jewish-Palestinian
55

Reconciliation.”
56
It can even be argued that the Oslo process has accelerated the process of Judaizing large parts of the
occupied territories, by legitimizing the construction of further Jewish housing and pervasive land confiscation for
“by-pass roads.” In this vein, the long closures of the territories, and the subsequent importation of hundreds of
thousands of foreign workers to replace Palestinian labour, are also part of the post-Oslo process of Judaization.
57
For recent attempts to compare Israel to western democracies, see A. Dowty, The Jewish State: One Hundred
Years Later (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); G. Shefer, “Has Israel Really Been a Garrison
Democracy? Sources of Change in Israel‟s Democracy,” Israel Affairs 3, no. 1 (1996): 13-38.
58
I do not claim, of course, that the Judaization process can explain every facet of ethnic relations in
Israel/Palestine; rather, it is a factor which helped shape these relations while remaining largley overlooked in
scholarly literature. But the Judazation process has also affected greatly power relations between groups not
covered in this paper, including military-civil society, gender relations and local-central tensions. See: Ferguson,
K. Kibbutz Journal: Reflections on Gender, Race and Nation in Israe (California, Trilogy Book, 1993).
59
This includes some my own previous writings, such as Planning a Mixed Region in Israel (1992), where I
classified Israel as a bi-ethnic democracy.
Neurberger, Democracy in Israel; Shefer, “Has Israel Really Been a Garrison Democracy?”
60
61
S.N. Eisenstadt, The Transformation of Israeli Society (London: Weinfield and Nicholson, 1985).
Don-Yihiya, The Politics of Accommodation; Liebman, “Attitudes Towards Democracy among Israeli Religious
62

Leaders”; D. Horowitz and M. Lissak, Trouble in Utopia: The Overburdened Polity of Israel (Albany: SUNY Press,
1990).
Smooha, “Ethnic Democracy: Israel as an Archetype”; Shaifr and Peled, “The Roots of Peacemaking.”
63

See Arian, The Second Republic; A. Barak, “Fifty Years of Israeli Law,” Alpayim 16 (1998): 36-45 [Hebrew].
64

See A. Bishara, “On the Question of the Palestinian Minority in Israel,” Teorya Uvikkoret (Theory and Critique)
65

3 (1993): 7-20 [Hebrew]; U. Ben-Eliezer, “Is Military Coup Possible in Israel?” Theory and Society 27 (1998): 314-
349; Peled, “Ethnic Democracy and the Legal Construction of Citizenship; Shapiro, Democracy in Israe; Swirsky,
Israel: The Oriental Majority; Ram, “Citizens, Consumers and Believers.”
E. Zureik, “Prospects of Palestinians in Israel (I),” Journal of Palestine Studies 12, no. 2 (1993): 90-109.
66
67
See Ghanem, “State and Minority in Israel”; Rouhana, Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State.
68
Here we can note that the political disagreement between the Jewish left and right in Israel, which is often
portrayed as a bitter rivalry, is not on the broadly accepted “need” to Judaize Israel, but only on the desired extent
of this project.
A step in this direction has already been taken, see Ghanem, “State and Minority in Israel”; Rouhana,
69

Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State; Yiftachel, “Questioning „Ethnic Democracy,‟” Israeli Studies 3, no.
2 (1998): 253-67.
70
This affects adversely the political rights of Israeli-Jews too, as it undermines the extent of their own
sovereignty.
71
Political theorists discuss in recent debates the possibility of cultural or linguistic forms of self-determination,
which may be non-territorial (see W. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)). However, these forms also allow the possibility of civil entrance into the

29
collectivity. This is different in Judaism, which is neither territorial, cultural or linguistic, and thus prevents the
possibility of civil inclusion.
72
Neiman v. Central Elections Committee, Judgment of the then High Court President, Judge M. Shamgar.
On this issue, see detailed analysis by T. Fenster, “Settlement Planning and Participation Under Principles of
73

Pluralism,” Progress in Planning 39, no. 3 (1993): 169-242.

The government‟s new strong-arm approach became evidently clear in early April, 1998, when three homes
74

built by Beduoins on private Arab land in the Galilee were demolished. The event was followed by
demonstrations and strikes, and community efforts to rebuild the homes.

30
 MIZRAHI FEMINISM AND THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE

Published in “JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EAST WOMEN’S STUDIES”, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring 2011)

© 2011

Smadar Lavie

THE MIZRAHIM

The modern State of Israel declared itself to be a homeland to a citizenry consisting of

three major social groups: Of its seven million citizens, about 20 percent belong to a group
that the government and popular culture term Arab Citizens of Israel, or Israeli Arabs
(Ducker 2005). They prefer to be called Palestinian Citizens of Israel, Palestinian Israelis,
or Palestinians Residing in Israel. In Arabic they are called “1948 Arabs,” shorthand for
those who stayed in Palestine after the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe)—the Zionist expulsion of
most Palestinians from their homeland in order to carve out the State of Israel. The second
group is the Mizrahim (Orientals), who constitute 50 percent of Israel’s total population
and about 63 percent of the Jewish population (Ducker 2005). Their parents immigrated to
Israel mainly in the 1950s from the Arab and Muslim world, or from the former margins of
the Ottoman Empire such as Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, or even Turkey, Iran,
Bulgaria, and India (2005). Officially, the Israeli government terms them “descendants
from Asia-Africa,” or ‘Edot Hamizrah (Bands of the Orient) (Lavie 1992). Mizrahim is the
coalitional term they use when advocating their rights before the ruling minority, the
approximately 30 percent of Israeli citizenry called Ashkenazim (Ducker 2005).

The Ashkenazim originated in central and eastern Europe and spoke Yiddish. While their
first organized immigration wave arrived in Palestine in 1882, most came after the
Holocaust (Lavie 2007). Official Israeli terminology endows them with the appellation
Kehilot Ashkenaz (Ashkenazi communities) (Ducker 2005, Lavie 1992, Shohat 1988) 1.
Most Mizrahim vehemently reject the identity descriptor “Arab Jews,” designated for them
by diasporic anti-Zionist Mizrahi intellectuals. Yet while most Ashkenazim identify
themselves first as Israelis and then as Jews, most Mizrahim identify first as Jews and only
then as Israelis 2.
Official discourse camouflages the fact that the majority of Israel’s citizenry is of
Mizrahi origin. The Israeli population survey authority devised an all-inclusive demographic
category, called yelidei ha’aretz, for those Israeli Jews “born in Israel.” If one does not
know the identity of the parents and grandparents of those born in Israel, then the propor-

1
tions of Mizrahim and Ashkenazim seem more equal than they actually are. When younger
Jewish Israelis are described as born in Israel, they lose their historical diasporic roots,
which still define racial-ethnic zones of privilege. Because Mizrahi families had much higher
birth rates than the Ashkenazim until the middle of the 1970s, it is evident that the
majority of Jews born in Israel are Mizrahim (Ducker 2005). Identifying this disparity, or
its occlusion in the census, greatly clarifies the patterns of discrimination within the Jewish
population.
Since the arrival of Ashkenazi Zionists in Palestine in 1882 and since 1948, the
Mizrahim have been expected to relinquish their Arab or Mediterranean culture and family
structure and their non-European mother tongues. After 1948, upon immigration, they
were forced to reside in economically deprived border villages and development towns.
The Mizrahim received government-sponsored training programs for production-line jobs,
while the Ashkenazim went to universities for professional training. Like the Palestinian
Israelis, the Mizrahi majority has only a small minority of representation in all financial,
legal, and cultural institutions of the Israeli elite. This holds true not only in these
institutions, but also in political movements such as feminism, where sharp divisions exist
between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi feminists.

ASHKENAZI FEMINIST ELITISM

The emergence of Mizrahi feminism in the 1990s must be placed into the context of
Ashkenazi elite domination of Israel’s public sphere. These elite are an almost hermetically
sealed group of families that ensures intergenerational transmission of financial assets and
Ashkenazi Zionist pedigree. Upward mobility is almost impossible for those lacking proper
genealogy, unless they have relatives, neighbors, and close friends who can “pull strings”
for them (Danet 1989,3 Etzioni-Halevi 1993). Most of the public sphere is framed by a
discourse focusing on security that muffles awareness of the rampant intra-Jewish racism
by uniting Jews against the Arab enemy (Chetrit 2004), talking about the Palestinians as a
demographic time bomb (Bistrov and Sofer 2006), or appealing to a shared Israeli
masculinity (Kaplan 1999). The remainder of the sphere is saturated with U.S.-European
high and popular culture.
When Israeli Ashkenazi feminism arose in the 1970s, many of its members were
middle-class Ashkenazim who had immigrated to Israel from English-speaking countries.
Their activism included founding a system of shelters for battered women, rape crisis lines,
courage-to-heal groups for incest survivors, and a prostitute rehabilitation movement and
fighting against the commodification of women’s bodies in commercials (Safran 2006,
Swirski and Safir 1991). From the mid-1980s on, the space that middle-class Ashkenazi

2
feminists had created for feminism in the public sphere was usurped by the gvarot (ladies)
of the liberal Ashkenazi elite 4. The upper-class Ashkenazi feminists had the wealth,
leisure, and Zionist pedigree to conduct full-time feminist advocacy through their fathers,
husbands, or other kinship ties. Among them were Shulamit Aloni, wife of Reuven Aloni, a
long-time member of the Labor Party establishment; Yael Dayan, Moshe Dayan’s
daughter; and the much younger Meirav Michaeli, niece of Mordechai Namir, one of the
Labor Party’s leaders.

Early Mizrahi feminists faced an uphill struggle in their efforts to carve out a place in
the little space left in Israeli civil society devoid of militarism or the liberal feminist
agenda. Mizrahi women’s needs were met by neither group. The gvarot were insufficient to
represent the welfare mother, the production-line worker from the hinterland company
town, or the woman who had just lost her job due to the economic downturn that followed
the failed Oslo Peace Accords. They could not even represent the Mizrahi woman
intellectual, who had neither the pedigree nor the relatives to secure her a tenure-track
position in Israel’s “Ashkenazi Academic Junta” (Damri-Madar 2002, Lavie 1995, 2002,
Lavie and Shubeli 2006) 5.

MIZRAHI FEMINISM

Mizrahi feminism is the only feminist movement in Israel that currently draws its
membership from all segments of society, including intellectuals, artists, small business
owners, fired factory workers, and homeless welfare mothers (Shiran 2002b). The
movement started when Mizrahi women wanted to bring immediate aid and long-term
empowerment and social justice to disenfranchised women in their communities. They
were inspired by the distinct voices of U.S. feminists of color who had emerged in the
1970s arguing that white feminism could not transcend the racism, ethnocentrism, and
privilege that typified the Western public sphere and its liberal feminist movements. Since
American trends arrive in Israel about a decade later, in the mid-1980s a group of Mizrahi
women met in Tel Aviv, upon the initiative of the feminist activists Ilana Sugavker, whose
parents immigrated to Israel from Bombay, and Hanna Cohen, daughter of Iranian
immigrants. Its members were Yemenis Yonit Mansour, Yael Zadok, and Ronit Dagan-
Timsit; Iraqis Ilana Shamai, Rutie Gur, Irit Daloumi, and Shosha Goren; Egyptian Vicki
Shiran; and Iranian Zehava Goldstein. All were Zionists, but all criticized the upper-class
and Anglo-Saxon influences on Israeli feminists. They criticized, too, the classism and
racism faced by Mizrahi and Palestinian-Israeli women (2002b). Though a Mizrahi
discourse of resistance had existed in Israel since the 1920s, when the Yemeni laborers
3
brought in as “natural workers” unionized (Kapara 1978), this was the first time that
Mizrahi women identified themselves as a category (Shiran 1991, 1996, 2002b, Shohat
1996).
The major event of Israel’s feminist non-governmental organizations (NGOs) since the late
1970s has been the Annual Feminist Convention. Until 1991, almost all the speakers and
workshop leaders were Ashkenazi women, with the inclusion of a single token Mizrahi and
a single token Palestinian-Israeli (Shadmi 2001). The Tel Aviv Women’s Group used to
joke, in the Audre Lorde (1993/4) tradition of “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the
Master’s House,” that Mizrahi women cleaned house and babysat for the Ashkenazi gvarot
so that the gvarot could devote time to feminism.
In 1991 the Mizrahi group refused to remain token participants in the Annual Feminist
Convention meetings and demanded proportional representation for each group of Israeli
citizens: Palestinians, Mizrahim, and Ashkenazim. It won this battle because, with the
refusal of the obligatory single Mizrahi and single Palestinian to act as a fig leaf, the
Ashkenazi feminists found their liberalist pluralism challenged.
In 1994 the Mizrahi feminists demanded that lesbians be added to the proportional
representation paradigm. From then on, until early 2000, almost all Israeli non-academic
feminist events were run by what is officially termed “the quarter system,” where each
panel or workshop had an Ashkenazi, a Mizrahi, a Palestinian, and a lesbian (Barkai 1993,
Ben-Zvi 1994, Shiran 1995).8 Israeli academic feminist events, on the other hand,
remained almost exclusively Ashkenazi.
By 2000, many Ashkenazi feminists saw the problem as resolved and returned to
the system of the all-Ashkenazi panel with a token Mizrahi and/or Palestinian. Mizrahi
feminists tried to challenge this paradigm but were left without much success, because by
then some of them felt conflicted by a sense of obligation to Ashkenazi NGO feminists, who
had singled them out as “good Mizrahim,” or Mizrahim willing to accept these token
diversity roles.
In response to the al-Aqsa Intifada (2000-2005), many Palestinian-Israeli individual
feminist activists and NGOs boycotted Israeli feminist activists’ events altogether. They
objected to the fact that such events included Jewish feminists, mainly Ashkenazi, from
settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, and Orthodox Jewish feminists, mainly Ashkenazi
as well, who believe in the idea of a Greater Eretz Yisrael but lived within its pre-1967
borders.
The only event that still observes the official policy of the quarter system is Israel’s
annual feminist NGO convention. While Mizrahim and Palestinian Israelis seek to devote
their energies to their own communities, Ashkenazi feminists have made a strategic choice

4
to shift their focus to the Question of Palestine.

ISRAELI FEMINISM AND THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE

The Question of Palestine best illustrates the gulf between Ashkenazi feminists and the
majority of Jewish Israeli women, who are disenfranchised Mizrahim. When I mention “the
Question of Palestine,” I allude to Edward Said’s (1979) book of that title. Yet for most
Ashkenazi feminists, who conceive of themselves as representatives of all Israeli women,
Palestine is to be found only in the West Bank and Gaza (Swirsky 2002). They are not
alone in this view. The Question of Palestine has developed into a legitimate subject of
activism among feminists in the West—many of whom, particularly in the United States
and Canada—are progressive Ashkenazi Jews (Berger-Gluck 1994, Dworkin 2002, Segal
2007, Sturm 1992, Young 1992).
Most Ashkenazi Jews in the diaspora are unaware of the vast socio-economic disparity
that exists in Israel and throughout the Jewish world. While 15 percent of world Jewry is
Mizrahi, this group resides mainly in Israel. The 85 percent majority of world Jewry that is
Ashkenazi resides mainly in the diaspora (Swirski 1989). Historically, diaspora Ashkenazi
feminists have been willing to battle racism in their own societies. Progressive and radical
Jews have always been at the forefront of anti-racist struggles, whether in South Africa
during the fight against apartheid or in the United States during the civil rights movement.
Many diaspora Ashkenazi feminists have consistently protested Israel’s colonial practices
towards non-Jews in the West Bank and Gaza. Nevertheless, because Mizrahi discourse on
intra-Jewish racism has been suppressed, whether by the English language barrier that
prevented it from traveling abroad or by severe censorship from Ashkenazi hegemony
(Lavie 2006), the extent of Israel’s intra-Jewish racial divide is unfamiliar to most
progressive Jews abroad.
Ashkenazi peace feminists focus on ending Israel’s occupation of Palestine in the West
Bank and Gaza, and some do concurrently fight for equal civil rights for Palestinian citizens
of Israel. But this fight deflects their attention from their responsibility for and participation
in the racial and economic oppression of the non-European Jewish majority citizenry within
Israel. These feminists employ a discourse about the Palestinian as the external,
homogenized, nationalist Other, who cannot be subject to the perennial Israeli debate
about who is a Jew (Lavie 2010). Palestinian women especially serve as Others for
Ashkenazi feminists, who recognize and nurture this difference.
Such activism almost surely yields European or U.S. funding. It is easier for the
Ashkenazi peace gvarot to deal with Palestine as a specifically feminist issue, as this allows
them to dialogue with the English-speaking, Western-bred, secular-liberal Palestinian
5
nationalist elite. They need not engage with members of the lower classes of Palestinian
women, who belong to Islamist movements such as Hamas, mainly as a result of their
disillusionment with the exclusive NGO-ization9 and professionalization (Merry 2006,
Sangtin and Nagar 2006) of cosmopolitan Palestinian feminism (Jad 2005).
The Question of Palestine is a well-funded springboard for Israeli activism under the
utopian platform of peace and coexistence. In Hebrew, du-kiyyum literally means “co-
existence.” It has become a shorthand description of a genre of Palestinian and Israeli get-
togethers designed to process old grievances and encourage potentials for peace. Often, a
professionally trained group facilitator aids the process. The meetings are held at elegant
resorts, in beautiful natural settings meant to provide the relaxed atmosphere needed to
allow past traumas to heal. The Israelis likely to participate come from the Ashkenazi
upper-middle class. Outside Israel, these du-kiyyum get-togethers are conducted in
English. This further limits the composition of participants, since, in the non-English-
speaking world, English proficiency and upper-class cosmopolitanism often go together. In
Israel, the du-kiyyum is habitually performed in Hebrew, the colonizers’ language.
Subaltern Palestinians speak it fluently. The Israeli participants are not likely to speak
Arabic. Some Palestinians have given du-kiyyum the sardonic affectionate nickname
“dukki” (Lavie 2006, Shubeli 2006).10
These ritualized du-kiyyum dialogues with the upper-class feminist elite of Ramallah
have permitted Ashkenazi feminists to justify their racial and class bias toward Mizrahi
women with benevolence toward Arab Muslim and Christian women of the West Bank (far
less than toward those of Gaza). They espouse the cause of the Palestinian women
activists who are citizens of Israel, even while controlling much of the funding that goes to
the Palestinian-Israeli feminist NGOs.
In an era where the public sphere has undergone NGO-ization and feminist NGOs have
undergone professionalization (Merry 2006, Sangtin and Nagar 2006), du-kiyyum is used
as a magic key to unlock NGO funding for local projects. Funds flow to Israel for dukki
feminism from the European Union as well as from diaspora organizations and U.S. Jewish
women’s groups. The dukki’s prestige brings in handsome budgets. In late 2002, the
peace-and-dialogue movement received about $9 million of U.S. and EU tax-deductible
donations (Ettinger 2003).
Almost all Israeli feminist NGOs are funded by the New Israel Fund (NIF) and Women-
To-Women USA-Israel. These foundations espouse an enlightened, left-leaning form of
Zionism and have influenced the scholarly political, cultural, and social agendas of Israeli
feminism and women’s studies. In the realm of feminist activism, the NIF and its
subsidiary, Sherutei Tmikha v’Ye‘utz l’Irgunim (Support and Consulting Services for

6
NGOs), or SHATIL, have professionalized the NGOs by offering job opportunities at a time
of job scarcity. But hired professionals must conform to role expectations, which has
tended to depoliticize some activists. Aside from organizations’ leadership, which is mostly
comprised of Ashkenazim, the NIF metes out its funds into part-time positions held mainly
by Mizrahi and Palestinian women. This practice confines many grassroots women activists
to jobs with fragmented hourly pay, devoid of benefits and labor rights.
In funding NGOs, the NIF has also enacted a Durkheimian division of protest labor. As
Durkheim (1884) classifies the manner in which hierarchies of different labors cohere into
a social order, the NIF has created a hierarchy of gendered-ethnic-national protests
regulated by its funding policies. The progressive-liberal feminist elite is funded by the NIF
and Women-to-Women USA-Israel to protest violations of the human and civil rights of
Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, or even those of Israel itself. It employs the
language of cosmopolitan human rights, including the discourse and the struggle of
indigenous first nations. The funding agencies do not object when these NGOs use terms
like “racism” and “apartheid” to describe the discriminatory ideologies and practices of the
Israeli regime against Palestinians. The Israeli regime now allows even its Palestinian
citizens to have their own tightly supervised human rights NGOs, also mainly funded by
the NIF. They receive demonstration permits and conduct activism objecting to Israeli
segregationist policies against them. Yet both the government and the funding agencies
use the Palestinian-Israeli and Ashkenazi elite human rights NGOs as proof of their claim
to enlightenment. The NIF vetoes any Palestinian human rights activism that
would inform the Palestinian public about the racial divisions of Zionism or the oxymoronic
concept of a democratic Jewish state.11
The NIF and Women-to-Women USA-Israel do not bestow even such confined protest
and popular mobilization privileges on Mizrahi NGOs. Instead, they have relegated these
NGOs to the role of substituting severely truncated state welfare programs. Feminist
Mizrahi NGOs are funded mainly to help women re-enter the job market through work-
shops for starting small businesses—such as selling home cooking in a tight, highly
professionalized catering market or embroidery in an exploitative market for ethnic crafts,
already populated by Bedouin women who have their own collectives for embroidery
and weaving. When the Mizrahi NGOs refuse to become charities or “oceans of tears,”12
they are neutralized by the funders’ threats of greatly reducing their grants.13 In sum, as
Racheli Avidov (2004) argued, Mizrahi feminism has been transformed into a depoliticized
subcontractor of mainstream Ashkenazi feminism.14
Until recently, Ashkenazi feminists have discredited Mizrahi feminists as mitbakhyenot
(crybabies),15 while erasing their own color and class differences from Mizrahi women

7
under the guise of Jewish sisterhood (Shiran 2002a). The result has been an almost
complete disjuncture between Mizrahi feminists and Palestinian-Israeli feminists, despite
their similar structures of patriarchy and similar multiple axes of oppression, whether by
Ashkenazi men and women or their own men. Mizrahi and Palestinian-Israeli feminists are
able to dialogue only through the mediation of the Ashkenazi feminists, even when the
Ashkenazim are physically absent during the dialogue (Ebron and Tsing 1995, Lavie 1995).
Furthermore, the lack of English skills and/or elite educational experience abroad (Lavie
2006) makes it impossible for Mizrahi feminists to engage with the upper-class nationalist
feminists of the Palestinian Authority.
The history of feminist activism and scholarship teaches us that progress starts at
home. Palestinian feminists, particularly if Islamist, conduct their activism in keeping with
the spirit of the old Jewish “sages of blessed memory,” who advised: “Put the poor of your
home before those of your town, and the poor of your town before those of the next
town.”16 In other words, use common sense and compassionate logic. Unlike the Israeli
feminist gvarot, Palestinian feminists first work locally, putting their class privileges into
action for the betterment of the disenfranchised in their own communities, and only then
present this work to the international community and media (Jad 2005). Yet the Question
of Palestine enables the Ashkenazi peace feminists to avoid sharing their power, prestige,
and money with the Mizrahi internal Others of Israeli society. Mizrahi feminists see great
irony in the contrast between Ashkenazi feminists’ emphasis of human rights for the Pales-
tinians and silence on human rights for the Mizrahim. This irony is but a small part of the
practices and policies that have led the majority of Israeli women, Mizrahi women, to
move farther to the right since 1977 (Lavie 2010).

IDIOSYNCRASIES OF ISRAEL’S POLITICAL LEFT AND RIGHT

The majority of Ashkenazim vote for the Israeli political left. The left agrees on a land-for-
peace settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but is divided among three factions.
First, the Zionist Left, consisting of the Labor Party and MERETZ Party, and even the
Kadima Party, voting bloc, espouses liberal to socialist Zionism.17 Nevertheless, when in
power, the Zionist Left has consistently carried out right-wing domestic social and
economic policies. The bloc’s affluent constituency has been composed of the Ashkenazi
economic-political elite—industrialists, bankers, developers, and high tech
businessmen (Reider 2006, Shubeli 2006). A second group, the Post-Zionist Left,
recognizes the reality of the 1948 Nakba and conducts active demonstrations against
Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza but does not differ from the Zionist
bloc when it comes to its Ashkenazi elite class interests. The third faction, the Anti-Zionist
8
Left, is also of the Ashkenazi elite class but traces its roots back to the European New Left
of the 1960s. It favors transforming Israel from a Jewish state, where Jews have
advantageous privileges of citizenship, into a secular state with equitable citizenship for all
inhabitants, including the Palestinians who remained in what was declared to be Israel
after the 1948 war. A minority within the Anti-Zionist Left believes that one state,
Palestine/Israel, ought to be formed from Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. None
of these leftist movements has managed to attract the Mizrahim.
On the eve of the 1967 war, Michael Selzer (1967)18 argued that all factions of the
Ashkenazi left had aryanized the Jews more than those of the right had, by co-opting
the then-fashionable counterculture discourse of peace and love to make solidarity
overtures to the Palestinians. But the left, while romanticizing the Palestinians, could not
digest its own Jewish Arabs—the Mizrahim—as part of the conflict between Israel and its
neighbors. Selzer points out that it treated them as the inassimilable excess of what the
left termed “the peace discourse” (94). He concludes that unless the political left
dismantles Israel’s intra-Jewish apartheid system by de-aryanizing Israel’s Ashkenazi
domination and hegemony, there will be no armistice, let alone peace, between Israel and
the Arab world. Selzer goes on to say that the left has not “realiz[ed] how significant it is
that the Ashkenazim have shown themselves incapable of living with their own Jewish
brethren of Arab background” (94).
In the 1977 election, the Mizrahim voted almost as a bloc for Menachem Begin, in
order to reject the left wing’s racial formations of Zionism and its inability to acknowledge
the humiliation and discrimination to which the Mizrahim have been subjected under the
reign of Labor Party governments since 1948. In 1959, Begin served as head of the right-
wing Herut Party and operated far outside the liberal-socialist Zionist consensus. He
became one of the most revered figures among many Mizrahim when he made a solidarity
visit with the rebels of Wadi Salib, an overcrowded Haifa slum where North African Jews
had risen up to protest the squalid conditions of their forced resettlement into an area
whose Palestinian residents had been expelled by the left-wing Labor regime. Because of
this visit, and especially because Begin was the first politician to acknowledge that
discrimination against the Mizrahim was based on their non-Ashkenazi ethnic origins, the
Mizrahim voted for the rightist Likud Party, successor to the Herut Party, for years
thereafter. Wadi Salib was the first event to shape post-1948 Mizrahi consciousness.
In his 1977 landslide victory, Menachem Begin moved from underdog to Prime
Minister, due in part to the early 1970s civil unrest sparked by the Mizrahi Black
Panthers, a protest movement that took its name as a symbolic gesture to the eponymous
Oakland movement. The Black Panthers were also in coalition with the budding late-1960s

9
New Left Anti-Zionist Ashkenazi movement. Starting in Jerusalem’s pre-1967 borderzone
slums, their demonstrations swept through almost all Mizrahi ghettos in Israel’s urban
centers. These were suppressed by brutal police force, following the instructions of Prime
Minister and Labor Party leader Golda Meir. Some Panthers were shot dead at short range
by police snipers. Others were co-opted into establishment positions, and those who
remained activists are still denied meaningful employment and housing by the Israeli
regime. One mysteriously disappeared.19 Just when they were about to embark on
coalitional relationships with European New Left and radical socialist groups, Israeli
officials confiscated the passports of their delegation members. Israeli scholars and the
public believe that the Black Panthers movement led directly to the fall of the Labor Party
and the transfer of power to Begin and the right. The Israeli political right has held
power since 1977, except for short periods, and has carried out a policy that had been
initiated by the Labor Party—settling the West Bank and Gaza through colonial outposts
under the ideology of Eretz Yisrael.
A new generation of Mizrahi politicians aligned themselves with the Likud Eretz Yisrael
ideology and practice and rose into lower-level municipal politics as mayors. Then some
went to the Knesset or obtained ministerial portfolios. But this new cadre of Mizrahi
politicians was still subservient to those with Ashkenazi lineage in the Likud, who were
popularly called nesikhim (princes). The Mizrahi politicians advanced the political agenda of
the nesikhim rather than that of their own Mizrahi communities. It is interesting to note
that these Mizrahi politicians enjoyed repeated re-election even though they failed to
advance their own communities’ interests.

10
 Nevertheless, there were good reasons for the lower-class Jewish majority of Israel
to keep voting for the political right. Many Mizrahi families wanted to escape the Mizrahi
ghettos, especially when the cities in central Israel started turning into real estate bubbles
that made housing there utterly unaffordable.20 In pursuing its goal to settle Eretz
Yisrael, the Likud continued the policy of creating viable single family dwellings for lower-
middle-class Israelis. It was the Labor government that started devising a plan in which
the only housing upgrades available for poor people were to be found in large-scale
settlements like Ariel, Ma‘ale Adumim, or the newer expansion of Jerusalem’s
neighborhoods to deep inside post-1967 occupied Palestine. Here, upscale-for-the-poor
projects bore names such as Pisgat Ze’ev (The Wolf’s Peak)21 or Neve Ya‘akov (The Oasis
of Jacob). Since the mid-1980s, however, right-wing governments of Israel not only
invested in these settlements but also initiated project renewal in the Mizrahi ghettos
throughout the country. Although the project did not support enough new housing, it did
establish community centers and significantly improve the infrastructure, particularly
electricity and sewage. Furthermore, it was during the right-wing Israeli regimes that
Mizrahi culture, as long as it avoided connecting its own Arabness with that of the
Palestinians, embarked on a renaissance (Abarjel and Lavie 2009).
During the 1993-1999 Oslo years, brokered by the United States, the Israelis and
Palestinians negotiated Israel’s gradual withdrawal from some of the territories it had
seized from Jordan and Egypt in the 1967 war. One of the selling points to the Israeli
public was the promise of an immediate regional economic boom, led by the globalized
restructuring of the Israeli economy. The Labor-MERETZ bloc, then in power, dismantled
labor unions and outsourced production to Egypt, Jordan, South Africa, and Southeast
Asia. The left elite invested in sweatshops abroad and employed cheap labor to replace
Mizrahi and Palestinian-Israeli women production line workers (Bichler and Nitzan 2001,
Lavie 2010, Zomer 2001). The Zionist Left leadership also started privatizing the public
sphere, and it initiated the move to reduce welfare allowances for the needy. The Post-
and Anti-Zionist Left did not protest, afraid of disturbing the peace process. The right
deployed populist ethnic and social justice rhetoric to win the support of Israel’s Mizrahim
until 2003, when Benyamin Netanyahu slashed almost all the remaining Israeli welfare
rights, exposing the rhetoric as hollow.
One of the slogans chanted in many demonstrations by all varieties of the Israeli
political left is “Fund the ’hoods,” that is, the Mizrahi slums and development towns, “not
the settlements,” meaning Israeli communities in the West Bank and Gaza. Rafi Shubeli
(2006) argues that the evocation of this catch-phrase is illusory. He asks: Since when has
the Israeli Ashkenazi left fought for the Mizrahi poor or tried to provide a viable alternative

11
to the avenues for upward mobility provided by allegiance to the right? Ironically, the
kibbutzim, the showcases of enlightened socialist Zionism, exploited Mizrahi development
towns by hiring underpaid menial laborers with no rights (Chetrit 2004). Shubeli notes that
the Ashkenazi left habitually depicts the Mizrahim as the atavistic chauvinistic masses.
The left almost always chants the slogan, “Fund the ’hoods, not the settlements,” in the
context of the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza without acknowledging the
fact that the Mizrahim are the silent majority of the West Bank and Gaza settlements.
They do not chant that slogan in the context of the racism and poverty typical of lived
experience in the slums of either Palestinian Nazareth or mixed Palestinian-Israeli upper
Nazareth, let alone skid row South Tel Aviv,22 where they will travel half a mile to the
“’hoods” only to eat inexpensive shish-kebabs of foie gras rolled into Iraqi pita-bread.
Shubeli concludes that, in a sense, by using such a slogan, the left inflames one public, the
Mizrahim, against the other, the Palestinians, due to its omission of the societal context
having to do with the ethnic composition of either the slums or the settlements vis-à-vis
the ethnic composition of the left.23
The left’s Ashkenazi feminists responded to Israel’s grave human rights violations
during the first Intifada (1987-2003) and the al-Aqsa Intifada (2000-2005). In her
writings, Gila Swirsky (2002), one of the founders of Women in Black and the Coalition of
Women for a Just Peace, vividly evokes the brave feats of Israeli peace activists demon-
strating in solidarity with the Palestinians of the West Bank during the al-Aqsa Intifada—
endangering their own lives as they distributed food to besieged villages, preventing with
their bodies the uprooting of olive trees, or exposing themselves to physical and verbal
violence from right-wing Israelis as they marched to crown Jerusalem with peace.
Ashkenazi feminists have demonstrated more often than men; because of the combination
of their gender and class privileges, it is less likely that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF)
soldiers on active duty policing the West Bank, most of whom are Mizrahim, would attack
them to stop the demonstrations (Keshet 2006). Still, Ashkenazi feminists ignore the
plight of their disenfranchised Mizrahi neighbors; rather, they can be found just across the
street, in favor of what Swirsky (2002, 238) describes as “TV crews from all over the
world” who document their “street theatre” protests against the occupation. These
photograph well for the media in search of simplistic Palestine/Israel binarisms.
Concurrently, as Swirsky aptly puts it, these feminists continue to wonder why their
groups “remain largely invisible to the Israeli public” (238).
The Ashkenazi left takes for granted the loyalty of the Mizrahim to the state. Indeed,
Mizrahim continue to vote for the political right regardless of which party is in
power. Similarly, Ashkenazi feminist scholarship and activism continue to ignore these

12
class and race divisions within Israel (Lavie 2010).

MIZRAHI FEMINIST PREDICAMENT AND STRATEGY

The Mizrahi predicament is complicated and driven by contradiction. It cannot be

compared to the clear-cut situation of West Bank or Gaza Palestinians living under the
daily atrocities of Israel’s military might. It cannot even be compared with the daily acts of
apartheid that Israel performs toward its own Palestinian citizens. G. Avivi argues that Miz-
rahim are situated between their own economic-cultural oppression and the Palestinian
fight for national determination.24 Most Mizrahim still believe in Zionism’s utopian
promise, even as they remain excluded from its economic and cultural power centers.
They are not active in struggles to overcome their disenfranchisement. Avivi hypothesizes
that if the Mizrahim were to change loyalties in the Zionism vs. Palestine equation, they
would incur immediate losses to whatever gains they have made through the tenuous
political-economic upward mobility that came with their Ashkenazification.25
Like all Jewish citizens of Israel, Mizrahim are obligated to serve in the military, an
institution that facilitates upward mobility for Israeli Jews. Since the 1982 Lebanon War,
however, actual combat has gradually become less attractive to Ashkenazim, who, due to
their superior schools in affluent neighborhoods, are eligible for the high-tech behind-the-
lines units. Today, Mizrahim train for the majority of infantry and armored corps front-line
duty jobs. Higher casualties follow (Halevi 2003, 2006). Avivi also points out that it is the
Mizrahim who end up as targets when Palestinian suicide bombers explode. Suicide
bombings are likely to occur on public transportation, which is frequented by Mizrahim who
cannot afford to own private cars. Other favorable locations for suicide bombers are
impoverished neighborhoods, where residents are not affluent enough to collectively hire
the patrolling services of privately run security companies and where official Israeli police
rarely patrol, except for during drug raids (Abarjel and Lavie 2009, Rappaport 2003,
Shadmi 2004).
The Ashkenazim, whether on the right or left, have international, specifically American,
connections in the World Zionist Organization and on Capitol Hill. Ashkenazi feminists on
the left, funded by the NIF, have also appeared before the European Parliament and
received more funding (Peled-Elhanan 2005). The Palestinians, too, have gradually won
international recognition for the Nakba and their heroic struggle for a free and independent
homeland. But the Mizrahim, despite their NIF-funded NGOs, have yet to gain international
recognition as another regional problem stemming out of the Zionist colonization of
Palestine. Only such recognition would persuade the NIF to allow the Mizrahi NGOs to
change their focus from local soup kitchens to transnational and coalitional social justice
13
activism for the benefit of the Mizrahi communities, thereby yielding a just and genuine
peace process.
At present, Mizrahi feminist NGOs avoid publicly facing the Question of Palestine. Their
grassroots advocacy work is funded by diaspora Zionist sources, and Mizrahi feminist
NGOs know that cutting these strings would provoke the Ashkenazi hegemony to inflict
further losses on Mizrahi communities.26 Furthermore, Mizrahi activists do not collaborate
with Palestinian feminists of lower socio-economic status within Israel or the West Bank
because of their affiliations with Hamas. All NGOs funded by the NIF are required to take
minutes of their meetings, and these minutes are subject to possible inspection by the NIF
and the State Registrar of NGOs. This places Mizrahi feminist NGOs in a predicament.
These organizations are comprised of, remarkably, the same factions as those of the
Ashkenazi feminists: Socialist Zionists, Post-Zionists, and Anti-Zionists. Yet, although they
do not agree with each other, any mention in the minutes of their actual discussions about
the Question of Palestine and international affairs would be interpreted by the NIF as an
invasion of Ashkenazi turf, with consequences so dire that they dare not risk it.27 The NIF
or even the Registrar of NGOs could publicize the opinions of the Mizrahi feminists. If the
Mizrahi community finds out about their political opinions, it would likely reject their
attempts to conduct projects for women in impoverished neighborhoods. The community is
concerned only with the harsh Mizrahi life of trying to get food, employment, housing, and
education. Therefore, Mizrahi feminists have agreed among themselves that silence is a
wiser strategy.
The Mizrahi feminists’ ability to challenge the regime is limited. They are threatened by
the NIF with budget cuts whenever they include Mizrahi feminist consciousness in their
project proposals along with the charity work. They must speak the language of practice in
order to help disenfranchised Mizrahi women resolve their daily problems in dealing with
the regime’s authorities, which, by default, are Ashkenazi. Thus, they have avoided
intellectual possibilities for reabsorbing Mizrahim into Arab space. Mizrahi feminists have
not called for a just solution to the Palestine problem by, for example, illuminating the
conjuncture of the military occupation’s cost with the lack of money for enough mam-
mogram machines in public health clinics in the unemployment-ridden Mizrahi ghettos.
They have not pointed out that the early Ashkenazi-Zionist eugenic ideologies and
practices against Mizrahim—such as forced sterilization (Hashash-Daniel 2004, Stoler-Liss
1998, 200328), high-dose X-ray medical experiments without the subjects’ consent
(Belhassan and Hemias 2004), and the removal of Mizrahi babies for Ashkenazi adoption
without the parents’ consent (Shubeli 2007, Zeid 2001)—connect to the treatment of
Palestinians (Abarjel and Lavie 2009, Lavie 2007). They have been silent about these

14
Mizrahi/Palestinian similarities. Gingerly, even while acknowledging the solace of sorts that
Mizrahi communities have found in the political right, Mizrahi feminists would have had to
face their constituencies and explicate the interplay between the Mizrahi erasure of Arab
memories, rooted in language and culture (Lavie 1992, Shohat 2001), and the almost
universal insistence by Israel’s Ashkenazi left on a two-state solution.
TWO STATES OR ONE?
A two-state solution, combined with the flat denial of the Palestinians’ right of return, is
calculated to preserve Israel’s Ashkenazi dominance and hegemony. Liberal-socialist and
Post-Zionist Left leaders repeatedly say they are willing to swap land for peace, that is,
give up Palestinian land that Israel occupied in the 1967 War. Giving up Gaza and the
West Bank, however, would release the Israeli regime from its position as an occupier
responsible for millions of Palestinian Arabs. Meanwhile, the separation wall, planned and
initiated during the short-lived government of Labor Party Prime Minister Ehud Barak with
support from MERETZ, and continued by Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, is confiscating
large areas of Palestinian land and water within the occupied territories, so that these will
be inside the proposed new permanent boundaries of a smaller, more compact Israel. The
objective is to restructure Israel into a Jewish-majority state, made possible by the
presence of the Mizrahi population. If the leftist leadership can get elected on the peace
ticket agenda, in spite of the Mizrahi anti-left vote, Israel’s Ashkenazi hegemony and its
democratic, peace-loving discourse will emerge, yielding Israel’s rebirth as a Jewish state.
As this is written, the Israeli regime has nearly finished building the wall that is to
separate the Palestinian Authority of the West Bank and Gaza from pre-1967 Israel and
the additional territories it occupied in 1967. Nevertheless, the wall is an integral part of
the “two states for two peoples” solution (Abarjel and Lavie 2009). Paradoxically, among
pro-Palestine scholars and activists abroad as well as among a handful of post- to anti-
Zionist scholars and activists in Israel itself, the idea of a one-state solution is experiencing
a resurgence (Abarjel and Lavie 2009, Abunimah 2006, Benvenisti 2010, Shenhav 2010,
Tilley 2005).
While a one-state solution does not seem a viable option for the majority of Israeli
Jews, Mizrahim and Ashkenazim alike, it is a powerful agenda because of its in situ
demographics. As it is, Jews of all ethnic varieties are already becoming a minority in the
territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Coast (Abunimah 2006). The
multiple strands analyzed in this paper point to the failure of Israel’s feminist peace
movement to work within the context of the Middle East demographics, cultures, and
histories and the inability of the Mizrahi feminist movement to weave itself into the
feminist fabric of the Arab World. From the Mizrahi feminist point of view, the assumption

15
that only two peoples are involved here, Israelis and Palestinians, is not matched by
reality. For the Palestinian feminists to continue using this binarism reaffirms the European
racial domination and internal colonization of Mizrahim. Given the demographics of Israel
and Palestine, a one-state solution would be an Arab majority solution. If the Mizrahi
feminists advocate it, they would alienate the right-wing Mizrahi communities. If they stay
silent and merely watch it come to pass, there will probably be little or no space to enact
equal rights for the Mizrahi citizens of this one state. In the Mizrahi activists’ scenarios, a
just escape from this paradox seems unattainable.

CONCLUSION
Although Ashkenazi feminists are known internationally for their valuable peace activism
and human rights work, this paper argues that from the Mizrahi perspective their critique
and activism are limited, if not counterproductive. They have not been able to bring racial,
social, and cultural justice issues into the perpetual U.S.-brokered political peace process.
Further, their choice to pursue international activism, rather than to merge the struggle
for a just peace with the struggle against the racism experienced by the Mizrahim, denies
them the necessary demographic constituencies to change Israeli voting patterns from
right to left. Despite the historical changes reviewed in this paper, the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi
distinction is a racialized formation so resilient it manages to sustain itself through
historical challenges such as the upward mobility of Mizrahim after 1967, when West Bank
and Gaza Palestinians replaced them as blue-collar laborers, and the mass immigration of
Ashkenazim from the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Therefore, the Ashke-
nazi/Mizrahi formation has not remained a dichotomy frozen in time and space.
Mizrahi activists assume that with the establishment of a one-state Israel/Palestine,
there will be massive emigration of Jews. Presently it is estimated that since the outbreak
of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000, about 500,000 to one million Israeli Jews have
equipped themselves with European Union passports based on their pre-Holocaust
European genealogies (Connolly 2002, Ehrlich 2008, Levi 2004, Reiter 2007, Shavit 2001,
Weiman 2008).29 It is estimated that if a one-state solution resolves the Palestine/Israel
conflict, EU passport holders, mainly professional Ashkenazim, will emigrate to Europe
(Burg 2008).30 The thin crust of Mizrahim who have risen to white-collar occupations in
demand will emigrate to countries like Canada and Australia and to the Latin American
republics that encourage immigration of wealthy professionals.
Will Palestine/Israel become a patriarchal Islamist state, where remaining Mizrahim
become a religious minority? Will a secular patriarchal state emerge, ruled by the
Ashkenazi elite who would rather not emigrate because they know they would lose their

16
privilege and wealth by going abroad, where no one knows their family names, descent,
and land holdings?31 Will they rule alongside the Palestinian moneyed class and educated
technocrats? Will these elites once again exclude the majority population, the Palestinians
and Mizrahim, from access to education, equitable justice, financial resources, and
networks of influence? Between the 2006 Lebanon War and August 2007, Reuven Abarjel,
co-founder of the Jerusalem Black Panthers, and I met regularly to discuss the
ramifications of the Mizrahi majority on a potential single state of Israel/Palestine. We
calculated and hypothesized that in this potential future state, 90 percent of the citizens
would be of non-European origin, half of them women.

POST SCRIPT—SACRIFICING GAZA 2009 ON THE ALTAR OF THE ISRAELI LABOR PARTY
REVIVAL

Between December 27, 2008 and January 21, 2009, the IDF carried out yet another large-
scale military operation against the Palestinian people because of its democratically elected
Hamas government and the missiles that it fired from Gaza into Israel. It did so with the
silent encouragement of the United States, the European Union, and their Arab
subcontractors, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Most Israeli Jews supported the Gaza
operation. Yet all the printed and electronic media discussed the cynical timing of the
attack on Gaza—six weeks before the Israeli elections of February 10, 2009, during the
U.S. interregnum between the Bush and Obama administrations. Not only did the Israeli
regime send its military machine to commit large-scale destruction of civilian lives and
properties, it also endangered the lives of its own citizens and soldiers. It did this without
even trying to negotiate in good faith with the elected Hamas-led government of the
Palestinian people.

17
 It is the leaders of Israel’s “peace camp” that started the 2009 Gaza operation, and,
before that, the 2006 Second Lebanon War. The perpetrator of the Gaza operation was
Ehud Barak, the leader of the Labor Party, while the defense minister in 2006 was Amir
Peretz, his predecessor in that post. Their political ancestor was David Ben-Gurion, the
orchestrator of the Nakba.
When the Israeli government collapsed in the summer of 2008, polls predicted that in
the subsequent elections, the right-wing bloc, led by Netanyahu, would win 65-70 seats in
the 120-member Knesset. Both the U.S. and EU leadership, as well as the Egyptian and
Jordanian regimes, prefer to deal with the centrist bloc of Israeli politics—that which
comprises Tzipi Livni’s Kadima and Barak’s Labor Parties. The Kadima Party was founded
by Ashkenazi members of the Likud Party who were dismayed at the increasing Mizrahi
influence in the party. They were joined by defectors from the flailing Labor Party, whose
fortunes Barak was reviving through the Gaza 2009 operation. The polls predicted a
devastating failure for this bloc due to its almost complete exclusion of Mizrahi
representatives.
Barak schemed for a war in Gaza, proclaiming that its purpose was to protect Israeli
communities against the Palestinians. Many of the communities directly attacked, and still
under attack, by Hamas missiles have a large majority Mizrahi population. In the 1950s
Mizrahim were settled by the regime in the Gaza borderzone and other borders Israel
shares with Arab states because these were easily targeted by Palestinian guerillas (Lavie
1992). After the Gaza War, the forlorn Mizrahim, for whom the government had repeatedly
refused to build adequate shelters, gained status as full-fledged Israelis in the Western
media that habitually focus on English-speaking Ashkenazim. It was the wailing of
Mizrahim hit by rockets, rather than the massacre of Gazans, that was regarded as good
copy. The resulting coverage was used to justify Israel’s claims of self-defense (Yegna
2010).
How benevolent was it of the Israeli European elite to hug the Jews of darker hue
whom they imported to Palestine as a demographic shield against the Arab enemy. Now,
when Mizrahi lives have become fraught with trauma, due to the Hamas-led Palestinian
Authority, how could these poverty-stricken subordinates not cooperate? Mizrahim enjoyed
this rare moment of large-scale attention in the national media, moreover as “true
Israelis.”
Like all of Israel’s wars, the recent war in Gaza has been followed by a post-war
boom—an additional benefit for the Ashkenazi-controlled economy (Bichler and Nitzan
2001). As well as trying to shift the Mizrahi vote from the right to the center, another goal
of this war was to delay the impact of the global economic crisis on the Israeli economy,

18
whose crux is the military-industrial complex.
A window of opportunity for constructive Mizrahi-Palestinian-Arab feminist dialogue
opened for a brief period after the 2006 Second Lebanon War. While the Israeli regime had
endowed Ashkenazi left-wing kibbutzniks living in northern Israel with well-equipped air-
conditioned underground shelters, it had failed to make corresponding provision for the
neighboring Mizrahi agricultural cooperatives and development towns. After the war, the
Mizrahim in the north—including several long-term Mizrahi feminist activists—publicly
acknowledged, with great bitterness, that they had been sacrificed for Israel’s military
adventure.
The 2009 Gaza operation carnage was portrayed to the Israeli public as a corrective
measure for the defeat by Hezbollah in the summer of 2006. As a result, Barak’s
popularity rose from 12 to 70 percent. Nevertheless, as in almost all of the Israeli elections
after 1977, the Likud Party emerged victorious with the Mizrahi vote. Any possibility for
Mizrahi-Arab feminist dialogue has been slammed shut.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This article is dedicated to the memory of Vicki Shiran, founder of Mizrahi feminism—a
leader and trailblazer who opened her heart and home and assisted me in surviving the
everyday in Israel. I would also like to thank Erella Shadmi, who challenged me to
conceptualize the usurpation by elite feminists from those women who labored so hard to
found Israeli feminism. During my years in Israel, Erella was like my older sister. My
heartfelt thanks goes to Joan Scott, who generously contributed her time, thought, and
editorial comments as I relearned to write cultural history in the interpretive “middle
register” in which this article is written. A huge bouquet of thanks to my pathbreaking
sister activists in Ahoti—for Women in Israel, and to the women with whom I shared my
days between 1999 and 2007, as we stood together in the lines of the National Security
Bureau, Forced Employment Bureau, and the NGOs distributing food for Shabbat. Thanks
to these women, I retained the power to hope for better times free of everyday vagaries in
order to write.

NOTES
1. I provided all translations.
2. In English, Mizrahim are often mistakenly called Sephardim, derived from the
Hebrew word, sfaradim (Spaniards). The Sephardim are descendants of the Jews who
were expelled from Spain in 1492, and they constitute one group of the Mizrahim.
3. Clare Louise Ducker’s (2005) findings on Israel’s demographics are the most recent
19
and are quite similar to the previous findings mentioned in this article. She wrote her
award-winning M.A. thesis, “Jews, Arabs, and Arab Jews: The Politics of Identity and
Reproduction in Israel,” at the Hague Institute of Development. Ducker accounts for the
large-scale post-Soviet immigration to Israel in the 1990s, yet she is careful to distinguish
between the Asian and European post-Soviet Jewish and non-Jewish immigrants. The
Central Asian post-Soviet immigrants to Israel are counted as Mizrahim. The visible and
vocal post-Soviet immigrants to Israel, however, are the Ashkenazim. In almost all of the
wide array of references substantiating the analysis in this article, the fact that race and
class go hand-in-hand in Israeli society (i.e., the fact that the Mizrahi majority of Jews of
darker hues is comprised mainly of the lower-middle-class and down, while the Ashkenazi
minority is largely middle-class and up) is never disputed by any scholar of Israeli society
in Hebrew. Such information about the accepted axioms of intra-Jewish racism rarely leaks
out of Israel.
4. This data is based on my fieldwork. I started my ethnographic fieldwork and
research on Mizrahi feminism between 1990-1994, as it consolidated into a budding social
movement. Anthropological fieldwork and research for this article were conducted between
1990-1994. Further fieldwork was conducted between 1999-2007. The data collected
during both periods of research and used for this article includes archival research
conducted in both official Ashkenazi state archives and the private archives of Mizrahi
independent scholars and activists unaffiliated with Israeli universities. Many of the
references here have been published only in Hebrew, and not by major Israeli presses.
These texts were not translated into English because there is a translation block between
the Hebrew and English with regard to grassroots Mizrahi scholarship and activism.
Another body of data consists of my detailed fieldnotes. These were written in sites such
as literary salons, social movements, the welfare system, family and bailiff courts, civil
society non-governmental organizations and their funding agencies, dance clubs, cafes,
housing projects, neighborhoods, schools, concert halls, tourist sites, universities, public
events, and the like. In-depth documented dialogues were conducted with intellectuals,
activists, and members of various Mizrahi communities. In addition, e-group
correspondence and Internet sites of the various Israeli peace feminist movements were
regularly read and analyzed throughout the duration of the research and to the present
day. In a similar vein, media articles from Israel’s printed dailies relating to the issues and
dilemmas this article addresses were read and collected regularly for the duration of the
research and to the present. Due to the article’s historical scope and its portrayal of
extremely complicated webs of social and political sets of relations and organizations, I
decided not to write it as a traditional “newer”- or “older”-style ethnography. It would have

20
taken too much word-space to bring in the large quotes from my informants, the detailed
Hebrew-English translations from archival materials, and my own field diaries, and
interpret and theorize them all. I needed a writing strategy that permitted me the
complexity of the argument within the limited space of a journal article. I therefore wrote
the article in the middle register of academic texts, an ethnographically authoritative
Geertzian text of sorts, rather than in the polar manner of snatches of ethnography and
high theory that has been typical of my anthropological writings.
5. While I borrow the term from Brenda Danet (1989), her analysis of the
Israeli “pulling strings” culture falls within the ideological paradigm of Zionist or post-
Zionist academic discourse, which takes for granted the racial formations of the Zionist
project and therefore ignores the problem of intra-Jewish racism in Israel.
6. While this term might seem archaic or offensive, gvarot was one of the standard
Hebrew terminological categories dividing Jewish women in British Mandate Palestine after
the 1920s. The other two were po‘alot (workers), whether Ashkenazi or Mizrahi, and ‘ozrot
(maids), who, by default, were all Mizrahi (Lavie 2007).
7. The term “Ashkenazi Academic Junta,” or “the Academic Junta,” is commonly
used by the non-academic Israeli public and indicates their estrangement from the
impenetrable networks of the Israeli academic elite (Blachman 2005, Zarini 2004).
8. Lesbianism is an identity more difficult to endure as a Mizrahi or a Palestinian than
as an Ashkenazi because of the Arab patriarchal structure of taboo in both Mizrahi and
Palestinian families. Mizrahi feminists noticed that having a lesbian representative doubled
the Ashkenazi presence at feminist events. But because in hetero-normative Israel even
Ashkenazi lesbians, with their class-race privileges, are still outcasts of sorts, the Mizrahi
feminists decided to put pressure on the lesbians to have a proportional representation
within their group, rather than cancel the quarter system of representation (Shiran 1995).
9. NGO-ization is a process by which grassroots social movements transform into
“‘safety valves’ by channeling… popular discontent along… harmful ways [and in the
process] the exploited and oppressed are divided into sections and identities….” It is a
process by which social movements turn into “self-help communities… absolving the state
from all social responsibilities” (Chachage 2006).
10. I rely here on the brilliant discussion of this slogan provided by Rafi Shubeli
(2006).
11. In 2006, Palestinian NGOs based in Israel issued a joint document entitled “The
Future Vision for Palestinian Arabs in Israel.” The document can be found at
http://www.knesset.gov.il/committees/heb/material/data/H26-12-2006_10-30-37_heb.pdf
(accessed on July 22, 2010). It recommends that Israel become a state for all of its

21
citizens, without privileging Jews over non-Jews. Some of the NGOs participating in this
document are funded by the New Israel Fund. According to some of the signatories, whom
I interviewed and who wish to remain anonymous, they received threats that the NIF
would cut their funding and, therefore, their salaries, if they continue to initiate and
participate in events that the NIF interprets as doing away with what the NIF defines as
Israel’s Jewish democratic character.
12. “Ocean of Tears” is a 1998 television series—researched, directed, and produced
by Ron Kahlili and Shosh Gabai—about the history of Mizrahi music. It derived its name
from a Mizrahi pop tune by the same title. An Ocean of Tears is the ultimate act of
l’hitbakhyen (see Note 15).
13. In 2002 and from January to March of 2003, Vicki Shiran, founder of Israel’s
Feminism of Color, and I worked on the long-term budget of Ahoti (Sistah), a Mizrahi
feminist NGO. On January 6, 2003, from 1:30-3:30 p.m., as co-authors of the budget
proposal, we defended it in the Jerusalem offices of the NIF. The woman in charge of
funding Mizrahi NGOs refused to fund our efforts to raise awareness about feminism of
color, saying that it would too divisive for Israel’s feminist movement.
14. The HILA NGO has been suggested for discussion as a beacon of an anti-Zionist
feminist NGO. HILA, a Hebrew acronym for “Parents for the ‘Hood,” works to raise Mizrahi
and Palestinian parents’ consciousness against the tracking of their children to vocational
schools. While its founder is indeed an anti-Zionist Mizrahi feminist, my two decades of
observations and interviews indicate that she has not dared go into the Mizrahi
communities with her anti-Zionist viewpoints because no one will participate in her
projects. Nevertheless, in the rush to create and reframe Mizrahi activist history in the
form of scholarly discourse, anti-Zionist Ph.D. students are presently sent from Western
universities to study this one- to two- person NGO and give it equal weight to the larger
Mizrahi NGOs such as the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow or Ahoti. It is worth mentioning,
however, that HILA is well connected to powerful anti-Zionist Mizrahi intellectual exiles
outside Israel.
15. The Hebrew slang verb l’hitbakhyen, or “to be a crybaby,” is value judgmental, and
is used mainly in the Mizrahi-Ashkenazi context. Livkot is a verb derived from the same
root—the three Hebrew letters bet, khaf, and heh—but, in another conjugation, means “to
cry” in standard Hebrew. L’hitbakhyen is a reflexive conjugation. Whenever Mizrahim
evoke their history of inequality, based on the eugenics ideologies and practices of the
Ashkenazi establishment or on this establishment’s anti-Arab sentiments (Lavie 2007),
they are accused of being mitbakhyenim (crybabies). The term is usually
deployed by those articulating what is known as “the Israeli discourse of pluralist

22
enlightenment” as part of its “Israeli (i.e., Ashkenazi) universalism vs. Mizrahi ethnic
particularism” analysis of Israeli society (Abarjel and Lavie 2009). Good examples for the
evocation of this verb are in the context of affairs such as the kidnapping of Yemeni
babies from the 1930s to the early 1970s, and their subsequent selling for adoption to
Ashkenazim (Madmoni-Gerber 2009), or the Ringworm Children Affair (Belhassen
and Hemias 2004), where about 150,000 North African children, without their parents’
consent, were irradiated with high dose x-rays as part of an unauthorized medical
experiment.
16. Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metziah 71a
17. Because the Ashkenazi Zionist Left keeps moving to the right, the Kadima Party is
now considered a leftist party. Kadima has no socialist roots, but, because its leaders
promote the idea of a land-for-peace swap with the Palestinians, it is viewed as leftist.
18. Michael Selzer is an Ashkenazi Jew whose parents emigrated from Europe to a part
of colonial India that later became Pakistan.
19. According to a January 2009 interview with Reuven Abarjel, one of the Jerusalem’s
Black Panthers co-founders, Black Panther ‘Ovadia Harari was executed by Israeli police
death squads from short range during a chase in May 1971. Black Panther Daniel Sa‘il fled
from Israel in 1975. He first went to France, and then Spain. Abarjel states that the
rumors were that he broadcasted from the Iraqi radio anti-Israeli propaganda in Arabic
and then returned to Spain. He then entered the Israeli consulate there and was never
seen again (Fischer 1996). Another panther, Ya‘akov (Koko) Der‘i, was violently beaten
during the 1977 demonstrations. In the 1980s, when many Black Panthers were
criminalized for their resistance activity and imprisoned at the Be’er Sheva Jail, they
organized a revolt, of which Der‘i was a key organizer. For the first time in Israel’s history,
prison guards shot tear gas and smoke grenades into the small cells of Jewish prisoners.
In doing so, they targeted Der‘i. Yehezkel Cohen, another Black Panther, was arrested for
being a part of a mainly Ashkenazi group, Shining Path, who was blamed by the Israeli
regime in collaboration against the state. The most celebrated prisoner from this group
was an Ashkenazi kibbutznik, Udi Adiv. He was given special comfortable conditions in the
prison. Cohen, the only Mizrahi in the group, was the one most exposed to torture,
emerging from his long jail term with untreated broken bones. In addition, he lost his
vision almost completely due to prison torture. See http://www.planet-
nana.co.il/r_aberjel10/0_a.r_dvar_hapanterim.htm (accessed on January 9, 2009).
20. The inflated prices of real estate in central Israel, where most employment is to be
found, rose sharply in the early 1990s due to the large wave of immigration to Israel by
former Soviet Union Ashkenazim, which the Labor Party leadership referred to as the white

23
‘aliya (literally “ascendance,” also the term for Jewish immigration to Israel) that was to
redeem Israel from Mizrahi-zation. The European former Soviet Jewish immigrants—as
opposed to those from Central Asia—were given large governmental subsidies for rent or
purchase of housing. They preferred to live in the central cities’ slums so that they would
be closer to employment and better education for their children than in Israel’s
hinterlands, where housing is better but schools and unemployment worse (Lavie 1991).
21. “Pisgat Ze’ev” literally translates to “The Wolf’s Peak”—a name that romanticizes
the imperialist endeavor, given that the neighborhood overlooks the majestic desert
wilderness dropping sharply from the Ramallah mountain range into the below-sea-level
oasis of Jericho. However, it is also possible that the neighborhood is named after Ze’ev
Jabotinsky, one of the founders of the right wing Herut Party, precursor to the present-day
Likud Party.
22. An eloquent analysis of the division of Tel Aviv into a “White City” and a “Black
City” is provided by Sharon Rotbard (2005).
23. Compare Leibovitz-Dar (2002) and Bar‘am (2003).
24. G. Avivi is the nickname of an incisive analyst who frequently writes talkbacks and
forum entries in Kedma (Eastbound), the Mizrahi portal: http://www.kedma.co.il.
25. Ashkenazification is the process by which Mizrahim become second-rate
Ashkenazim, as they wish to integrate into mainstream Israeli society but lack the
phenotypical and historical privilege of coming from Europe.
26. A good example of a possible future grassroots Ashkenazi-Mizrahi-Palestinian
devoid of Zionist funding was found at http://www2.jewishsolidarity.info/en/petition
(accessed on March 18, 2007). As of March 15, 2011, this online petition has been taken
down. The reason is unknown.
27. See footnote 13.
28. It is interesting to note that Sahlav Stoler-Liss (1998) meticulously documents
Ashkenazi eugenics in her M.A. thesis written in Hebrew for Tel Aviv University, yet, when
publishing her findings in English, she uses the less potent and more accepted tropology of
building the new Jew’s body.
29. The quantity of Internet search results on “European Union Passport” and
“Ashkenazim” in Hebrew is staggeringly high (Connolly 2002, Levi 2004, Shavit 2001,
Weiman 2008). Y-Net is the highest circulation news portal in Hebrew and a subsidiary of
Yedi‘ot Aharonot, Israel’s highest circulation printed daily. One Y-Net (2007) article,
actually an English-to-Hebrew translation from the Reuters wire, generated 250 talkbacks.
While talkbacks might not be viewed as indicators of public mood in the United States, in
Israel, they are of utmost importance to predict public mood and are often referred to or

24
quoted by the printed, high-brow media, politicians, and other public figures. Here are
some of the talkbacks’ titles with regard to the constantly increasing amount of Israelis,
mostly Holocaust survivors or their children, who undergo the expensive, complicated
process necessary to equip themselves with European Union passports: “This is an
Ashkenazi exit ticket;” “Because the state of Israel will not survive for long;” “Maybe the
Jews indeed do not deserve a Jewish state;” “The ship is sinking;” “Among the German
Ashkenazim you will find the highest number of racists;” “A shelter to save my family;”
“Zionism is science fiction;” “Better Germany on corrupt, racist Israel;” “Ashkenazim
AWOL from Israel.”
Of particular interest is the legal partnership exhibited in the Internet site
www.hagira.co.il (hagira means “immigration” in Hebrew), which is run by a group of
savvy attorneys who offer their services for Israelis wishing to become citizens of
Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England, the United States, Poland, Romania, Germany,
and other European countries. One insightful, informative article on their site is “The
Comeback of the Polish Granny” (Linder-Gantz 2005). Several Hebrew Internet sites offer
Ashkenazim guidance on how to search for proof of pre-Holocaust family residency in
order to start the process of EU passport application in each and every EU member
country.

25
 30. It is interesting to note that the Hebrew original of Avraham Burg’s (2008) new
book is longer and spells out in larger detail the logic behind the Ashkenazi rush to go
through the extensive bureaucratic machinations necessary to acquire a European Union
passport. In short, Burg argues that a Jewish state in Israel is futureless.
31. Even though we live in an era of globalized capital and digitized wealth, land
holdings as power and wealth are still of crucial importance in Israel, where interestingly,
the global economic crisis has resulted in a building spree both within the state’s pre-1967
borders and in the territories occupied by the state since 1967.

REFERENCES

Abarjel, Reuven, and Smadar Lavie

2009A Year into the Lebanon2 War: NGO-ing Mizrahi-Arab Paradoxes, and a One State
Vision for Palestine/Israel. Left Curve 33: 29 – 36.
Abunimah, Ali
2006One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. New York:
Metropolitan Books.
Avidov, Racheli
2004“Postmodern” Feminism in Israel: Mizrahi Feminism. In Hebrew. Master’s Thesis
Haifa University, Haifa, Israel.
Bar‘am Nir
2003Exposing the Face of the “Left.” In Hebrew. Ma‘ariv, June 27.
Barkai, Nurit
1993Actually, I Was Present at the 8th Feminist Conference. KLAF Hazak 7: 16 – 8.
Belhassan, David, and Asher Hemias
2004The Ringworm Children. DVD. Directed by David Belhassen and Asher Hemias.
Israel: Casque D’or Films.
Benvenisti, Meron
2010.How Israel Became a Bi-National State. In Hebrew. Haaretz. January 23.
Ben-Zvi, Yael
1994Conversation: The Zone between Darkness and Whiteness. KLAF Hazak 9: 30 –
40.
Berger-Gluck, Sherna
994An American Feminist in Palestine: The Intifada Years. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press.
Bichler, Shimson, and Jonathan Nitzan
2001From War Profits to Peace Dividends: The Global Political Economy of Israel. In
26
 Hebrew. Jerusalem: Carmel.
Bistrov, Ivgenia, and Arnon Sofer
2006The State of Tel Aviv: A Threat on Israel. Haifa: Department of Geography and
Environmental Studies, University of Haifa.
Blachman, Israel
2005Mizrahim in the Faculty of Israeli Research Universities. In Hebrew. Master’s
Thesis, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Burg, Avraham
2008The Holocaust is Over; We Must Rise from its Ashes. New York: MacMillan.
Chachage, Chachage Seithy L.
2006The World Social Forum: Lessons from Mumbai. The African (Dar es Salaam),
February 23-28.
Chetrit, Sami Shalom
2004The Mizrahi Struggle 1948-2003: Between Oppression and Emancipation. In
Hebrew. Tel Aviv: ‘Am-‘Oved.
Connolly, Kate
2002Israelis Applying For German Citizenship As Refuge. The Guardian. June 21.
Damri-Madar, Vardit
2002My Brothers, the Mizrahim. In Hebrew. In ‘Azut Mezah: Mizrahi Feminism.
Jerusalem: ZAH: Students for Social Justice. 54 – 7.
Danet, Brenda
1989Pulling Strings: Biculturalism in Israeli Bureaucracy. Albany: State University of
New York Press.
Ducker, Clare Louise
2005Jews, Arabs, and Arab Jews: The Politics of Identity and Reproduction in Israel.
Research Paper, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands.
Durkheim, Emile
1984 (1893)Division of Labour in Society. New York: Free Press.
Dworkin, Andrea
2002Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women’s Liberation. New York: Free Press.
Ebron, Paula, and Anna Tsing
1995In Dialogue? Reading Across Minority Discourses. In Women Writing Culture, ed.
Ruth Behar and Deborah A. Gordon. Berkeley: University of California Press. 390 –
411.
Ehrlich, Zur
2008The Spring of Nations. In Hebrew. Makor Rishon. February 24.

27
Ettinger, Yair
2003Record demand for funding of Arab-Jewish get-togethers since the October
uprising—but their practical side is negligible. Ha’aretz. October 14.
Etzioni-Halevi, Eva
1993The Elite Connection and Democracy in Israel. In Hebrew. Tel Aviv: Sifriyat
Poalim.
Fischer, David
1996They Buried Him Alive. Film. Directed by David Fischer. Israeli TV, Channel 1.
70m.
HaLevi, Yagil
2003An Army of Others for Israel: Materialistic Militarism in Israel. Tel Aviv: Yedi‘ot
Aharonot.
2006Materialistic Militarism. Mizad Sheni 14/15: 42 – 7.
Hashash-Daniel, Yali
2004Sex/Gender, Class and Ethnicity in the Policy of Birth in Israel 1962-1974. In
Hebrew. Master’s Thesis, Haifa University, Haifa, Israel.
Jad, Islah
2005Between Religion and Secularism: Islamist Women of Hamas. In On Shifting
Ground: Muslim Women in the Global Era, ed. Fereshteh Nouraie-Simone. New York:
CUNY Press. 172 – 95.
Kapara, Pinhas
1978From Yemen to Sha‘arayim. In Hebrew. Rehovot: Self-published book.
Kaplan, Danny
1999David, Jonathan, and Other Soldiers: On Identity, Masculinity and Sexuality in
IDF’s Combat Units. Tel Aviv: HaKibbutz HaMeuhad.
Keshet, Yehudit Kirstein
2006Checkpoint Watch: Testimonies from Occupied Palestine. London: Zed Books.
Lavie, Smadar
1991Arrival of the New Cultured Tenants: Soviet Immigration to Israel and the
Displacing of the Sephardi Jews. June 14. The Times Literary Supplement 4602: 11.
1992Blow-Ups in the Bordezones: Third World Israeli Authors’ Gropings for Home. New
Formations 18: 84 – 106.
1995Border Poets: Translating by Dialogue. In Women Writing Culture, ed. Ruth Behar
and Deborah A. Gordon. Berkeley: University of California Press. 412 – 27.
2002 Search the Mizrahi Women. Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal 3:1.
2006Transnational English Tyranny. Anthropology Newsletter. April Issue. 9 – 10.

28
 2007Imperialism and Colonialism: Zionism. In Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic
Cultures, ed. Suad Joseph. Vol. 6. Leiden: Brill. 9 – 15.
2010De/Racinated Transcendental Conversions: Witchcraft, Oracle and Magic among
the Israeli Feminist Left Peace Camp. Journal of Holy Land Studies 9(1): 71 – 80.
Lavie, Smadar, and Rafi Shubeli
2006On the Progress of Affirmative Action and Cultural Rights for Marginalized
Communities in Israel. Anthropology News 47(8): 6 – 7.
Lebovitz-Dar, Sarah
2002Oslo is Still Far Removed from Ofakim. In Hebrew. Ha’aretz Weekly Magazine,
February 1.
Levi, Meirav
2004Immigration Business Blossom: For $6,000 Intermediaries will get you Western
Citizenship. In Hebrew. News First Class, May 16.
Linder-Gantz, Ronnie
2005The Comeback of the Polish Granny. In Hebrew. Ha’aretz. June 10.
Lorde, Audre
1993/4 (1979)The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. In Hebrew.
KLAF Hazak 10: 16 – 7.
Madmoni-Gerber, Shoshana
2009Israeli Media and the Framing of Internal Conflict: The Yemenite Babies Affair.
New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Merry, Sally E.
2006Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism: Mapping the Middle. American
Anthropologist 108(1): 38 – 51.
Peled-Elhanan, Nurit
2005Speech on International Women’s Day: The European Parliament. ZNet. March
27.
Rappaport, ‘Amir
2003Who Gets Attacked More? Palestinian Terror Hurts Us All, But Some Populations
are Much More Exposed to Murderous Attacks. In Hebrew. Ma‘ariv, September 14, B2 –
3.
Reider, Vera
2006The Right, For One, Does Not Lie. In Hebrew. Mizad Sheni 14/15: 32 – 7.
Reiter, Natalia
2007Sharp rise in Israelis seeking German citizenship. Reuters, July 24.
Rotbard, Sharon

29
 2005White City, Black City. Tel Aviv: Babel Publishing.
Safran, Hannah
2006Don’t Want to Be Cute: The Struggle for Women’s Voting Rights and the Origins
of Israel’s New Feminism. In Hebrew. Haifa: Pardes Publishing.
Said, Edward W.
1979The Question of Palestine. New York: Vintage.
Sangtin Writers, and Richa Nagar
2006Playing with Fire: Feminist Thought and Activism through Seven Lives in India.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Segal, Lynne
2007Making Trouble: Life and Politics. London: Serpent’s Tail.
Selzer, Michael
1967The Aryanization of the Jewish State. New York: Black Star.
Shadmi, Erella
2001Yearning for Fullness, Yearning for Power: Preliminary Notes on the Lived Reality
of Ashkenazi Women in Israel. In Hebrew. In Will You Listen to My Voice? Women’s
Representations in Israeli Culture, ed. Yael ‘Azmon. Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad.
408 – 26.
2004The Police: Servant of the Hegemony. Paper delivered at Ashkenazim conference,
Beit Berl College, Israel. June 3.

30
Shavit, Uria
2001The Path of Escape. In Hebrew. Ha’aretz, August 24.
Shenhav, Yehuda
2010In the Trap of the Green Line. Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘Oved.
Shiran, Vicki
1991Feminist Identity vs. Oriental Identity. In Calling the Equality Bluff: Women in
Israel, ed. Barbara Swirski and Marilyn P. Safir. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
1995Settling the Bill: The 11th Annual Feminism Conference. In Hebrew. KLAF Hazak
15: 43 – 9.
1996Mizrahi Women and Other Women. In Hebrew. Mizad Sheni 5/6: 24 – 8.
2002aDeciphering Power, Creating a New World. In Hebrew. Panim 22.
2002bThe Symmetrical Self-Representation: Mizrahi Women’s Contribu-tion to Israeli
Feminism. In Hebrew. In ‘Azut Metzah, ed. V. Damari Madar, Jerusalem: ZAH:
Students for Social Justice. 12 – 9.
Shohat, Ella
1988Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Point of View of its Jewish Victims. Social
Text 19/20.
1996Mizrahi Feminism: Politics of Gender, Race and Multi-Culturalism. In Hebrew.
Mizad Sheni 5/6: 29 – 33.
2001Taboo Memories: Toward a Multicultural Thought. In Hebrew. Tel Aviv: Bimat
Kedem.
Shubeli, Rafi
2006It Is Not the Occupation that Corrupts. Mizad Sheni 14/15: 38 – 41.
2007The Yemeni Children Affair: An Oriental Imagination? In A Rainbow of Opinions: A
Mizrahi Agenda for Israel, ed. Yossi Yonah, Yonit Na‘aman, and David Machlev.
Jerusalem: November Books. 174 – 83.
Stoler-Liss, Sahlav
1998Raising a Zionist Baby: An Anthropological Analysis of Parents’ Guidebooks. In
Hebrew. Master’s Thesis, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
2003Mothers Birth the Nation: The Social Construction of Zionist Mother-hood in
Wartime in Israeli Parents’ Manuals. Nashim 6 (Fall): 104 – 18.
Sturm, Philippa
1992The Woman Are Marching: The Second Sex and the Palestinian Revolution. New
York: Lawrence Hill Books.
Swirski, Barbara, and Marilyn P. Safir, eds.
1991Calling the Equality Bluff: Women in Israel. London: Pergamon Press.

31
Swirski, Shlomo
1989Israel: The Oriental Majority. London: Zed Books.
Swirsky, Gila
2002Feminist Peace Activism During the al-Aqsa Intifada. In Women and the Politics of
Military Confrontation: Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation, ed.
Nahla Abdo and Ronit Lentin. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books. 234 – 9.
Tilley, Virginia Q.
2005The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian
Deadlock. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press.
Weiman, Gabi
2008The New Suitcase Packers. In Hebrew. Ha’aretz, March 31.
Y-Net
2007A Sharp Rise in the Number of Israelis Demanding German Citizen-ship, July 24.
Yegna, Nir
2010.When the Qassams stopped, so stopped the donations, and the municipality of
Sderot is near bankruptcy. Ha’aretz, March 3.
Young, Elise G.
1992Keepers of the History: Women and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. New York:
Teachers College Press.
Zarini, Iris
2004Capital and Networking: Socialization Processes of Mizrahi Women Professors in
Israeli Academe. In Hebrew. Seminar Paper Submitted to the Open University, Israel.
Zeid, Shoshi
2001The Child is Gone: The Yemeni Children Affair. In Hebrew. Jerusalem: Geffen
Publishers.
Zomer, Navit
2001Delta Textile Closes its Textile Plant in Khurfeish: Two Hundred

32
 Exploding Identities: Notes On Ethnicity & Literary History
Ammiel Alcalay

Every notion in vogue, including the retrieval of ―roots‖ values, is

necessarilyexploited and recuperated. The invention of needs always goes hand in
handwith the compulsion to help the needy, a noble and self-gratifying task that
alsorenders the helper’s service indispensable. The part of the savior has to be
filledas long as the belief in the problem of ―endangered species‖ lasts. To
persuadeyou that your past and cultural heritage are doomed to eventual extinction
andthereby keeping you occupied with the Savior’s concern, inauthenticity
iscondemned as a loss of origins and a whitening (or faking) of non-Westernvalues.
Being easily offended in your elusive identity and reviving readily an old,racial
charge, you immediately react when such guilt-instilling accusations areleveled at
you and are thus led to stand in need of defending that very ethnicpart of yourself
that for years has made you and your ancestors the objects ofexecration. Today,
planned authenticity is rife; as a product of hegemony and aremarkable counterpart
of universal standardization, it constitutes an efficaciousmeans of silencing the cry of
racial oppression. We no longer wish to erase yourdifference, We demand, on the
contrary, that you remember and assert it. Atleast, to a certain extent.
1
Trinh T. Minh-ha
1.
As 1992 came and went, with its proliferation of quincentennial Sephardic or
Arab / Jewish conferences, festivals, publications, tours, exhibits and
commemorations,
I felt some relief at not having been called in as a ―native informant‖ until the very
end
of December. Throughout the year, I yearned for a transcendent moment of the
kind
described by Edmond Jabès as ―a moment we do not manage to classify, whose
consequences we do not manage to exhaust and whose effects we do not manage to
2
neutralize.‖ Yet, with rare exceptions, it seemed a year of missed opportunities, a
year
when the deeper implications of the common fate of European Muslims and Jews
1
faced
with consecutive edicts of expulsion from Spain were obscured to the point of
oblivion.
For those edicts of expulsion affected not only the hundreds and thousands of
Muslims
and Jews forced into exile; they also forced over 800 years of ―Euro-Semitic‖ culture
underground, forever marking Europe’s own self-conception by excising itself of
references to its tainted, impure past. This suppressed chapter in European history
returned with a vengeance in what has come to be our own legacy, during the
enlightenment and colonial periods when an imperial curriculum successfully
managed to ethnically cleanse any references to semites - Jews or Muslims - that
might indicate them to be both possessors of an autonomous history and
inextricable partners in the creation of ―European‖ civilization. It is this very legacy
that continues to affect not only our discipline but the way we think of ourselves and
the world we inhabit.

2
 In the context of Jewish studies, particular questions and issues that have
already been debated in other fields remain largely unexamined or even formulated
as possibilities. The idea that Spanish culture might, for instance, be the result of an
intense struggle, for, between and against the memory and reality of its Arabic and
Hebrew past, rather than the ―self-evident‖ ―national‖ outgrowth of a particular
ethnic group, is rarely taken as an initial assumption. Rather than hold conferences,
for example, questioning the very term ―European‖ or pondering just how many
generations of nativity in a particular place is needed in order for ―blood‖ and
ethnicity to turn into accurate, geographical description, the activities of 1992 only
buttressed the impermeability of the very categories themselves. Whichever myth
one subscribes to an idealized ―multi-cultural‖ garden of co-existence or the
precarious existence of a minority allowed its few moments of brilliance by the
tyrannical rule of the majority, along with all the more or less subtle gradations in
between - the terms of discussion have remained the same: Arab Muslim, Sephardic
Jew and Spanish Christian, with only the latter being granted the magical status of
―European,‖ despite the residence of the former on European soil for close to a
millenium. The containers of identity remain fixed and iconic, regardless of the
qualities their contents might possess.
The quincentennial also conveniently provided the finger in the proverbial dike
that would shore up any leaks contaminating one arbitrarily constructed historical
period from another. The construction of a ―glorious‖ past (even when that ―glory‖ is
contested), is often, as in this case, more a concession dedicated to fending off the
present and more recent past than a means of coming to terms with the continuing
significance of the materials themselves. In this sense, the discourse of historical
Jewish / Muslim relations in Spain has generally been constructed with certain
assumptions or silences regarding present political realities. The very terms of
debate (as seen, for example in an exchange between the prominent Jewish
3
historians Norman A. Stillman and Mark R. Cohen), range over an extremely limited
spectrum of possibilities. The very terms ―Jew‖ and ―Arab‖ remain mutually
exclusive and are rarely problematized by particular historical, economic, political or
cultural circumstances.
Perhaps even more significantly, at least as far as Jewish studies (however it
may be construed) is concerned, this discourse has almost categorically refused to
take into account the present political, social and cultural status of Sephardi, Arab or

3
mizrahi Jews in historical and non-ideological or apologetic terms as a focal point
through which different interpretations of the past can be filtered. One typical
assumption is that since Arab Jews came from less ―developed‖ countries, they
could not compete with Ashkenazi Jews in the ―open‖ market Israel presented; here,
for example, is a quote from Jane Gerber’s The Jews of Spain on the status of the
mizrahim in the Israel of the 1960’s: ―Coming from Muslim countries with less
advanced economies, their skills were often limited and their per-capita income and
4
educational attainment were typically and strikingly inferior to Ashkenazi levels.‖

4
 The perpetuation of one narrative (or at least one set of constituent terms
through which versions of that narrative are told), replete with experts armed with
all the ―required‖ data, only serves to police the borders of a policy of separate
development. This move away from the multiply constructed contexts of textuality
and more towards entrenchment into narrowly defined territories, small-fiefdoms of
power composed of self-serving and ―self-evident‖ truths, obscures the ways we
have come to accept the ―infallibility‖ of those very ―truths.‖ Moreover, it pre-empts
even the possibility of raising precisely the kinds of issues that not only need to be
raised but which the very materials under scrutiny demand be raised. For example,
one can look at the unquestioned canonical status of Golden Age Hebrew poetry in
Spain as a way of detaching it from the incredibly varied and rich tradition of
Levantine Jewish culture that follows it over the next millenium. By ghettoizing
―accomplishment‖ in one discrete period, with only flashes of glory to follow, little
room is left for a cohesive narrative that can be presented as an alternative to the
centrality of the ―European‖ Jewish narrative.
This pattern is made all the more resilient by the fact that far too few texts
are easily available outside of a highly specialized academic context. While many
nations have standardized editions of pre-modern texts, this is not the case for
Hebrew. As things stand now, only selections of some major writers (Ibn Gabirol,
Shmuel HaNagid, Yehuda Ha-Levi, for example) are available and many others
simply have not entered into the vocabulary. The classic rhymed verse narratives of
Yehuda al-Harizi, for example, are out of print. From the 10th to the 20th c., one
can point to, literally, hundreds of writers whose influence on the present has hardly
been felt due to the difficulty of gaining access to their work. While substantial
―readings‖ exist there is, for example, no radical rereading of the Hebrew poetic
tradition, no text such as Introduction to Arabic Poetics by Adonis; one could make a
good case that the lack of such an endeavor is the result of the contemporary
unavailability of the tradition itself. Ironically, many of the writers in question - for a
variety of reasons too complex to delineate here but having to do with place,
spheres of influence, usage and intent, could have a lot to say to younger Israeli
writers who are again fully inhabiting a Levantine space but are still looking for a
language to do it in. In addition to this, the aura of prerequisite expertise that keeps
such texts in a highly sheltered but largely inaccessible domain, makes them
unavailable for translation. Thus, the gaps existing in Levantine Jewish texts

5
available for use in teaching outside of Israel, for example, are truly enormous. The
complex set of issues that such a situation presents should be of vital concern not
only to Israeli writers, literary historians, educators and the general public but to
scholars of medieval, renaissance, post-renaissance and modern Jewish life, in all its
aspects. Yet, for reasons that are certainly as intriguing as those causing the
problem in the first place, open debate over a topic as crucial as this never surfaces.

6
2.
What can, for want of a better term, be called ―Zionist discourse‖ (with its
hybrid enlightenment, romantic, revolutionary and colonialist legacy, as well as its
attendant assumptions regarding Jewish history and the diaspora), has permeated
every aspect of modern Jewish culture. The earnest critique of this legacy and these
assumptions has only begun. In some fields, such as history, revisionist work has
gained a foothold. Other fields, such as sociology, anthropology and literary studies,
are still dominated by modes of discourse that can only be called paternalistic,
ahistorical and inadequate. In literary studies, the field that most concerns me here,
we can see this expressed on all levels. On the one hand, completely vulgar and
almost comical assertions not only abound, but go unquestioned in purportedly
academic contexts. Two of my favorite instances of this are as follows; the first is
from a preface to a book of interviews with contemporary Israeli writers:
Equally remarkable, I am abashed to point out that every one of the 18
writers who appear in this collection is of Northern European or North American,
Ashkenazi background. Not a one can point to roots in the Sephardi Jewish
communities of Southern Europe or the Arab countries. And yet such is the literary
culture of contemporary Israel that, though of course exceptions could be cited -
novelists Amnon Shamosh and Sammy Michael, poet Ronnie Someck, a number of
others - my claim to being representative can justly stand. To all intents and
purposes, Israeli literary culture today is not only predominantly leftist but wholly
5
dominated by Ashkenazim.

7
After being ―honest‖ about his quandry, this author goes on to exonerate himself of
any culpable judgement; he has, after all, mentioned some Sephardi Jewish writers
so he knows that they exist. However, since there are no others, his ―claim to being
representative can justly stand.‖ Thus, QED, ―Israeli literary culture today...is wholly
dominated by Ashkenazim.‖ The next example reaches much greater heights of
absurdity, purely on logical grounds:
Israel is geographically part of the Middle East - and indeed is a major factor in
contemporary Middle Eastern consciousness. Yet as astute an Israeli intellectual as
Shulamit Hareven defines literary Israel as a territory whose borders skirt present-
day Manhattan and nineteenth-century Odessa, with Czernowitz somewhere in
between. She would prefer a more Mediterranean Israel, though she surely knows
that such an Israel is, in literary as well as political terms, still very much within the
realm of utopian fantasy. Yoram Bronowski, too, is clear on this point: that Israeli
literature moves willynilly on paths determined by European literature. It does seem
that, for literary purposes, the Israeli sensibility is incontrovertibly a Euro-American
sensibility. Very little about Israeli belles lettres can be called Levantine, even
though a sizable proportion of the Israeli population (a segment that includes such
authors as A.B. Yehoshua, Nissim Aloni, and Erez Bitoun [sic]) has Levantine or
Oriental antecedents. From a Middle Eastern perspective, then, all Israelis, even
those of Moroccan or Persian or Yemenite origin, are European; their literature is
6
European; their outlook is alien or external to the Middle East.
This last quotation speaks for itself and, though the temptation is great, one
does not, in the end, even feel compelled to add any typographical emphases. On
the other hand, it is remarkable to observe just how deeply ingrained similar
attitudes are, to varying degrees, in mainstream scholarship. These less blatant
instances are often harder to contend with since they form the very building blocks
of commonplace assumptions in practically all modern Hebrew literary criticism and
literary history, whether written in Hebrew, English or other languages. More
insidious, embedded in gaps and silences, this discourse relies on exclusion or
partial accomodation as a means of asserting truth and maintaining control. A few
examples chosen from the work of Gershon Shaked, Benjamin Harshav and Robert
Alter, three dominant figures in modern Hebrew literary studies, can serve as an
introduction to the problematic involved.

8
 In the fourth and last volume of Gershon Shaked’s Hebrew Literature 1880-
1980, Shaked looks at writers (particularly Shimon Ballas and Sammy Michael) that,
as one of the primary arbiters of ―taste‖ in the Israeli literary establishment, he had
consistently chosen to ignore. He describes the work of these and other mizrahi
writers as an expression of ―socialist realism (though it is really more social than
socialist).‖ In addition, Shaked describes their work simply as a reaction; writing
about Ballas and Michael, he states: ―Their immigration to Israel exposed them to
social and ethnic humiliation. The Ashkenazi community turned them from a social
elite into a second class. When they were able to express themselves in Hebrew,
7
they set out to accuse those who had humiliated them.‖ Other writers that he
discusses (such as Amnon Shamosh and Yitzhaq Gormezano Goren), ―prefer the
8
folklore and customs that were to the Zionist lifestyle.‖ Shaked also takes pains to
find ―precedents‖ in mainstream Israeli writing to anything that might be construed
as ―innovative‖ in work by mizrahim. Again, writing about Ballas and Michael, he
points out that ―these two realistic writers ―dared‖ to raise the Jewish-Arab question
- caustically, and while identifying to one degree or another with the Arab position -
only after this issue had been raised in a complex, camouflaged and ambiguous way
by the members of the new, modern-grotesque school as represented by A.B.
9
Yehoshua.‖ In every instance, the judgemental language implies superiority and
inferiority: the ―Oriental‖ is barely capable of socialist realism, only ―social‖ realism;
the ―Oriental‖ is incapable of independent agency, but can only express him or
herself in reaction to dominance; the ―Oriental‖ is only capable of folklore and
customs, not an ideology or a lifestyle; the ―Oriental‖ is incapable of innovation and
can only crudely imitate more complex and ambiguous literary works through direct
representation and identification.
In one of a series of exchanges following the appearance of excerpts from
Shaked’s book, Shimon Ballas stated: ―In other words, there is no reason to relate
to me
-as a writer or as a human being - as to someone having principles or a world-view.
One should only see my political positions as a reaction to the humiliation that I
supposedly suffered. But what about the pure Ashkenazis who also felt solidarity
with the Arabs and fought along with me? They didn’t struggle because of
degradation but because they had principles. But I, at least according to Shaked,
couldn’t possibly develop any principles but only react as a result of my humiliation.
9
 10
Such a claim is not only perverse, but racist.‖
In Benjamin Harshav’s new book, Language in Time of Revolution, Shaked’s
more openly polemical assumptions are woven into the realm of scientific authority
and historical objectivity. In his preface, ―the Jews‖ remain unqualified; thus, when
he speaks of the numbered immigrations to Israel (the First through Fifth), he can
conveniently exclude the people who do not fit into Zionist historiography. If such
people are excluded (the waves of Yemenites, brought in as a more ―practical‖
alternative to Palestinian labor; the Bukharians and Moroccans who established early
urban presences in Jerusalem, for example), then their linguistic influence can also
be eliminated. In fact, outside of one mention of the educator Nissim Bechar,
absolutely no role or presence is accorded to ―non-European‖ Jews in the Hebrew
revolution.
Harshav assumes the destiny of Jews to be universal: ―In this sense, Jewish
history is a staggered history: what happened to one Jewish group earlier happened
11
to another group later.‖ This ―universalization‖ of Jewish destiny, however, in
addition to being completely ahistorical, cuts off areas of inquiry that demand
attention, eliminating not only the need or the desire but even the possibility of
beginning to think about modern Hebrew literature and its complex development in
a truly comparative sense, alongside so many other cultures and literatures that
underwent similar processes (Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Greek, Urdu, Japanese or
Bosnian, to mention only a few).
The revival of Hebrew and the creation of a new society, according to
Harshav, ―gave its users a vehicle for expressing a totality of twentieth-century
12
experience in a language of their own.‖ The assumption here, of course, is that
without such a vehicle, one could not express a totality of twentieth-century
experience. Reading more carefully, one can build on the nature of Harshav’s
distinctions: ―But unlike other ancient civilizations that were modernized and gained
independence at about the same time in their own traditional space, Hebrew came
back to its ancestral land from a long absence, from the outside, and from the world
of Europe and modernity. It was not an ancient language of a great ancient
civilization, stagnant for hundreds of years (as Arabic or Indian cultures were), that
is now gradually growing into the twentieth century, but rather a new language,
recreated in the very heart of the transitions of modernity, in the context of the
intellectual ferments in Russia, which itself underwent an earthquake, trying to
10
 13
embrace abstract, idealized forms of the culture of the modern West.‖ In this
passage there are subtle, yet clearly identifiable judgements being made: other
ancient civilizations ―were modernized‖ - passively acted upon, they did not
modernize themselves; the world of Europe and modernity presumably never fully
touched the ―traditional space‖ of these ancient civilizations; unlike Hebrew, at the
very ―heart‖ of modernity, the ancient civilizations only ―gradually grew‖ into the
twentieth century. Later on, these prejudices are made explicit in such journalistic
14
cliches as ―backward, Ottoman-ruled Palestine;‖ ―backward and despotic Ottoman
15
Empire, in that desolate and hot land, amid the hostile Arabs,‖ and ―orderly British
Mandatory rule that recognized Hebrew as one of the three official languages in
16
Palestine.‖
In ―Ashkenazi or Sephardi Dialect?‖ Harshav accomplishes a remarkably
erudite leap of faith. After endowing the Ashkenazi dialect with richness, subtleties
of nuance, musicality and flexibility (as opposed to the artificiality of the ―so-called‖
Sephardi stress which, nevertheless, became the official pronunciation), we are told
that variations in ―correct‖ pronunciation (where Ashkenazi overules Sephardi stress
positions), entail more than ―just a phonetic issue.‖ They give ―a specific character
to Israeli speech and its speakers. And beyond that, this is the basic mode of the
whole revival in Eretz-Israel: an ideological decision and a drastic imposition of a
new model of behavior, radically different from the Diaspora past, is accompanied
by a subtext of old behavior, which reemerges with time: the Jew comes out from
17
under the Hebrew.‖ Thus we come full circle; since non-European Jews have been
excluded from the narrative, this Jew, (like ―the Jews‖ mentioned in the preface),
we are made to understand, is clearly an Ashkenazi Jew.
Finally, in Robert Alter’s new collection, Hebrew & Modernity, we can see
further manifestations of some of the problematic issues described above. Yet again,
we learn, inexplicably, that ―Hebrew literature, though now created preponderantly
in the Middle East, resolutely remains a Western literature, looking to formal and
even sometimes stylistic models in English, German, and, to a lesser degree,
18
Russian, French, and Spanish.‖ The fact that novelists like Shimon Ballas or poets
like Moshe Sartel might look to Lebanese, Iraqi, Palestinian, Egyptian, Turkish or
Greek models, is a non-issue.While Alter remains resolutely sensitive to the nuances
and resonances of Hebrew literature in its Eastern and Western European contexts,

11
his informed readings in the diversity of pre-Modern Mediterranean and Levantine
Hebrew writing are tainted by his own qualifications. Modernity proper remains a
European enterprise: ―That is to say, by the late eighteenth century, European
Jewry was launching the radical historical transformation we call modernization, and
what was at issue now in the act of writing Hebrew was not just an aesthetic pursuit
but a programmatic renegotiation of the terms of Jewish collective identity... To
write, let us say, a sonnet or a poetic epigram in Hebrew was an act of competitive
cultural imitation, but one carried out within the confines of a highly
conventionalized formal structure, and as such chiefly an aesthetic exercise,
19
however deep the feeling behind some of the individual poems.‖ In slightly more
elevated terms, we again encounter the crucial and truer difference of European
agency; the novel becomes an idealized form representing consciousness itself while
―pre-modern‖ poetry can only aspire to be an ―aesthetic excercise.‖
In other words, there can be no ―modernity‖ before ―modernity‖ proper. The
crisis facing Judaism during the Inquisition, for example, in the ―age of discovery,‖
when new parts of the self were interrogated, discovered and charted, is not
―modern‖ enough to fit such criteria. Within the domain of such exclusive terms, the
fertile field of analogy and inquiry between marrano and 19th century Jewish
experience remains cordoned off. Yet, as Shmuel Trigano has written, ―The Marrano
Sephardic Jews served, paradoxically, as the prototypes and the anguished
laboratory of modernity, the ‗political animal’ divided into the fantasizing private
person, and the universal citizen, abstract and theoretical. The citizen is ‗free’ but
subject to law and the coercion of power. The private individual is ‗free,’ but that
20
liberty can only be exercised between the four walls of ‗cellular’ rooms.‖
Alter’s proprietary relationship to the past is accompanied by a good deal of
mystification, both about the status of modern Israeli writers and the particularities
of the Hebrew language itself (one might almost even say: ‘al ‘ijaz al’ibrani / ―the
inimitability of Hebrew,‖ to paraphrase the Arabic dictum ‘al ‘ijaz al’-quran / ―the
inimitability of the Quran,‖ such a central idea to both classical Arabic and Hebrew
literature). Regarding contemporary Israeli writers, we are given to accept the fact
that translation of more popular writers such as David Grossman, Amos Oz or A.B.
Yehoshua somehow already implies or guarantees the importance of their work. The
idea that contemporary Israeli writing might be a highly contested field, a place
where social and political struggles occur, is never even broached as a possibility.
12
The ―Israeli literature which has become abundantly available in English
21
translation‖ has become so, presumably, only because of its quality. There is no
intimation that this availability might have something to do with the creation of a
receptive space affected by the political and economic relationship that exists
between the United States and Israel, and everything that goes along with that,
including the politics of publishing. Why aren’t Iranian, Lebanese, Turkish or
Moroccan novels available with such immediacy? And even more to the point, why
are only some Israelis translated and published abroad?
While Alter links some Israeli writers with their Yiddish antecedents and
apparent American or European contemporaries, these links are made to appear so
seamless and natural that one finds it hard to even imagine that there might be
parallel worlds, worlds where writers like Yitzhaq Gormezano Goren would find
antecedents in Albert Cohen or Jacqueline Kahanof; where the work of Albert
Memmi or Clarisse Nikoidski could exist alongside that of Albert Swissa or Amira
Hess; where the work of Samir Naqqash and Shimon Ballas would find antecedents
in Taha Hussein and contemporaries in Edwar el-Kharrat, Ghassan Kanafani, Yahya
Taher Abdullah or Hannan al-Shaykh. One could go on and on: while the abundance
of Yiddish literature is assumed, we are never given, for example, even a cursory
description of the massive production of literature in Judeo-Spanish and what its
significance might be for the growth of a whole other branch of modern Jewish
writing as seen in the work of Haim Davico, Isak Samokovlija, Laura Bohoreta Papo,
Elissa Rhais, Catulle Mendes, Ryvel, Albert Ades, Albert Josepovici, Mony de Boully,
Veza Canetti or so many others whose names are neither mentioned nor known in
practically all studies purportedly meant to cover Jewish modernity.
Without belaboring a point that already seems belabored to the point of
tediousness: my aim here is not to engage in accusations, to expose the ―sins‖ of
ignorance (no matter how egregious), or put the ―blame‖ for the state of things as
they are on this or that person. I am not writing as a victim, reaching, as Trinh
Minh-ha puts it, to defend ―that very ethnic part of‖ myself. Nor is it my aim to
―struggle for my rightful share,‖ to impose - along with the policy of separate
development - a policy of equally separate development. The idea here is not to vie
for a bigger slice of the pie but redefine the nature of the pie itself. Other areas have
seen remarkable achievements in the past decades, combining theoretical erudition
with a true scholarly zeal to produce authoritative and easily available editions of

13
both classical and non-canonical texts. On the American scene, for example, African-
American and Women’s Studies have presented new paradigms, standards and
challenges.
The study of Hebrew literature and the writings of Jews in other languages
stands at a crucial juncture. A combination of chauvinism, ideological blinders,
political blindness and the lack of a true comparative perspective have severely
tested the abilities of students to emerge intact from most of the contexts now
available in which such studies can be pursued. We can either expect more of the
same, or strive to open the field up to new directions and new definitions. Entire
periods are waiting to be defined and examined. No intellectual history of 19th and
early 20th century Jewry in the Levant, with its relationship to European thought,
currently exists. Who, for example, has studied the correspondence between the
great Orientalist A.S. Yahuda and Saul Tschernikovski, or Yahuda’s remarkable
critique on Freud’s Moses and Monotheism? A literary scholar attuned to the
complexities of contemporary Israeli and Jewish writing in other languages, could
open up the whole issue of writing in an acquired language, moving across different
cultures and periods. These are only suggestions hinting at the enormous range of
unexplored material available, material whose unveiling would unquestionably
dislodge and make obsolete the kind of facile, unfounded generalizations that
presently dictate what can and cannot be studied, known or imagined. The amount
of writing that remains ―unread,‖ in the largest sense of that term, is staggering,
And the questions that this writing engenders, particularly when viewed through the
lens of the complex amalgam of Israeli culture in all its aspects, are the questions
that many literatures are or should be asking themselves.
3.
The works of Ivo Andric, winner of the Nobel Prize in what was then
Yugoslavia, have resurfaced lately as a source of anti-Muslim prejudice in Serbian
cultural discourse. In particular, his thesis, The development of Spiritual Life in
Bosnia under the Influence of Turkish Rule (originally written in 1924 and published
in English in 1990), has been cited in various texts on Bosnia. Andric, though
adopted as part of the Serbian literary canon (often as an ―antidote‖ or in direct
opposition to the Croatian writer Miroslav Krleza), was himself a Croat. It is in this
context, in an essay called ―Ivo Andric’s Place in Croatian Literature,‖ that the
Bosnian Croat novelist and critic Ivan Lovrenovic discusses the absolute resistance

14
to even speaking of Croatia’s three towering, modern literary figures, Tin Ujevic, Ivo
Andric and Miroslav Krleza, in the same breath: ―What model does this phenomenon
present for a culture’s internal relationship? Just this, that such a culture has a
serious problem with the recognition of its own contents and their worth, with the
realization of its own creative energies; in other words, in the final analysis, it has a
problem with self-recognition. Furthermore, it means that this culture has a serious
problem with the integration of its own differences. And this, in itself, contains
within it a more burdensome and global diagnosis: such problems all derive from an
22
insecure identity.‖ Lovrenovic goes on to make an analogy between the way
Croatian literary history and literary politics abandoned not only Ivo Andric but
everything having to do with Bosnia: ―The essence of this relationship resulted from
an optical illusion in which, looking at everything from the center, the Bosnian Croat
problematic was always and in its entirety viewed as an appendage, and a second-
class appendage at that... And we are speaking here of a full body of work
stretching over half a millenium; the literary and linguistic continuity and memory of
a whole world that had always been a vital element of Croatian history and the
Croatian people. What does the tenacity and continuity of this optical deformation
tell us? It tells us that the only model given legitimacy, the metropolitan paradigm
of center and periphery, is inadequate. Putting it simply, this culture, as well as its
literature, have had a different historical formation, polycentric and
23
polymorphous...‖ One does not have to stretch the imagination far to see the
remarkably fertile analogies present in this seemingly distant and highly localized
example.
Lovrenovic also speaks of those forces that have the means at their disposal
- in the form of a state, an army and a police force - to exert and maintain control
over a writer, a work or an event. This bitter knowledge of defeat and subjugation,
so long a Jewish instinct, can be contrasted with Harshav’s almost chilling tone of
triumphalism: ―But in place of the Hebraized terms, new ―foreign words‖ and
concepts were introduced, within the proportions of good taste allowed in a given
genre. This was and is - the cosmopolitan openness (as well as the Yiddish and
Russian background) of modern Hebrew. It was this openness that constructed a
24
modern State with universities, literature, and an air force.‖ This, in turn, can be
contrasted to the wise irony of Isaac Bashevis Singer; when asked what the
difference between Hebrew and Yiddish was, he replied: ―Hebrew is Yiddish with an
15
army.‖
The very imprecisions I have pointed to are what Erica Hunt describes in her
highly cogent essay, ―Notes Towards an Oppositional Poetics,‖ as ―codes and
mediations that sustain the status quo‖ and ―abbreviate the human in order to fit us
25
into structures of production.‖ In this case, we are meant to fit into the structures
that produce meaning and significance - as writers, scholars, critics, students and
consumers of cultural artifacts. But such structures and strictures contradict our
experience, no matter how casual or urgent it might be. To be ―abbreviated‖ in the
multiplicity of our possible range of identities is a form of oppression.. In a context
of extreme violence, the contemporary Bosnian writer Nedzad Ibrisimovic was asked
if he should be spoken to as a writer, a fighter in the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina,
or just as a plain Bosnian suffering with everyone else. He answered: ―You can’t talk
to me as a writer because I can’t talk while I’m writing and when I stop writing, I’m
not a writer.‖ This answer, ironic and playful as it might seem under the
circumstances, embodies an insistence on the autonomous nature of plurality, and a
steadfast refusal to be pinned down into one category or another. It is the
categorical assertion and acceptance of difference beyond ―a certain extent.‖
Without losing sight of the possibility of universal desires, claims and
responsibilities, what remains crucial is precisely this ability to maintain a diversity
of selves and roles that can act locally in many places at once.

1. Trinh T. Minh-ha,Woman, Native, Other (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1989), p. 89.
2
. Edmond Jabes, From the Desert to the Book: Dialogues with Marcel Cohen, trans.
Pierre Joris (Tarrytown, N.Y: Station Hill, 1990), p. 40.
3
. See Mark R. Cohen’s ―The Neo-Lachrymose Conception of Jewish-Arab History‖
followed by Norman A. Stillman’s ―Myth, Countermyth, and Distortion‖ in Tikkun,
Vol. 6, No. 3 (pp. 55-64). There is also an exchange of letters in the following issue,
Vol. 6, No. 4 (pp. 96-97), entitled ―Revisionist Jewish-Arab History: An Exchange‖.
4
. Jane S. Gerber, The Jews of Spain (New York: Free Press, 1992), p. 279.
5
. Haim Chertok,We Are All Close: Conversations with Israeli Writers (New York:
Fordham University Press, 1989), pp. 4-5.
6
. Warren Bargad and Stanley F. Chyet, Israeli Poetry: A Contemporary Anthology

16
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), p. 3.
7
. Gershon Shaked, ―Struggling Against the Ashkenazi Establishment,‖ inModern
Hebrew Literature 10; New Series (Spring / Summer 1993), pp.4-5.
8. Ibid., p. 6.
9. Ibid., p. 7.
10. ―Rehabilitation or Libel: A Conversation Between Ya’akov Besser and Shimon
Ballas,‖ Davar; October 23, 1992; p. 25 [my translation]
11. Benjamin Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993), p. 15.
12. Ibid., p. 81.

13. Ibid., p. 82.

14. Ibid., p. 84.

15. Ibid., p. 110.

16. Ibid., p. 85.

17. Ibid., p. 166.

18. Robert Alter, Hebrew & Modernity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1994), p.

7.
19. Ibid., pp. 42-3.

20. Shmuel Trigano, La nouvelle question juive (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), p. 208 [my

translation].
21. Ibid., p. ix.

22. Ivan Lovrenovic, Ex tenebris: sarajevski dnevnik (Zagreb: AGM, 1994), p. 43.
23. Ibid., p. 44.

24. See above, note 9; p. 129.

25. Erica Hunt, ―Notes Towards an Oppositional Poetics,‖ in The Politics of Poetic

Form: Poetry and Public Policy; Charles Bernstein ed. (New York: Roof Books,
1990), p. 200.

17
 Rupture And Return: A Mizrahi Perspective On The Zionist
Discourse

By: Ella Shohat[*]

MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies
May 2001

http://web.mit.edu/cis/www/mitejmes/issues/200105/shohat.htm

Eurocentric norms of scholarship have had dire consequences for the representation of
Palestinian and Mizrahi history, culture and identity. In this paper I would like to
examine some of the foundational premises and substratal axioms of hegemonic
discourse about Middle Eastern Jews (known in the last decade as ―Mizrahim‖).
Writing a critical Mizrahi historiography in the wake of colonialism and nationalism,
both Arab and Jewish, requires the dismantling of a number of master-narratives. I
will attempt to disentangle the complexities of the Mizrahi question by unsettling the
conceptual borders erected by more than a century of Zionist discourse, with its fatal
binarisms of savagery versus civilization, tradition versus modernity, East versus West
and Arab versus Jew. This paper forms part of a larger project in which I attempt to
chart a beginning for a Mizrahi epistemology through examining the terminological
paradigms, the conceptual aporias and the methodological inconsistencies plaguing
diverse fields of scholarship concerning Arab Jews/Mizrahim.
Central to Zionist thinking is the concept of ―Kibbutz Galuiot‖-- the ―ingathering of the
exiles.‖ Following two millennia of homelessness and living presumably ―outside of
history,‖ Jews can once again ―enter history‖ as subjects, as ―normal‖ actors on the
world stage by returning to their ancient birth place, Eretz Israel. In this way, Jews
can heal a deformative rupture produced by exilic existence. This transformation of
―Migola le’Geula‖ —from Diaspora to redemption—offered a teleological reading of
Jewish History (with a capital H) in which Zionism formed a redemptive vehicle for the
renewal of Jewish life on a demarcated terrain, no longer simply spiritual and textual,
but rather national and political. Concomitant with the notion of Jewish ―return‖ and
continuity was the idea of rupture and discontinuity. In order to be transformed into

1
New Jews, (later Israelis) the Diaspora Jews had to abandon their Diaspora—galuti—
culture, which in the case of Arab- Jews meant abandoning Arabness and acquiescing
in assimilationist modernization, for ―their own good,‖ of course. Within this
Promethean rescue narrative the concepts of ―ingathering‖ and ―modernization‖
naturalized and glossed over the epistemological violence generated by the Zionist
vision of the New Jew. This rescue narrative also elided Zionism’s own role in
provoking ruptures, dislocations and fragmentation, not only for Palestinian lives but
also—in a different way—for Middle Eastern/North African Jews. These ruptures were
not only physical (the movement across borders) but also cultural (a rift in relation to
previous cultural affiliations) as well as conceptual (in the very ways time and space
were conceived). Here I will critically explore the dialectics of rupture and return in
Zionist discourse as it was formulated in relation to Jews from the Middle East/North
Africa. I will examine these dialectics through the following grids: a) dislocation: space
and the question of naming; b) dismemberment: the erasure of the hyphen in the
―Judeo-Muslim;‖ c) dis-chronicity: temporality and the project of modernization; d)
dissonance: methodological and discursive ruptures.

DISLOCATION: SPACE AND THE QUESTION OF NAMING

In the comic film Sallah Shabbati (Israel, 1964), the protagonist, the stereotypical
Levantine Jew, lands in Israel. He comes from the Levant, but within the film’s
Eurocentric imaginary geography he comes from nowhere: first, in the literal sense,
since his place of origin remains unknown; and secondly, in the metaphorical sense,
since Asian and African geographies here are suggested to amount to nothing of
substance. Within this view, Jews from the Middle East/North Africa arrive to Israel
from obscure corners of the globe to the Promised Land to which they have always
already been destined. In this way Mizrahim could be claimed as part of a continuous
Jewish history/geography whose alpha and omega, or, to use the Hebrew, aleph and
tav, is in the land of Israel, a land which the Zionist movement claimed to represent.
While superimposing a nationalist discourse on the spiritual messianic idea of Jewish
renewal, Zionist ideologues not only sought the physical transfer of Palestinians to
Arab countries but also the transfer of Jews from Arab countries to Palestine.
However, the physical dislocation was not adequate in the case of the Middle Eastern
Jews. They had to undergo what the establishment, in a contemporary retelling of the
biblical Exodus from Egypt, called ―the death of the desert generation‖ (Moto shel dor

2
hamidbar), in order to facilitate their birth as the new Israelis, that of the Sabra
generation.
The question of continuity and discontinuity is central, therefore, to the Zionist vision
of the nation-state. Yet, one could argue that by provoking the geographical dispersal
of Arab-Jews, by placing them in a new situation `on the ground,` by attempting to
reshape their identity as simply `Israeli,` by scorning and trying to uproot their
Arabness, by racializing them and discriminating against them as a group—Israel itself
provoked a series of traumatic ruptures. The Israeli establishment obliged Arab Jews
to redefine themselves in relation to new ideological paradigms and polarities, thus
provoking the aporias of an identity constituted out of its own ruins. The Jews within
Islam always thought of themselves as Jews, but that Jewishness was part of a larger
Judeo-Islamic cultural fabric. Under pressure from Zionism, on the one hand, and
Arab nationalism on the other, that set of affiliations gradually changed, resulting in a
transformed cultural semantics. The identity crisis provoked by this physical, political,
and cultural rupture, is reflected in a terminological crisis in which no single term
seems to fully represent a coherent entity: Sephardim, Jews of Islam, Arab-Jews,
Middle Eastern/ North African Jews, Asian and African Jews, Third World Jews, ―bnei
edot ha mizrah’ (descendents of the eastern communities), blacks, Mizrahim, or Iraqi-
Jews, Iranian-Jews, Kurdish-Jews, Syrian-Jews and so-forth. Each term implies a
historical, geographical and political point-of-view.
Prior to their arrival in Israel, the self-designation of Jews in Iraq, for example, was
different. They had thought of themselves as Jews but that Jewish identity was
diacritical, playing off and depending on a relation to other communities. Hyphens
were added in relation to other communities: Baghdadi-Jews (in contrast to Jews of
other cities); Babylonian-Jews (to mark their historical roots in the region); Iraqi-Jews
(to mark national affiliation); or Arab-Jews (in contradistinction to Muslim and
Christian Arabs, but also marking belonging to the greater Arab nation). Even the
concept of Sephardiness was not part of the self-definition. The term strictly referred
to the Jews of Spain who retained their Spanishness even outside of Iberia, for
example in Turkey, Bulgaria, Egypt, and Morocco. Of course, there was a kind of
regional geo-cultural Jewish space from the Mediterranean to the Indian ocean, where
Jews traveled, exchanged ideas, under the aegis of the larger Islamic world, into
which they were culturally and politically interwoven even if they retained their
Jewishness within that realm. They were shaped by Arab-Muslim culture and helped
shape that culture in a dialogical process that resulted in their specific Judeo-Arab

3
identity.
Upon arrival in Israel, shorn of any alternative passport, Arab Jews entered a new
linguistic/discursive environment, at once geo-political (the Israel/Arab conflict), legal
(citizenship), and cultural (East versus West). The normative term became ―Israeli.‖
Whereas Jewishness in Iraq, for example, formed part of a constellation of co-existing
and stratified ethnicities and religions, Jewishness in Israel was now the assumed
dominant. Arabness became the marginalized category and their religion, for the first
time in their history, was now affiliated with the dominant power, equated with the
very basis of national belonging. Their ethnicity (their Arabness) became a marker of
cultural otherness, a kind of embarrassing excess.
Within Israel, nevertheless, in ordinary everyday discourse as well as in the official
discourse,[1] individuals and communities were designated by and referred to
themselves by their country of origin: Moroccans, Libyans, Turks etc., — a designation
that assumed the Jewish national belonging. Although the cultures of Jews from Iraq,
Morocco, or Iran etc., were distinct, they also had cultural aspects in common, but
more importantly they shared a new social and political situation that brought forth-
new definitions of identity.[2] Non-Ashkenazi Jews in Israel more specifically, were
regarded and began to think of themselves as belonging to a larger group than their
community of origin. While in the private sphere they maintained their Iraqi, Yemeni
or Moroccan specificity, within the social sphere they gradually began to articulate a
new collective existence not specifically related to their country of origin and yet which
represent, on one level, the sum of their countries of origin.
The term Sephardi acquired a new meaning from the 50s through the 80s, which did
not simply refer to its literal meaning of Spanish origin. Rather it came to mark a
disadvantageous social positioning and, at times, a revolutionary stance, as with the
60’s efforts to form the Sephardi revolution movement (hamhapeikha ha-spharadit).
In the meantime, the official term bnei edot hamizrah (descendants of the oriental
communities) became a marker of special departments and programs meant to deal
with the ―Levantine element,‖ just as special departments were formed to deal with
―hamiut ha’aravi,‖ the ―Arab minority‖—that is, the Palestinians who became citizens
of Israel. Gradually since the 70s, the term ―descendants of the oriental communities‖
was used by the Mizrahim themselves, especially those who were running for public
office. Since the rise of Likkud to power in 1977, this term also pointed to an embrace
of the integrationist ideology of ―kulanu am ehad‖ (―we are all one nation‖).
However, it was the Black Panther movement in the early 1970s, which loudly

4
protested the racialized system, re-appropriating the negative connotation of
blackness. Its name was a proud reversal of the anti-Mizrahi slur schwartze khayes,
(Yiddish for `black animals`), and an allusion to the black liberation movement in the
United States. While the concept of blackness is still invoked – and not just in relation
to Ethiopian Jews - the term Mizrahim came into use in the early 1990s. Mizrahi leftist
activists who were involved in the 80s in such organizations as ―East for Peace,‖ ―New
Direction‖ and ―the Oriental Front‖ felt that previous terms, such as ―Sephardim,‖
apart from its imprecision, could be seen as privileging links to Europe while slighting
their non-European cultural origins. The term `Mizrahim` still retains its implicit
opposite—`Ashkenazim`—, which in the Israeli context means the hegemonic white
elite—rather than simply a marker of an Ashkenazi Diaspora culture. The Mizrahi
critique of naming suggested that the official terminology placed non-European Jews
as `ethnicities` in contradistinction to the silent unmarked norm of Ashkenaziness or
Euro-Israeli `Sabraness,` simply equated with Israeli. `Mizrahim,` I would argue,
condenses a number of connotations: it celebrates the past in the Eastern world; it
affirms the pan-oriental communities developed in Israel itself; and it invokes a future
of revived cohabitation with the Arab-Muslim East.
The question of naming is also problematic in relation to the movement across
borders of Middle Eastern/North African Jews in unprecedented numbers from the late
40s to the 60s. Conventional paradigms fail to capture the complexity of this historical
moment for Arab Jews. Perhaps due to the idiosyncrasies of the situation, being
trapped between two national paradigms—Arab and Jewish—each term seems
problematic. None of the terms—―aliya‖ (ascendancy) ―yetzia‖ (exit), ―exodus,‖
―expulsion,‖ ―immigration,‖ ―emigration,‖ ―exile,‖ ―refugees,‖ ―ex-patriots,‖ and
―population-exchange‖— seem adequate. In the case of the Palestinians, the forced
mass exodus easily fits the term ―refugee,‖ since they never wanted to leave Palestine
and have maintained the desire to return. In the case of Arab-Jew the question of will,
desire and agency remains ambivalent and complex. This is even reflected in the
proliferation of terminology, suggesting that it is not only a matter of legal definition
of citizenship that is at stake, but also the issue of belonging within the context of
rival nationalisms. Did Arab Jews want to leave? Can their will simply be seen as a
free will? Did they want to go back? And were they able to? Each term implies a
different assumption and suggests a different narrative about the question of agency,
identity and space.
The displacement of Iraqi Jews for example was not, simply, a choice of the Arab Jews

5
themselves.[3] Even if some Arab-Jews expressed a desire to go to Israel, or to
`Zion,` the question is why, suddenly, after millennia of not doing so, would they
leave overnight? I would argue that Arab-Jewish displacement was the product of
complex circumstances in which panic rather than desire for Aliya was the key factor.
The ―in-gathering‖ seems less natural when one takes into account the circumstances
forcing their departure: the efforts of the Zionist underground in Iraq to undermine
the authority of the community leaders such as that of Haham Sasson Khthuri;[4]
Zionist attempts to place a `wedge‖ between the Jewish and Muslim communities, for
example by placing bombs in synagogues to generate anti-Arab panic on the part of
Jews;[5] the anti-Jewish Arab nationalism (Istiklal or independence party) that failed
to clarify and act on the distinction between Jews and Zionists, and which did not work
to secure the place of Jews in the Arab World; and the misconceptions, on the part of
Arab-Jews, about the differences between their own religious identity or sentiments
and the secular nation-state project of Zionism, a movement that had virtually
nothing to do with those sentiments.
The official term ―aliya‖ therefore, is multiply misleading. It suggested a commitment
to Zionism, when in fact the majority of Jews-- and certainly Middle Eastern Jews--
were decidedly not Zionists. Within Zionist discourse the telos of a Jewish state was
normalized; the move toward its borders was represented as the ultimate Jewish act.
When the actual departure of Arab-Jews is represented—as in the 1998 TV series
Tkuma that was produced for the 50th anniversary of the State of Israel— it is
narrated as merely an act of devotion on the part of Yemeni Jews. They are
represented as willing to cross the desert and sacrifice their lives in order to get to the
Promised Land, i.e. the State of Israel. In most Zionist writings a kind of natural
inevitability is always highlighted, while the diverse Zionist tactics to actively dislodge
these communities is erased. Even in the novels written by Mizrahim in Hebrew, we
witness a structuring absence of that crucial moment. Mizrahi literature tends to focus
either on life in Israel or on life prior to Israel as two disconnected spaces. Such
narratives, still, for the most part, manifest difficulty with articulating that actual
moment of departure-- that moment whereby overnight one’s marker as an Iraqi or
Yemeni ends and suddenly begins that of an Israeli. In Sammy Michael’s novel
Victoria, for example, the heroine’s life in Iraq is described from the turn of the
century until the 1950’s, after which she is magically transferred to her apartment in
contemporary Ramat Gan of the 1990s (also known as Ramat Baghdad). Her move
from Iraq to Israel forms a structuring absence, as though it were simply an obvious

6
and transparent act in her life. In this sense, even relatively critical writers tend to
assume the concept of ―aliya‖ without interrogating its semantics within a specifically
Arab-Jewish history.
The term ―aliya‖ naturalizes both a negative pole and a positive pole: a negative will
to escape persecution and a positive desire to go to the Jewish homeland. Yet this
narrative excludes moments of refusal or of ambivalence toward being uprooted. The
term ―Aliya,‖ which literally means ascendancy, is borrowed from the realm of religion
―aliya la’regel’ which originally refers to the pilgrimage to the Temple and later to the
land of Zion. Yet within Zionist discourse the term ―aliya‖ has been transferred to the
realm of citizenship and national identity, suggesting spiritual and even material
ascendancy, the opposite of what actually took place for devastated Mizrahi
communities that experienced social descent – yerida-- rather than ascent. Zionist
discourse about the transition of Arab-Jews to Israel deploys conceptual paradigms in
which religious ideas such as redemption, ascent, and the in-gathering of exile are
grafted onto nationalist paradigms.
At the same time the dominant Arab nationalist discourse sees the mass exodus as an
index of the Jewish betrayal of the Arab nation. Ironically, the Zionist view that
Arabness and Jewishness were mutually exclusive gradually came to be shared by
Arab nationalist discourse, placing Arab-Jews on the horns of a terrible dilemma. The
rigidity of these paradigms has produced the particular Arab-Jewish tragedy, since
neither paradigm has room for a crossed and multiple identities.[6] The displacement
of Arab Jews from the Arab world took place, for the most part, without a fully
conscious or comprehensive understanding on their part of what was at stake, and
what was yet to come. Arab-Jews left their countries of origin with mingled excitement
and terror, but most importantly, buffeted by manipulated confusion,
misunderstanding, and projections provoked by a Zionism that grafted messianic
religiosity onto secular nationalist purposes. Even at times Arab-Jewish Zionists failed
to grasp this distinction, and certainly never imagined the systematic racism that they
were about to encounter in the `Jewish` state. Therefore some Arab-Jewish Zionist
activists came to lament the day that they set foot in Israel.[7] The incorporation of
the non-Ashkenazim into a new culture was far more ambiguous than any simple
narrative of immigration and assimilation can convey. Although the Mizrahi `aliya` to
Israel is described by official ideology, and sometimes seen by Mizrahim themselves,
as a return `home,` in fact this return, within a longer historical perspective, can also
be seen as a new mode of exile.

7
Arab Jews, in my view, could never fully foresee what the impossibility of return to
their countries of origin would mean. The permission to leave—as in the case of Iraqi
Jews—did not allow for a possible return either of individuals or of the community.
Therefore, even the term `immigration` does not account for that massive crossing of
borders since Arab-Jews did not have the right to return. In fact for at least four
decades even the symbolic return of publicly expressing nostalgia for their Arab past
was also taboo. Meanwhile, the description that what occurred was a `population
exchange,` which somehow justifies the creation of Palestinian refugees, is also
fundamentally problematic because neither Arab Jews nor Palestinians were ever
consulted about whether they would like to be exchanged. While the forced departure
of Arab-Jews does not parallel the circumstances of the Palestinian traumatic exodus
during the Nakba (catastrophe), one cannot also simply affix terms such as aliya or
immigration, because the question of will, desire, agency remains extremely complex,
contingent and ambivalent.

DISMEMBERMENT: THE ERASURE OF THE HYPHEN IN THE JUDEO-MUSLIM

The master-narrative of unique Jewish victimization has been crucial for legitimizing
an anomalous nationalist project of `ingathering of the exiles from the four corners of
the globe.` Yet, this narrative can also be defined as legitimizing the generation of
displacements of peoples from such diverse geographies, languages, cultures and
histories-- a project in which, in other words, a state created a nation. And if it has
been argued that all nations are invented, I would say that some nations are more
invented than others. Zionism is certainly a case in point. The narrative of
incomparable victimization has also been crucial for the claim that the `Jewish
Nation` has faced a common perennial `historical enemy`-- the Muslim-Arab. This
picture of an ageless and relentless oppression and humiliation, implies double-edged
amnesia: one with regards to the colonial partition of Palestine which has led to the
dispossession of Palestinians, and to the Palestinian antagonism toward Zionism; the
second with regards to the Judeo-Islamic history which must be represented within a
more multi-perspectival approach.
Zionist discourse has represented Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims as merely one more
`non-Jewish` obstacle to the Jewish-Israeli national trajectory. Therefore, the
historiography concerning Jews within Islam consists of a morbidly selective `tracing
the dots` from pogrom to pogrom. The word `pogrom` itself, it must be noted,

8
derives from and is reflective of the Eastern-European Jewish experience. I do not
mean to idealize the position of Jews within Islam, rather I argue that Zionist
discourse has in a sense hijacked Middle Eastern Jews from their Judeo-Islamic
cultural-geography, and subordinated them into the European-Jewish chronicle of
shtetl and pogrom.
The Zionist conception of ―Jewish History‖ presumes a unitary and universal notion of
history, rather than a multiplicity of experiences, differing from period to period and
from context to context. The Zionist `proof` of a single Jewish experience allows little
space for comparative studies of Middle Eastern Jews in relation[8] to diverse religious
and ethnic minorities in the Middle East/North Africa. Within the Zionist vision of a
single Jewish experience, there are neither parallels nor overlaps with other religious
and ethnic communities, whether in terms of a Jewish hyphenated and syncretic
culture or in terms of linked and analogous oppressions of various groups. The
selective reading of Middle Eastern history, in other words, makes two processes
apparent: the unproblematized subordination of Middle Eastern Jews into a
`universal` Jewish experience as well as the rejection of an Arab and Muslim context
for Jewish institutions, identity, and history.
Contemporary cultural practices illustrate this process of dismemberment; i.e. the
attempt to represent the Jews within Islam detached from Muslim-Arab culture,
philosophy and institutions. Take for example the 1989 New York Jewish Museum
exhibition of Turkish-Jewish costumes. The exhibition provided a vehicle for imaginary
travel into distant geography and history via the costume of the ―other‖ Jews, here
completely isolated from the Muslim Ottoman context. However, beyond the issue of
shared dress codes, various historical documents also reveal Muslim support for
Jewish adherence to Jewish culture, during the period in question, while Westernized
Ashkenazi Jews were attempting to install what was regarded as an alien culture in
countries such as Iraq. For example one of the articles in the Judeo-Arabic newspaper
Perah, published in India (Calcutta, Sept. 23, 1885)[9] reports on the Baghdadi
Jewish leaders’ opposition to the power exercised by the Alliance Israelite Universelle
(AIU) toward the students. The AIU—the schooling system founded in Paris in
1860[10] - was meant to provide a French curriculum for the Jews of the Levant, and
to carry the banner of enlightenment and the civilizing mission into the ―backward‖
regions of the non-West. It began its programs by requiring its students to change
their cloth and hairstyle, which were perceived as signs of backwardness. The
Baghdadi Jewish establishment wanted the AIU to educate its children in the sense of

9
providing a practical knowledge within a world of rising Western powers. However,
they did not understand learning French culture and history as abandoning their
Judeo-Arab culture.
Yet, this report, which outlined the opposition of the Baghdadi Jews to the practices of
the AIU is particularly interesting for its discussion of the response of the Muslims to
the changes they began to perceive among upper-middle class Jews: ―From one day
to the next the phenomenon [of shaving] is spreading so that the one who shaves his
beard cannot be distinguished from the gentiles (Christians). It has also become the
occasion of ridicule by the Muslims in the marketplace who say: ―wonder of wonders,
the Jews have forsaken their religion… See how the Jews have abandoned their
religion (heaven forbid) before, not one of them would touch his beard and ear locks,
and now they cut them and throw them into the dustbin.‖ In contrast to Zionism’s
caricatured portrayal of a presumably inherent Muslim anti-Semitism, one sees in this
example a Muslim investment in maintaining Jewish identity, as it had been known
within the Muslim world. Jewish identity is seen by both Muslim and Jews as part of a
larger and more complex Judeo-Islamic civilization while assimilation into Western
style is seen as a betrayal of traditions at once culturally shared and religiously
differentiated. In this respect, the Jewish-French action to assimilate Baghdadi Jews is
regarded by the Judeo-Arabic paper and by the Baghdadi Jewish establishment, as a
violation of these norms. The Judeo-Arab newspaper of the late 19th century cites the
Muslim response as invoking the same code that the Jewish Baghdadi establishment
also believed in. In other words, the anxiety that Arab-Jews manifest here is not so
much in relation to their perception in the eyes of French-Jews, but in the eyes of
their Muslim neighbors. Ironically, it was not their neighbors who were seeking their
assimilation.
The commonalties between Middle Eastern Jews and Muslims posed a challenge to any
simplistic definition of Jewish national identity. The idea of a homogeneous national
past precludes any ―deviance‖ into a more relational and historicized narrative that
would see Jews not simply through their religious commonalties but also in relation to
their non-Jewish contextual cultures, institutions, and practices. In other words, in the
same period that the idea of Zionism was being formulated within a Christian-
European context, Jews in the Muslim world were in a different position that did not
require a nationalist articulation of their identity. In this sense, one might argue that
the concept of Jewish nationalism was irrelevant to their existence as Jews within the
Islamic world.

10
Thus a historiography that assumes of a pan-Jewish culture is often the same
historiography that assumed the bifurcated discourse of `Arab versus Jew` without
acknowledging a hyphenated Arab-Jewish existence. In this sense, the erasure of the
Arab dimension of Arab-Jews was crucial to the Zionist perspective. The Middle
Easterness of Jews questioned the very definitions and boundaries of the Euro-Israeli
national project. The cultural affinity that Arab-Jews shared with Arab-Muslims was in
many respects stronger than that they shared with European Jews—a fact that
threatened the Zionist conception of a homogeneous nation, modeled on the
European-nationalist definition of the nation-state.
As an integral part of the topography, language, culture and history of the Middle
East, Mizrahim have also threatened the Euro-Israeli self image which sees itself as a
prolongation of Europe, in the Middle East but not of it. Arab-Jews, for the first time in
their history, faced the imposed dilemma of choosing between Jewishness and
Arabness, in a geopolitical context that perpetuated the equation between Arabness,
Middle Easterners and Islam, on the one hand, and between Jewishness, Europeaness
and Westerness on the other. Thus the religious Jewish aspect of diverse interacted
and interwoven Jewish identities has been given primacy, a categorization tantamount
to dismembering the identity of a community. In other words, the continuity of Jewish
life meant the ceasing of Arab life for Arab-Jews in Israel—at least in the public
sphere. What was called by officialdom an ―ingathering,‖ then, was also a
dismembering, both within and between communities. But the Zionist reading of that
dismemberment, both prior to and subsequent to the actual rupture, rendered it as a
healing and a return.

DISCRONICITY: TEMPORALITY AND THE PROJECT OF MODERNIZATION

The ruptures provoked by Zionism were at once geographic— dislodging the

communities and transferring their bodies to Israel – and historiographic, so that Arab
Jews were separated off from their Arab-Muslim context and discursively integrated
into a presumably universal culture. Underlying these conceptualizations was the
discourse of modernization with its assumption of dischronicity, or the rupture of time,
as though communities live in different time zones, some advanced and some lagging
behind. The ideology of modernization thrives on a binary opposition of twinned
concepts-- modernity/tradition, underdevelopment/development, science/superstition,
and technology/ backwardness. In this sense, modernization envisions a stagist

11
narrative that can paradoxically assume the essential superiority of one community
over another while also generating programs to transpose the inferior community into
modernity.
In the case of Israel, modernization has been a central mechanism of policy-making
as well as of identity shaping within what I see as, in many ways, an anomalous
national formation. The Zionist modernization narrative has projected a Western
national identity for a state geographically located in the Middle East and populated by
a Middle Eastern majority, including Palestinians and non-Ashkenazi Jews. The
dominant discourse of Euro-Israeli policy makers and scholars suggests that Asian and
African Jews come from `primitive,` `backward,` `underdeveloped,` `pre-modern`
societies and, therefore, need modernization. But here modernization can also be
seen as a euphemism for breaking away from Arab culture.
In the 50s Prime Minister David Ben Gurion for example, repeatedly expressed
contempt for the culture of the Oriental Jews: `We do not want Israelis to become
Arabs. We are in duty bound to fight against the spirit of the Levant, which corrupts
individuals and societies, and preserve authentic Jewish values.`[11] Abba Eban
expressed similar concern: `One of the great, apprehensions which afflict us ... is the
danger lest the predominance of immigrants of Oriental origin force Israel to equalize
its cultural level with that of the neighboring world.`[12] Golda Meir projected the
Sephardim as coming from another, less developed time, for her, the sixteenth
century and which for other Eurocentrics, was a vaguely defined `Middle Ages`, and
asked: `Shall we be able to elevate these immigrants to a suitable level of
civilization?`[13] Over the years Euro-Israeli writings and speeches have frequently
advanced the historiographically suspect idea that `Jews of the Orient,` prior to their
`ingathering` into Israel, were somehow `outside of` history. This discourse ironically
echoes 19th century assessments, such as those of Hegel, that Jews, like Blacks, lived
outside of the progress of Western Civilization.
In the early fifties, some of Israel`s most celebrated intellectuals from the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem wrote essays addressing the `ethnic problem,` and in the
process recycled any number of colonialist tropes. For Karl Frankenstein, `the
primitive mentality of many of the immigrants from backward countries,` might be
profitably compared to `the primitive expression of children, the retarded, or the
mentally disturbed.`[14] And in 1964, Kalman Katznelson published his openly racist
book The Ashkenazi Revolution where he argued the essential, irreversible genetic
inferiority of the Sephardim, warning against mixed marriage as tainting of the

12
Ashkenazi race and calling for the Ashkenazim to protect their interests against a
burgeoning Sephardi majority.
In ethnographic films and folklore books Eurocentric discourse takes a more
patronizing `humane` form. For example, the book One People: The Story of the
Eastern Jews (Dvora and Rabbi Menachem Hacohen, with an introduction by Abba
Eban)[15] foregrounds `traditional garb,` `charming folkways,` pre-modern
`craftsmanship,` cobblers and coppersmiths, and women `weaving on primitive
looms` as representative of the Eastern Jew’s way of life. An entire chapter is devoted
to `The Jewish Cave-Dwellers.` The historical record suggests that most Jews in the
region lived in cities and towns. Moreover, the subject that dwelling in houses as
opposed to caves is a sign of superiority is a matter for a deep philosophical debate
about the meaning of ―Progress.‖ The problem of this discourse, however, lies in its
axioms. What is striking here is a kind of a `desire for primitivism,` which feels
compelled to paint the Mizrahim as innocent of technology and modernity. The
pictures of Oriental misery are then contrasted with the luminous faces of the
Orientals in Israel itself, learning to read and mastering the modern technology of
tractors and combines. This book, amongst others, forms part of a broader national
export industry of Sephardi `folklore,` an industry that circulates (the often
expropriated) goods— dresses, jewelry, liturgical objects, photos --among Western
Jewish institutions eager for Jewish exotica. In this sense the ―Aliya‖ to Israel signifies
leaving behind pre-modernity.
In sociological and anthropological studies the dispossession of Middle Eastern Jews of
their culture has been justified by the concept of `the inevitable march of western
progress`[16]; that is that those who have been living in a historically condemned
temporality would inevitably disappear before the productive march of modernity.
Within traditional anthropology one detects a desire to project the Mizrahim as living
`allochronically,` in another time, often associated with earlier periods of individual
life (childhood) or of human history (primitivism). As within colonialist discourse,
metaphors and tropes played a constitutive role in `figuring` Euro-Israeli superiority.
The trope of infantilization projects the colonized as embodying an earlier stage of
individual human or broad cultural development.[17] In Israeli modernization
discourse, the Mizrahim always seem to lag behind, not only economically but also
culturally, condemned to a perpetual game of catch-up in which they can only repeat
on another register the history of the `advanced` Euro-Israelis.[18] From the
perspective of official Zionism, Jews from Arab and Muslim countries enter modernity

13
only when they appear on the map of the Hebrew state, just as the modern history of
Palestine is seen as beginning with the Zionist renewal of the Biblical mandate. In
Israeli history text books Middle Eastern Jewish history is presumed to begin with the
coming of Sephardi Jews to Israel, and more precisely with the `Magic Carpet` or `Ali
Baba` operations which transported them to Israel from different countries in the
Arab region. Borrowed from A Thousand and One Nights, the names themselves
foreground the putative technological naivet‫ י‬of the Sephardim, for whom modern
airplanes were `magic carpets` transporting them to the Promised Land. Similarly,
the major part of the Babylon Jewish Museum in Israel [19] exhibition is in fact not
dedicated to the millennia of Jewish history between the rivers of the Dijla and the
Frat but to the Zionist activism there. The converging discourses of the
enlightenment, progress, and modernization are central to the Zionist master
narrative. A series of mutually reinforcing equations between modernity, science,
technology and the West has contributed to the civilizing mission not only in relation
to Palestine but also in relation to Arab Jews. Science became crucial for legitimizing
Zionist nationalism as part of the West and modernity.
Discourses off progress were crucial to the colonization of Palestine, while later
playing a central role toward Mizrahim in the process of incorporating them into the
Jewish Nation. The mystique of modernizing Palestine by `making the desert bloom`
provided a claim to a land in an argument that was not exclusively based on Biblical
evidence, but also on a secular idea of Progress. This mystique, similarly, justified the
ingathering not only on a biblical messianic vision but also on the idea of
modernization. The civilizing mission towards the ancient land and traditional Jews
occupies a significant portion of Zionist discourse. The Eurocentric projection of Middle
Eastern Jews as coming to the `land of milk and honey` from desolate backwater
societies lacking all contact with scientific-technological civilization, once again set up
an Eurocentric rescue trope. Rather than a traumatic rupture, we find a rescue
narrative of saving people and objects. The narrative concerning the removal of the
Cairo Gniza, for example, suggests that its dispersal to European and American
universities and institutions was a heroic act of rescue— and indeed the Gniza was
dispersed half a century before the dispersal of the community that produced it.[20]
Zionist discourse portrayed Middle Eastern Jewish culture prior to Zionism as static
and passive, and like the virgin land of Palestine,[21] lying in wait for the
impregnating infusion of European dynamism. While presenting Palestine as an empty
land to be transformed by Jewish labor, the Zionist `Founding Fathers` presented

14
Arab-Jews also as passive vessels to be shaped by the revivifying spirit of Zionism.

DISSONANCE: METHODOLOGICAL AND DISCIPLINARY RUPTURES

In the scholarship about Arab-Jews that delineates their lives before and after their
arrival to Israel, one notices a methodological oscillation or a conceptual shift,
subliminally privileging a Zionist perspective. Books about the Jews of Yemen, for
example, detail their oppression at Muslim hands relaying the kidnapping of young
Jewish women and their forced conversion to Islam and marriage to Muslim men.
When these same Yemeni Jews are studied within the Israeli framework, however, we
find a discursive or methodological rupture. The writers abandon the historical account
of victimization, and shift into an anthropological account of polygamy and gat
chewing. A mixture of history and anthropology, Herbert S. Lewis’s After The Eagles
Landed: The Yemenites of Israel [22] begins by mentioning Muslim persecution,
including the Decree of Orphans in the 17th century, which forced fatherless Jewish
children to be taken away by force from their community and converted into Islam.
Yet, After The Eagles Landed deploys a selective tale of kidnapping. Although the book
is written in the mid-nineties, it fails to mention one of the most traumatic kidnapping
to afflict the Yemeni-Jewish community between the late 40s and the 60s, taking
place not in a Muslim country, but in the Jewish State. Traumatized by the reality of
life in Israel, Yemenis as well as other Jews from Arab and Muslim countries fell prey
to a ring of unscrupulous doctors, nurses and social workers on the state payroll.
These government representatives were involved in providing Mizrahi babies for
adoption by Ashkenazi parents largely in Israel and in the U.S., while telling the
natural parents that the baby had died. The conspiracy was extensive enough to
include the systematic issuance of fraudulent death certificates for the adopted
children and at times even fake burial site for the babies who presumably had died,
although the parents were never presented the body of their baby. In this way, the
government attempted to ensure that over several decades Mizrahi demands for
investigation were silenced and information was hidden and manipulated by
government bureaus. The act of kidnapping, I would argue, was not simply a result of
financial interests to increase the revenues of the state; it was also a result of a deep
belief in the inferiority of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries, especially since
Oriental parents were seen as careless breeders with little sense of responsibility
towards their own children. In this sense, doctors, nurses and social workers saw

15
themselves as incarnating Western Science and Progress, and believed in their duty of
materializing its vision of modernization[23] within the Zionist rescue narrative.
[24]Thus, within he discursive framework, detaching babies form their Oriental
backward spaces and transferring them into the spaces of modernity where they
would be raised according to Western values seemed only logical. What is certainly an
issue of Human Rights violation was subjected to systematic silencing and
censorship.[25]
Given that the kidnapping of their babies was not what Yemeni and other Arab-Jews
expected in the Jewish State, one wonders about a scholarship that has not trouble
articulating itself about kidnapping in the Muslim word, while remaining silent about
the Jewish State. More critically perhaps, at a time when there had already been
considerable agitation and mobilization and even some academic research [26] on the
issue of the kidnapped Yemeni and Mizrahi children, scholarly work seems to remain
oblivious to the diverse modes of oppressing Jews within the Jewish state. Instead,
anthropological books tend to be typically organized around such concepts as kinship,
marriage, attitudes, rituals, and values, religious and social attitudes. After the Eagle
Landed, interestingly, does not attempt to speak about Yemeni Jews within a
modernizing narrative. Rather it participates in the Romantic discourse of Eurocentric
anthropology that longs for ―simplicity‖ of its subjects. The author praises Yemeni
culture for its simplicity and richness, presumably as a rebuff to the elitist attitude
toward Yemeni Jews. Why in all this scholarly emphasis on the Mizrahi extended
family structure (the hamula) is there barely any trace of the devastation of these
families through the kidnappings performed with the complicity of certain sectors of
the establishment?
The ideological rupture characteristic of Zionism, then, is not only reflected in the
scholarship and its constant thematic reproductions, but also in an acute rupture in
the method of analysis itself. To take another example, Moshe Gat’s book A Jewish
Community in Crisis: The Exodus from Iraq, 1948-1951[27] analyzes the Iraqi
political and economic interests in at first keeping and then permitting Iraqi Jews to
leave (only upon giving up their citizenship). The book also characterizes the active
opposition to Zionism on the part of the Iraqi Jewish leadership of Baghdad, depicting
Haham (the Sephardi equivalent of Rabbi) Sasson Khthuri as simply fearing the loss of
his status and position to the Zionists. Yet this dissection of motives, interest and
power is abandoned once the author moves to examine the activities of the Zionist
movement in Iraq and the Israeli establishment. Here the author shifts into an

16
idealistic and benign official discourse of ―concern‖ for the Iraqi Jews, the very
community being uprooted partly for the Israeli demographic and economic
necessities: settling the country with Jews, securing the borders, getting cheap labor,
and military personnel. As with any history writing, it is not simply the issue of ―facts‖
that is at stake, but also the question of narrative structure and point-of-view, which
here becomes absolutely central, since sympathies are not apportioned equally but
according to an ideologized schema.
A rupture of a different nature operates in Amitav Gosh’s book In an Antique
Land.[28] A hybrid of anthropology and history, the book ends up by splitting the
subjects of ethnography and historiography; the first focusing on present-day
Egyptian Muslims and the second on past Arab-Jews. Anthropological accounts of
Ghosh`s visits to Egypt are paralleled by his historiographical chronicle of the Judeo-
Islamic world largely through the travels of Ben-Yiju, the Tunisian Jewish merchant
whose existence is followed through the Gniza archive. The book vividly captures a
geo-cultural Jewish space from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, where Jews
traveled, exchanged ideas under the aegis of the larger Islamic world, into which they
were culturally and politically interwoven, even if they retained their specific Jewish
practices within that realm. Within this space the existence of Jewishness within Islam
was not perceived as a philosophical and cultural contradiction. Ghosh’s anthropology,
however, exclusively deals with Muslim-Egyptians, and produces silence about the
lives of Egyptian, Tunisian and other Arab-Jews. On Ghosh`s final trip to Egypt he
learns that Mizrahi pilgrims from Israel are on their way to Egypt to visit the tomb of
the cabbalist mystic Sidi Abu-Hasira, a site holy for both Muslims and Jews, with many
similar festivities. Yet, for one prosaic reason or another, the anthropologist, Ghosh,
ends up never meeting them. Ghosh, at the closure of his historiographical and
anthropological Odyssey, somehow ends his narrative at the very point where the
subject of his historiography could have turned into a subject of his anthropology.
Perhaps Ghosh`s missed rendezvous, his packing up and leaving Egypt precisely as
the Arab-Jews visit the Abu-Haseira`s holy site, is revelatory of the difficulties of
representing a palimpsestic diasporic identity; the dangers of border crossing in the
war zone. It seems here that Arab-Jews continue to `travel` in historical narratives as
imbricated within a legendary Islamic civilization. As the postcolonial story, however,
begins to unfold over the past decades, Arab-Jews, suddenly, cease to exist. This split
narrative seems to suggest that once in Israel, Arab-Jews have reached their final
destination-- the State of Israel-- and nothing more remains be said about their

17
Arabness. The historical episode described by Ghosh, and its aftermath, suggests that
alliances and conflicts between communities not only evolve historically but also that
they are narrativized differently according to the schemas and ideologies of the
present. And as certain strands in a cultural fabric become taboo, this narrativization
involves destroying connections that once existed. The process of constructing a
national historical memory also entails the destruction of a different, prior, historical
memory.
While for the purpose of the nationalist telos Mizrahim are detached from the Arab-
Muslim context of their belonging, for the purpose of explaining their positioning
within Israeli society, the re-attachment also takes place. The hegemonic scholarship
concerning the Mizrahim entails a paradox that has to be understood in terms of the
relationship among the disciplines. Zionist historiography dismantles the Judeo-
Islamic world, centuries prior to the arrival of nationalism. At the same time, after
their arrival to Israel, Mizrahim inhabit the pages of Euro-Israeli sociological and
anthropological accounts as maladjusted criminals and superstitious exotics. Within
this discourse Mizrahim are indeed extracted from their Arab history, which,
paradoxically, firmly returns in the form of explaining Mizrahi marginalization. The
Arab-Muslim past looms as deformed vestiges in the lives of Israelis of Asian and
African origins. Sociology and Anthropology detect traces of underdevelopment, while
national historiography tells the story of the past as a moral tale full of national
purpose. Such scholarly bifurcation cannot possibly capture the complexity of an Arab-
Jewish identity that is at once past and present, here and there.
The study of Mizrahim today is neatly divided among the disciplines in a narrative
whose terminus lies within the territory of Zionism and Israel, as though there were
only rupture without continuities with the Arab-Muslim world. Here geopolitical
borders are superimposed on cultural paradigms; once within the borders of the state
of Israel, Mizrahim usually are the subject of Sociology and Criminology. In
Anthropology, where their rituals are studied, their affinity with the East is
emphasized, usually within an exoticizing fashion detached from history and politics.
In the present, Mizrahi culture tends to be narrated simply within the state of Israel,
i.e. within the framework of a political geography that lacks a wider perspective of a
border-crossing analysis. Contemporary Mizrahi culture is thus dismembered from the
complex Arab cultural space it inhabits.
Producing a Mizrahi epistemology, we have seen, requires challenging a number of
disciplinary assumptions as well as normative political discourses. To critique and even

18
bypass the founding premises of Orientalist representation and Eurocentric discourse,
one must challenge the folklorization and exoticization of Mizrahim within Zionist
discourse, its self-idealizing narrative of rescue and the concomitant denigration of
Arab Muslim culture. Such studies interrupt the modernization narrative in which
anthropology renders Mizrahim as living ―allochronically‖ in ―another time‖, in which
sociology reduces Mizrahim to criminality, in which political science fails to discern the
links between Mizrahi and Palestinian issues, and so forth. The interdisciplinary work
of the kind I am calling for here hopes to relocate the issues in a much wider and
denser geographic and historical context.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[*] Ella Habib Shohat is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the City University
of New York (CUNY), Graduate Center and a co-founder of the New Association of
Sephardi/Mizrahi Artists & Writers Int`l.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Legal documents and official record-- school, military, and job-- were premised on
the definition of Jewish identity according to countries of origins.

[2] The younger generation of the 70s referred to themselves as ―Israel ha’shniya‖
(second Israel).

[3] Even subsequent to the foundation of the state of Israel, the Jewish community in
Iraq was constructing new schools and founding new enterprises, as clear evidence of
an institutionalized intention to stay.

[4] This effort is clearly expressed in texts written by Iraqi Zionists, see, for example,
Shlomo Hillel, Ruah Kadim (Operation Babylon , Jerusalem: Edanim Publishers, Yediot
Ahronot Edition with The Ministry of Defense Publishing House, 1985), pp. 259-263.

[5] See Haolam Haze (April 20, 1966); The Black Panther Magazine (Nov 9, 1972);
Abbas Shiblak, The Lure of Zion (London: Al Saqi Press, 1986) and G.N. Giladi,
Discord in Zion (London: Scorpion, 1990).

19
[6] While the position of Arab-Jews is often used to justify the expulsion of
Palestinians, there have been a few attempts to reflect on the position of Arab-Jews
vis-‫א‬-vis Arab nationalism from a different angle; see, Ella Shohat, ―Sephardim in
Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims‖ (Social Text, 19/20, Fall
1988: republished in Dangerous Liaisons, A. McClintock, A. Mufti & E. Shohat, eds.
University of Minnesota Press, 1997); Shiko Behar, ―Time to Meet the Mizrahim?‖ Al-
Ahram, Oct. 15-21, p.5; Ella Shohat, ―The Invention of the Mizrahim,‖ Journal of
Palestine Studies, Vol. XXIX/1-No. 113, (Autumn, 1999).

[7] For example, Naeim Giladi, a former Zionist activist in Iraq, gradually came to
change his outlook after living in Israel, and has become an anti-Zionist activist. He
left Israel in the early 80s and settled in New York, renouncing his Israeli citizenship.
(From my diverse conversations with Naiem Giladi taking place in New York, in the
late 80s.)

[8] Throughout my work I have elaborated on the method of relationality in analyzing

culture and identity. See especially, Ella Shohat/Robert Stam Unthinking Eurocentrism
(London: Routledge, 1994) and Ella Shohat, ―Introduction‖ to Talking Visions
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998)

[9] All quotations from the article that appeared in Perah paper are taken from Zvi
Yehuda , p.12.

[10] On the history of the AIU, see Aron Rodrigue, Images of Sephardi and Eastern
Jewries in Transition: The Teachers of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, 1860-1939
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993)

[11] Quoted in Sammy Smooha, Israel: Pluralism and Conflict (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1978), p. 88.

[12] Ibid, p. 44

[13] Ibid., pp. 88-89.

[14] Another scholar, Yosef Gross, saw the immigrants as suffering from `mental

20
regression` and a `lack of development of the ego.` Quotations are taken from Segev
p. 157 (Hebrew). The extended symposium concerning the `Sephardi problem` was
framed as a debate concerning the `essence of primitivism.` Only a strong infusion of
European cultural values, the scholars concluded, would rescue the Arab Jews from
their ``backwardness.``

[15] Dvora and Rabbi Menachem Hacohen, One People: The Story of the Eastern Jews
(New York: Adama Books, 1986).

[16] Leftist writings are also not exempt from this Eurocentric narrative of Progress.
Although Marx turned Hegel on his head in some respects, in others he prolonged the
Eurocentrism of Hegelian philosophy with his idealization that Africa’s ―unhistorical
and undeveloped spirit‖ and Asia’s `natural vegetative existence‖ therefore have to be
subjugated to Europeans.

[17] Renan speaks of the `everlasting infancy of [the] non-perfectable races.` Ernst
Renan, The Future of Science (Boston: Roberts Roberts, 1891). The infantilization
trope also posits the political immaturity of colonized or formerly colonized peoples,
seen as Calibans suffering from what Octave Mannoni called a `Prospero Complex,`
i.e. an inbred dependency on European leadership. The in loco parentis ideology of
paternalistic gradualism assumed the necessity of white trusteeship; for colonialist
discourse, whole peoples and entire continents were not `ready` for democracy. In
this manner, terms like `underdeveloped,` as diplomatic synonyms for `childlike,`
project the infantilizing trope on a global scale. See Shohat/Stam (1994) Unthinking
Eurocentrism, (London, New York, Routledge).

[18] When Euro-Israelis reach the stage of postmodernism, the Mizrahim hobble along
toward modernism. However, `postmodern` is not an honorific title.

[19] The Museum is located in Or Yehuda, and wad founded by Iraqi Jews who were
among the leaders of the Zionist movement. Despite its name, the museum is largely
dedicated to triumph of the Zionist rescue in Iraq.

[20] I further discuss this point in Ella Shohat, ―Taboo Memories, Diasporic Visions:
Columbus, Palestine and Arab-Jews‖ in Performing Hybridity, May Joseph & Jennifer

21
Fink eds., University of Minnesota Press, 1999, pp. 131-156.

[21] See Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (NY: Times Books, 1979)

[22] Herbert S. Lewis (Waveland press, 1994).

[23] One of the nurses who was interviewed on the subject for a report on Israeli
television for the program Oovda did not simply admit it, but, after decades, still
believed that it was the right thing to do.

[24] I have already discussed this concept in what I called in the mid 80s ―the Zionist
masternarrative‖ and its concomitant ―rescue fantasies‖: see Ella Shohat, Israeli
Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation; ―Sephardim in Israel,‖ (1988);
―Masternarrative/Counter Readings‖ in Resisting Images: Essays on Cinema and
History, Robert Sklar & Charles Musser (eds.), Temple University Press, 1990. pp.
251-

[25] On June 30, 1986, for example, The Public Committee for the Discovery of the
Missing Yemenite Children held a massive protest rally. The rally, like many Sephardi
protests and demonstrations, was almost completely ignored by the media. A few
months later, however, Israeli television produced a documentary on the subject,
blaming the bureaucratic chaos of the period for unfortunate `rumors,` and
perpetuating the myth of Oriental parents as careless breeders with little sense of
responsibility towards their own children. The same discourse was replayed in the
mid-90s, when a forceful protest led by Rabbi Uzi Meshulam overwhelmed the
country. Meshulam, was de-legitimized and portrayed in the media as another David
Koresh. He is still serving prison time for his campaign where he demanded access to
government files on the case, so as to shed light on what exactly took place during
those years, and most, importantly to give the families a chance to meet their
kidnapped children.

[26] See Dov Levitan, `The Aliya of the `Magic Carpet` as a Historical Continuation of
the Earlier Yemenite Aliyas.` M.A. thesis written in the Political Science Department at
Bar Ilan University (Israel), 1983 (Hebrew). Segev, pp. 185-87, 331 (Hebrew); and
investigative articles largely written by the journalist Shosh Madmoni.

22
[27] Moshe Gat’s book A Jewish Community in Crisis: The Exodus from Iraq, 1948-
1951 (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1989)

[28] Amitav Gosh, In an Antique Land (Alfred A. Knope, 1993).

The MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies

©2001 Shohat, Vol. 1, May 2001,

Links to the latest articles in this section

For Jerusalem: a response to Elie Wiesel

Richard Becker - video

Hedy Epstein speaks at UC Berkley

23
 The Abducted Infants Story
Thousands of Jewish children abducted soon after their arrival in the newly
established State of Israel

By Yechiel Mann

Introduction

In the years 1948-1954 thousands of children were taken, sometimes

forcibly, from their biological parents while in hospitals or child-care
homes. These children were then sold both in Israel and abroad for
substantial sums (that varied from case to case), or given out for
adoption. Their parents however were told that the children had died.
In most cases, when the parents asked about the cause of death or
requested a death certificate, or other documentation confirming the
death of their children, they were ignored and their requests went
unanswered.
They never saw a body. In most cases, not even a burial spot was
seen. In a few cases, however, graves were shown to the families.
Some of those graves, later on, were dug up by parents who did not
believe that their beloved, healthy child truly died overnight. The
graves were recently found empty.
These activities were carried out by doctors, nurses, social workers and
other members of the Israeli Establishment at that time. I have heard
many "moral" justifications given for taking these children from their
parents.
I do not believe any are legitimate. It seems to me that the real reason
for the kidnapping of the children was money. People in positions of
power at the time that the State of Israel was established profited from
the abduction and sale of children from poor immigrant families.
This practice continued on at least into the early 1960s. Some say that
it still continues, although on a much smaller scale.
One common misconception is that these abuses were practiced
against Yemenite Jews alone. While researching this issue I have

1
 concluded that the victims also included immigrant Jews from Tunis,
Spain, Morocco, Lybia, Iraq, Iran, and Belgium, to name a few
countries. In most cases, the immigrants came from Middle Eastern
countries.
The number of kidnapped children has been told to be around 2,400 by
the official investigating committee. When Rabbi Uzi Meshulam was still
collecting evidence, he gathered the names of 4,500 children. I believe
that the real number is much larger than that. Since I have found that
many families never reported the disappearance of a child, I estimate
that approximately 10,000 children were kidnapped and sold, and I
would not be surprised if the real number is higher.

Swept Under the Magic Carpet

On the 5th May, 1998, I attended a rally held by the "Mishkan Ohalim" organization,
at Gan HaAtzmaut (the Independence Gardens), in Jerusalem.
Present at the rally were some members of 1,500 families who suffered the
kidnapping or "disappearance" of their children, each with a shocking story of their
own. An emphasis was placed at the rally on those of the families that had arrived
here during the "Magic Carpet" operation in the early years of the state that saw
Jewish families from Yemen brought to Israel in the effort to increase the immigration
of Diaspora Jews. Operation "Magic Carpet" was initiated in 1949, and is said to have
brought approximately 50 thousand Yemenite Jews to Israel. In course of the
operation, about 380 flights took place, by British and American planes. The flights
left from Aden, the capital of Yemen. Most of the Yemenite Jews lived in different
locations in Yemen, and went through many difficulties getting to Aden. There were
families from Eastern European countries as well as the U.S. and South America (and
most other countries where Jews immigrated to Israel from) who had also lost their
sons and daughters under similar circumstances.
Present at the rally were Members of Knesset Rabbi Arieh Gamliel, Rabbi Benny Elon,
Mudi Zandberg, David Tal, Hanan Porat, Prof. Avner Shaki, Marina Solodkin as well as
such prominent Rabbis as Shlomo Korach, Dr. Nachum Rabinowitz, and Dr. Ratzon
Arusi.

2
Rabbi Menachem Porush, who has publicly stated that he knows the identities of
organizers of the kidnapping operation and those who carried it out, failed to appear
at the rally.
Rabbi Yosef Ba-Gad showed up by surprise, as well as other important figures such as
Yigal Yosef, mayor of Rosh-HaAyin, and a number of well-known Israeli singers,who
came to show support.
Each of the speakers at the rally had their turn to speak at the rally. Fascinating
speeches were given by Knesset Member Rabbi Benny Elon, Yitzhak Keren (the ex-
policeman mentioned in part one of this series), Eddie Mor (who gave a long,
emotional speech that had the audience on the edge of their seats ), as well as the
mother of Shlomo Asulin. Shlomo Asulin was a student of Rabbi Uzi Meshulam, who
was gunned down by Israeli security forces in the Yehud incident. Rabbi Meshulam's
wife was also present at the rally, although she didn't speak in front of the audience.
All speeches that were given spoke of the terrible crimes committed, and how
everything possible should be done to bring families back together, and the guilty to
justice.
It should be noted here that none of the prominent figures who made these
statements have done anything concrete to advance either of these causes.
One interesting woman at the rally was Dora Vachnun, a 48 year old woman who lives
in Haifa and had her sister taken from her nearly 42 years ago. After having a short
conversation with Dora, I decided to stay in touch with her, pay her a visit, and set up
an interview with her.
When I arrived at her house, I was surprised when she asked me if I'd like her
mother, Esther Meshulam (no relation to Rabbi Uzi Meshulam) present as well. As a
result, I first interviewed Dora, and then Esther, who arrived later on.
The Meshulam family (who had their name changed to Emeshulam, before they
immigrated to Israel) immigrated from Istanbul, Turkey, around the beginning of
1950. Both Dora and Esther recalled the conditions they encountered upon their
arrival in Israel. Although Dora's father made a substantial income working on the
Haifa docks, the conditions of any immigrant in Israel's first years were not good.
Esther recalls their situation being better than most immigrants of the period. Their
family was the only one at the immigration camp to have a sink in their shack. Esther
worked hard to make their shack look as cheerful as possible. She recalls how she
cleaned the shack, how she painted it, put flowers there, and made it a wonderful
living environment. "Anyone that would come into the shack would be surprised, and

3
ask 'this is supposed to be a shack? This looks like a villa!' ", says Esther. Their family
was financially secure and had no problem whatsoever providing for their children.
Dora has two brothers.
Esther (E) Meshulam, now 73 years old, gave birth to Mazal (I.D. 5391242) on the 5th
of January, 1956. On the 20th of September, 1956, Esther took Mazal outside for
some fresh air, while going to buy meat and after a while she noticed Mazal seemed
to be feeling a little ill, so she took her to a nearby doctor. The doctor wasn't home at
the time, so she took her daughter to another doctor, who also was not home. Esther
then took Mazal to the Rambam Hospital. When she arrived, a doctor examined Mazal
and said that she looked fine, and asked Esther why she had brought Mazal. Esther
said that Mazal was not feeling well, and was a little pale. The doctor said that they
would watch Mazal for a little while, and told Esther not to worry.
When Esther entered the ward to stay with Mazal, a nurse yelled at her, told her to
leave, and said that the families aren't permitted to stay with their babies.
Esther returned to their shack later in the afternoon, disturbed that she had left her
baby alone. Her husband, Meir-Nissim, upon seeing her distress, told her not to
worry, that he would go see Mazal. He arrived at Rambam Hospital around 4 in the
afternoon. At the hospital, he was not permitted to enter the ward, but they took him
to a window, where he was able to see the babies. He saw Mazal, who recognized
him, and stretched her arms towards him. They didn't let him take her at that point.
But he was content with the fact that he had seen she was healthy. He returned to the
shack and told Esther that Mazal was doing fine, and that she would probably be
released that day or the day after.
It was 2-3 hours later when two men, who claimed to be policemen, appeared at the
Emeshulam's shack. They announced to the family that Mazal had died. The family
was in shock. The parents cried all that night. The next day, the family arrived at the
cemetery to see a "body" that was not identified by anyone and hurriedly buried. All
that the family saw was a white sheet with something inside it, tied on both ends, and
completely covered with blood. The family was petrified at the sight of the blood.
Upon telling this, Esther broke out in tears.
Dora recalls how they have always wondered about the entire case. Their suspicions
intensified after the entire issue of stolen children was raised. No one ever had the
chance to see a body. One month after the "death" of Mazal, the family received a
letter explaining that Mazal had died from a heart attack.

4
In the past few years, Dora has been doing everything she can to try and find her
sister. She has turned to the "Mishkan Ohalim" organization. She speaks highly of
their efforts to bring this issue to light. She turned to the Rambam Hospital, asking to
see Mazal's files. She was at first denied access to these files, but then her brother,
Police Superintendent Yaakov Meshulam, turned to the courts, asking for an order to
be allowed to see the files. After that, they got the permission to see the files.
The document that describes the disease states "For two days the girl has been sick
with diarrhea and has been throwing up. She coughs a little as well. According to the
mother, the girl became a little pale and cold. This has happened a few times before,
and has passed". Esther recalls that it wasn't a serious condition, just a slight illness.
Esther also mentioned that Mazal was not throwing up at all. Dora mentioned she
wonders what possible connection there may be between a heart attack and diarrhea.
The part intended for "previous diseases" is blank.
What is probably the most interesting document in this case is the burial certificate,
numbered 12348. It states:
Name: Meshulam Mazal.
Address: Apartment 27 [of the immigration camp]
Age: 9 months. [to be accurate, it was 8 and a half]
Gender: Female.
Citizenship: [Blank]
Religious affiliation: Jewish.
Cause of death: Myocardio Infarction. [Heart attack]
Place of burial: Haifa.
The certifying Doctor: Garfel. [Signature]
Examiner of cause of death: [Blank]
Official signature: [Either a signature or just a tiny scribble]
Signature of the Health Ministry clerk: [Blank].
One interesting thing about this document is the fact that the certifying Doctor was
Dr. Garfel. Garfel is said to have been involved in other cases where children have
been stolen. Ora Shifris, spokeswoman for the "Mishkan Ohalim" organization recalls
the case of a man in Jerusalem who had his brother stolen, and found it also involved
Dr. Garfel, who worked in the children's ward of Haifa's Rambam Hospital.
Another interesting fact about this document is that both spaces which should contain
the signatures of the examiner of cause of death, and the signature of the Health

5
Ministry clerk (and possibly the official signature) were left blank. By law, both spaces
should contain signatures.
Another interesting document I've found is the "Patient summary", which contains
details about Mazal, and the entry: "Diagnostic: Myocardiac". The rest of the page,
which is titled "Summary of disease" is surprisingly blank.
Dora lives in Haifa with her husband and those of her children who haven't yet
married and left the house. Dora has seven children: Moshe (13), David (16), Anna
(17), Eli (25), Meir (26), Avigail (28) and Mazal (30).
Upon arriving at their house that morning, I was greeted warmly by Dora and her
daughter Avigail. It was then that Dora asked me if she should call her mother over,
and told me she lived a few houses away. Later on that day, some of her other
children arrived. Moshe, an active child who stayed to hear the story again, despite
the many times he'd heard it before (and who made sure to get in a comment
whenever he could). Anna and David, who didn't spend much time at home, arrived
later on.
As Dora recalled the story, she made sure not to leave out a single detail about Mazal,
the story of their immigration, and detailed explanations about everything down to
how their family name was changed from Meshulam to Emeshulam before they came
to Israel. She recalled how her mother returned to the shack that day of September
20th, 1956, in tears for having to leave her beloved Mazal at the hospital, away from
her watchful eye. She recalled how her Dad then made sure to go see how Mazal was
doing, and how he returned to the shack and reassured her mother. She recalled how
the two "policemen" arrived at the shack and announced Mazal's death and how her
parents stayed up all night crying in the light of an oil-lamp, since they had no
electricity in the immigration camp. She recalled being taken in by her neighbours, so
as not to see the pain and anguish of her parents, how the "body" of her sister was
buried hurriedly by two men who never identified themselves, and the terrible sight of
the sheet completely covered with blood. Her trauma from this terrifying experience is
evident. Dora still searches for her sister. She tries to get assistance from anyone that
may be able to help. Dora comes from a family with an excellent reputation which has
done much for the city of Haifa. Dora was given an "Outstanding Citizen" award by
the Mayor of Haifa, Amram Mitznah. Dora and her brothers are well known in Haifa,
and have received many honours, awards and commendations for all their family has
done, and is still doing.

6
She told a number of amazing stories of her family in the early days, and all her
parents sacrificed for the sake of the Zionist cause, to live in Israel.
How they came to build the country in it's first days,and accepted whatever conditions
they had to endure for this cause, even when that meant accepting any job they could
find without complaining. How they believed it important for them to live in Israel.
Dora told of the tough conditions in the immigration camps, with no electricity and
only basic necessities. They lived in that shack in the immigration camp for nine
years. The Meshulams are a proud family of good standing. During all the years after
Mazal was taken from them, her father, Meir-Nissim, was terribly distressed, and
spoke to everyone of the way she was taken from them. He spoke of how it was
impossible that from such a common illness his baby could have died. This has
haunted their family for nearly 42 years. Meir-Nissim passed away on September
11th, 1993, at the age of 73, without seeing his daughter for almost 37 years.
Esther spoke of the depth of her family's pain and the devastation caused by the lies
and the terrible scandal that went on back then, which was only discovered years
later. How little children were torn from their families, while the horror-struck parents
were told that their child had died in some terrible way. Esther and her family were
never given a death-certificate for Mazal. Esther hopes and prays that she will find
Mazal soon, as thousands of other families still do. She also recalled their immigration
years, and their Zionist family. She told of her life back in Istanbul, and their arrival at
the "Selniks-Sha'ar Aliyah" (immigration entrance) immigration camp. Esther is
worried since she hears stories of how some of the parents that have adopted the
stolen children were told the original parents had forsaken their children, and so
passed this on to the children. This concept is too much for Esther to bear. "Maybe
they told her that we ' threw her to the dogs' ", says Esther. Dora finds it hard to cope
with the fact that Mazal was taken because Esther cared for her so much and was
doing everything she could to ensure her daughter's health.
Esther has lived with this trauma her entire life. It's impossible to imagine how much
this has affected her both emotionally and physically. Esther lives with pills she takes
every three hours. Esther recalls how much her husband cried for their daughter, and
how the pain was so intense. She recalls the support the family received from friends.
Friends that "feel their loss, share their pain, cry their tears...Mazal should be with us
now. She's 42 now, and should be sitting right here, beside me".
One of the most shocking moments of the interview was hearing Dora and Esther
speaking of the burial. They spoke of how they couldn't even get close to the "body"

7
being buried, that was covered with blood. They began to speculate where all the
blood came from, and what was buried. "Maybe they slaughtered a chicken", Dora
said. "Maybe they took a dead dog, and buried that", Esther said. As much as one can
"prepare" oneself to hear these stories, these are the moments that are hardest to
cope with.
At one point, Dora went to the home of a doctor Zeltzer, who she remembers worked
in the children's ward in the Rambam Hospital. She thought that maybe he could give
her some answers, since he was one of the older doctors working there then. Zeltzer,
although still alive, is an ill man. Dora waited at his home until he returned. When he
arrived, she questioned him. Zeltzer then told her he'd been through a stroke, and
due to the damage caused by the stroke he can't recall many details from his past, as
well as anything connected to these cases.
Dora remembers a few doctors that worked in the ward then, including Zeltzer and a
doctor Bender-Lee, who she said is still alive, and living in Haifa. Dora is sure that the
doctors know of what happened and can give details, but that there is a plot to keep
everyone silent, and these horrible crimes swept neatly under the carpet.
In many of the cases, swept under the "Magic Carpet".
This is one of the things that disturbs the families terribly, especially since the
mainstream press is, for all practical purposes, still ignoring the issue.
Dora and Esther speak of how parents have gotten old and died without seeing their
children since they were taken. This is why everything should be done immediately to
bring the families together. All Esther, and many other parents like her, would like to
do before they pass away is to find their child, to see them if only once, to hold their
child, to tell her "Mazal, we did not forsake you!", as her daughter may have been
told. They turn to people in the government for assistance. These people, who have
done nothing serious enough to bring results, have betrayed the trust these families
have placed in them, have forsaken the loving parents and families of these children,
and thousands of other parents and families. Mazal's father has already passed away,
but her mother would give anything just to see her again.
I have them in piles beside me. Documents. Interviews with Dora and Esther. Audio
and video tapes. One case. One case out of thousands like it. Thousands of tragic
stories that won't go away. These crimes cannot be "swept neatly under the carpet".
There are too many families in terrible pain to allow that to happen.
To make an understatement, this was not what the families were expecting when they
immigrated to Israel.

8
These families have not forsaken their children. Nor have they abandoned hope of
seeing them again.
No human being of conscience can abandon them... especially not Jews of conscience.

9
 Whitewashing History: Israeli Media and the Yemenite Babies Affair

By: Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber

―We used to leave in the hospital healthy babies; the next day I would ask them 'where
are the babies?' and they said they are gone. They died. What do you mean died? They
were healthy. Nothing was wrong with them. Today when they say that they died, it's not
true. They were sent for adoption, mostly to the U.S.‖ i (Nurse Ruja Kuchinski, 1996)

The day my aunt Hammama emigrated from Yemen to Israel in 1949, she
gave birth to a healthy baby boy. When she returned from the hospital to
the immigrant camp in Rosh Ha’ayin, the nurse who accompanied her in
the ambulance held the baby in her arms and told my aunt to step down.
When my aunt turned her back, the ambulance and drove off. She never
saw her baby again.
My father, himself a Jewish immigrant from Yemen, said he and the rest
of the family rushed to the scene minutes after they heard my aunt’s cry.
He told me the story when I was a little girl, but only years later did I
understand the magnitude and ramifications of this traumatic event. When
I became a reporter, I heard similar stories from many families of
Yemenite and other non-European ethnic groups. I learned that hundreds
of Jewish families in the state of Israel were carrying this tragic narrative
in their memory.
Through extensive research, and interviews with dozens of families,
activists, and journalists, I discovered that while the Israeli government
and the public have tried to forget and silence this Affair, Yemenite
families continue to suffer from their terrible loss. In this essay, I argue
that public efforts to silence and deny this affair contribute to the ongoing
intra-Jewish rift, and racism in Israeli society today. Moreover, the
question of if and how this story will be remembered in the public sphere
will strongly influence the identity formation of Yemenite and Mizrahi
children of future generations.

1
What is the Yemenite Babies Affair?
During the mass immigration to Israel from 1948 to the early 1950s,
hundreds if not thousandsii of babies disappeared from immigrant
absorption and transit camps throughout Israel and from the transit camp
Hashed in Yemen. According to testimonies given to the Kedmi
Commission (1995–2001), the absorption policy governing Yemenite Jews
required separating children from their parents because the stone
structures housing the babies, called baby houses,iii were in better
condition than the tents and tin structures that sheltered the parents.
Babies were usually taken from the baby houses without parental
knowledge or consent. Parents who were present and refused consent
reported that camp authorities forcefully took their children from them,
even acting violently.iv
Later testimonies revealed that a typical scenario was as follows: a baby
was declared ill and taken to the hospital despite parental assertion that
the child was healthy. The ostensibly ill baby was then taken to one of
several institutions around the country, such as Wizo, an international
women’s organization with recovery centers in Safad, Jerusalem and Tel
Aviv. The parents were then told their babies had died, even as state
institutional workers later testified that these ―parents were not interested
in their children. ‖
As more complaints were filed during the mid 1960s, the Affair gained
more momentum each time causing a public outcry that was quickly
suppressed and forgotten. Despite numerous, suspiciously consistent
allegations that babies were kidnapped and adopted by European Jews, or
sold to Jewish families abroad, the state of Israel has refused to properly
investigate the matter. The establishment’s efforts to silence the story
was unwavering; an effort that would not have been possible without the
media’s active cooperation.
The government appointed two inquiry commissions, in 1967 and 1988.
Both operated behind closed doors, had limited authority and budget, no
power of subpoena, and were not challenged by the press. In 1995, a
public investigative commission called in Hebrew Va’adat Hakira
Mamlachtit, was finally appointed after a public protest, turned violent, by
Rabbi Meshulam and his organization.

2
This commission, however, was not what the Yemenite community had
hoped for. In his legal analysis of the Kedmi Commission’s conclusion
(2002, 48), Law Professor Boaz Sanjero wrote: ―my main conclusion,
based on acceptable legal text analysis, is that the Commission’s work is
lacking the most fundamental basis for investigative work: epistemology
of suspicion.‖ According to Sanjero, suspicion of criminal acts was not
considered at any stage of the Commission’s work. Rather, he said, the
Commission was engaged in ―a discussion‖ about this Affair, which can be
read as a verification of the establishment’s discourse.

Zionist Narrative and Media Discourse

The historical review of the Babies Affair raises questions about Western
domination, national identity, ―otherness,‖ memory, and how dissenting
voices were silenced. With the exception of a few critical narratives in
Haolam Haze in 1967 and Ha’ir, Haaretz and Channel Two in the mid
1990s, denial ruled the media coverage. Articles were mostly aligned with
government’s versions of events instead of challenging it. As a result, the
media produced a narrative that obfuscate rather than investigated the
Affair. Haolam Haze was not only the first media outlet to bring the story
to the attention of the public as a phenomenon, but also the only one to
frame the story as a narrative of kidnapping. The magazine reported that
the kidnapped babies were sent abroad for adoption at a cost of $5,000
US per child. This alternative coverage, however, paled in relation to the
overwhelming narrative that supported the government’s denial.
The media was also instrumental in framing the Affair as a ‗Yemenite
problem.’ The title: ‗The Yemenite Babies Affair’ ultimately turned this
affair into a Yemenite problem, thus never transforming the discourse to
questions of State and society’s responsibility. As Cornel West argued in
Race Matters (1993), part of the barrier in the public discourse about race
is the view of black people as ―problem people.‖ This framework, West
says, is paralyzing. It prevents society from dealing will the more crucial
question of ―what this way of viewing black people reveals about us as a
nation.‖
The media discourse about this Affair demonstrates the power of Zionist
meta- narrative (Shohat 1988) to drive what Stuart Hall terms ‗strategies

3
of representation.’ The narrative of the Babies Affair is rejected because it
contradicts the notion of Jews as victims. It forces us to acknowledge that
Jews have victimized other Jews, on a racial basis and within a decade of
the Holocaust. The mostly Ashkenazi controlled media was not going to
allow this voice to be heard. As activist Rafi Shubeli explains, some vital
questions were absent from the media discourse:
How is it possible that in a democratic state, so many people are living
with an unresolved pain for so long? Why is Yemenite pain not legitimate?
One of the main strategies used by media organizations was denying
access to Yemenites families and activists seeking further investigation
and demanding answers from authorities all the while magnifying
testimonies of state representatives, thus weakening the Yemenite
community.
Ilana Dayan, prominent journalist and host of the show Uvda on Channel
Two, was one of few journalists to break this silence. She said:
There is a gap between the depth of the pain, the magnitude of the Affair,
and the media treatment…The ability to prevent the Yemenites from
effective form of expression for so long is unbelievable. Especially
because we think of ourselves as an open society, but the truth is that
different groups in society have no access to power focal points and
effective forms of expression.

Yemenites as ‘Others’
To uncover the powerful ideology behind the narrative of this Affair, one
must examine the Orientalist assumptions that marked Yemenites as
‗Others’ and served as the basis for constructing this discourse. Some
media narratives even blamed parents for not wanting their children, or
worse, justified the kidnapping as an act of charity, to better the future of
theses babies.
In the 1960’s, articles on the Affair portrayed Yemenite Jews as at once
exotic and inferior; primitive people in need of rescue and enlightenment.
In a Davar article in 1966, for instance, Yemenite parents were described
as seeing ―for the first time in their lives how to bathe a baby and how to
change a baby’s diaper.‖ (Davar, February 24, 1966)

4
Absorption camp staff told the press and the Kedmi Commission that
Yemenite Jews were not terribly upset when told their children died,
interpreting the Yemenites’ religious belief and their tendency to
internalize pain as a lack of care. ―If a child died in the tent, they would
say, ‗God gives and God takes’‖ (Davar, February 26, 1966).
Moreover, the ideological assumption that Zionism ‗rescued’ Mizrahim,
justified abduction and adoption. Ahuva Goldfarb, head nurse of the
Absorption Camp Baby Houses, went so far as to say, ―maybe we did
them a favor‖ (Madmoni, 1996). The Yemenites were dehumanized
beyond the categories of us/them, and became inhuman ‗things’. Head
nurse Sonia Milshtein shocked the Commission when she referred to
Yemenite babies as ―packages‖ and ―carcasses.‖ (Ha’ir, October 27,
1995). When asked if, as a mother, she could understand the families’
pain, she replied: ―Oh, I’ve heard this too much lately. After forty years I
would have been happy that my child got a good education and a good
family. Yes, that is how I would feel‖ (Yoman, July 21, 1995).
When Sara Perl, chair of Wizo-Israel, testified to the Kedmi commission,
she also claimed her supervisor said parent didn’t claim their children
because ―they just don’t want their children, they have too much going
on‖ (Ha’ir, November 3, 1995).
In its final report, the investigative commission concluded that thousands
of Yemenite parents deserted their own children. Sanjero’s criticism of the
commission’s report notes that only Yemenite parents were blamed. No
other parties were held accountable for separating thousands of babies
from their families or the burial of babies without the knowledge or
presence of their parents (if they had indeed died).
The blame for not searching hard enough or neglecting their children,
forced parents to defend themselves from false accusations as they
relived their tragic losses. In Tzipi Talmor’s documentary Down—A One
Way Road (1997), the following heartbreaking testimony was given by
Shlomo Bahagali, a Yemenite parent who searched for his son Hayim for
50 years:
I am talking to you, Hayim; this was not my fault. This is the fault of the
people in charge. It isn’t at all like they said that we were not interested in
the babies. It is a cruel lie. That is why I am talking to you, Hayim; please

5
in God’ s name, if you hear me, your ID number is 64703; please come
back to me, let me rest in peace. I need to know that you are alive
wherever you are.

Rabbi Meshulam’s Protest

In over four decades of government mishandling of the Babies Affair,
Rabbi Meshulam and his organization formed the only forceful protest, but
in the end was just as forcefully stopped by the state. The public in Israel
first heard of Rabbi Meshulam on March 24, 1994 (before the Shalgi
Commission released its findings). According to the press, Rabbi Uzi
Meshulam, a Yemenite leader, and some of his followers, that the media
labeled a dangerous cult, had collected a weapons cache, demanding the
Israeli government establish a public investigative commission to
investigate the Affair.
In response to Meshulam's public protest, the Israeli police mounted an
armed attack on the compound where he and some of his followers lived.
For more than a month, police and army troops surrounded Meshulam's
house in Yahud. And on May 10, 1994, they attacked and killed 19-year
old, Shlomi Asulin, a follower of Meshulam. The Rabbi and others from his
group who were arrested and served prison sentences (he was in prison
for 4 years and left a very sick man). Shortly after the protest, the state
did establish the requested public investigative commission.
When this incident broke, I was assigned by the editor of the weekly
Shishi to cover the Affair. While my prior requests to cover this story had
been often rejected, the media was now eager to highlight the Yemenite
Babies Affair on the heels of the violent incident described above. In
media terms, the violent incident was perceived to be ―sexier‖ than
kidnapped babies. While editors and journalists thought they were
constructing a comprehensive coverage, I believe the coverage was
mostly one-sided, aligned with the Zionist narrative, leaving the most
important part of the story untold.
The Meshulam affair, known in Israel as ―the fortification in Yahud,‖
played a significant role in shaping public perception of the Yemenite
Babies Affair. This incident magnified Israel’s internal conflict as well as
definitions of violence and justice (Madmoni, 2003, 2009). It illustrated

6
how Orientalism as a practice of knowledge and of violence functions as a
tool for what Entman (2007) calls, ―priming audiences‖ and ultimately
serves as a force that silences resistance.
Similar to the depiction of Wadi Salib, and the Black Panthers, Rabbi
Meshulam’s ideological claims about the Yemenite Babies Affair, as well as
his claims about the chain of events leading to the violent incident, were
mostly absent from the public sphere. As Zaid (2001) wrote, ―If over a
thousand security forces did not siege a house with about 80 people that
had a total of six licensed guns, there would not have been any violent
incident‖ (92). Like Mizrahi protesters before him, Rabbi Meshulam’s acts
were considered violent and a threat to democracy, a point of view that
provided justification for retaliatory force to stop him. In the end, the
press, which is the most important part of any liberal democracy, instead
of being motivated to expose what the governments want to keep hidden
defacto became part of the silencing force of free speech. As Bill Moyers
so eloquently put it: ―the news is about what people want to keep hidden,
everything else is publicity.‖ (Interview with Jon Stuart, The Daily Show,
6/1/11)
While the media’s framing of Meshulam’s leadership and discourse in the
public sphere as an illegitimate attempt and a danger to democracy, his
alternative discourse as presented in his publication reveals a different
picture. What were his main claims? What was his aim? Did he really
pose a danger to democracy? Did he promote a violent approach from the
start?

Early Protest and Activism

Meshulam’s nonprofit organization called Amutat Mishkan Ohalim was
formed back in the early 1990’s for the purpose of investigating the
kidnapped babies affair and demanding a public governmental
investigation. According to the organization’s publications, Meshulam
started investigating the affair as early as the 1970’s. He claims that
already in 1978 a Shabak agent contacted him in Tel-Aviv and offered him
different rewards to stop his activities, at the same time the agent also
threatened to hurt him and his family if he didn’t stop. This claim fits with
Shohat’s (2007) description of how the government systematically

7
rewarded Mizrahi activists who were willing to cooperate with the state
and abandon their Mizrahi protest.
By the late 1980s Meshulam started to record evidence on audiocassettes
and distribute them to people, and in 1993 he directed and produced a
play about the kidnapped babies affair. At the same time, he issued
numerous requests to Knesset members as well as journalists asking
them to demand an open doors public investigation; when he realized that
his persistent request remained unanswered, he decided to create his own
alternative newspaper and videotapes.
After examining his discourse closely, I claim that his protest as a whole
can be seen as an early day, low-tech social network. In fact, very similar
to the power of social networking that we witness today, his declared
purpose was to mobilize people into action by providing them with
information he claimed the government and the press were withholding.
And while Meshulam’s criticism of democracy in Israel was labeled by the
press as a form of paranoia, it actually fits with Noam Chomsky’s claim
about democracy. ―The more prevailing conception of democracy,‖ he
says, ―[is] one where the means of information must be kept narrowly and
rigidly controlled (1993, p.1).‖ Meshulam understood the power of
information and his rights to exercise ―free speech‖ as a citizen in a
democratic country. However, without public access to records held by the
government, or demand from the press to expose them, it was easy to
dismiss Meshulam’s claims. As Hanegbi (1999) noted, ―freedom of
expression‖ and ―free speech‖, are empty rights without a ―freedom of
information act,‖ which became a law in Israel only in 1998-9v.
Meshulam’s alternative discourse, as evident in his publications could be
generally divided into the following three categories:
1. First, he provided readers with historical context and reasons why
he was claiming that Israel is failing to deliver on its democratic premise.
2. Second, he provided readers with what he thought was missing
form the mainstream media including investigative type articles with
multiple documents proving the kidnapping of babies, as well as the
cover-up.

8
3. And third, he wrote opinion articles often challenging the
democratic nature of the state, and deconstructing mainstream discourse
by exposing what he saw as hypocrisy, especially by the Israeli left.

Meshulam’s criticism was aimed first and for most at the government’s
lack of action for over four decades, defining this lack of action as
undemocratic. He directed the heart of his criticism to people he defined
as the gatekeepers of both information and action including politicians,
journalists, as well as Mizrahim who he referred to as ―mashtapim‖ –
meaning collaborators. In fact, in looking back at his actions before the
incident in Yahud, not only can nothing about it be defined as illegal in a
democratic society, but also nothing about his actions can even be defined
as civil disobedience. Up until that point, the only acts of protest by
Meshulam and his legally registered non-profit organization included:
1. Refusing to vote in the election – a right that they chose not to
fulfill.
2. Publishing alternative information and disseminating it, through his
publications and videotapes.
Titled Even Maasu Habonim, (―everything the electronic and print ‗media’
{‗Tishkoret’ in Hebrew, which is a play on the verb – leshaker - to lie} in
the ‗democratic waspy’ state is hiding from you by instructions from
above‖) the first newspaper was published on March 13, 1994, only two
weeks before the events in Yahud. In his letter to the reader, Rabbi
Meshulam, who was the editor, detailed the history of his involvement in
investigating the Babies Affair and what he was trying to do about it in
democratic ways. He included the letter mailed to all Knesset members
demanding the establishment of an open door public investigative
commission. Out of 120 knesset members, he wrote, ―only 14 answered,
and even this was after a third reminder. It is important to note that no
one from Shas ‗the Sepharadic’ party, answer this call, including Knesset
member Gamliel [who is] ―this year’s Yemenite collaborator‖ (p.10).
Unlike the one-dimensional portrayal of his character as well as his
discourse in the mainstream press (i.e. an insane person who is motivated
by paranoia and violent tendencies)vi his criticism, as evident in his
publications, was actually complex and must be read as such. For

9
example, his reading of the ethnic responsibility to the kidnapping and the
lack of investigation were never simply presented as issues of Ashkenazim
Vs. Mizrahim. He always emphasized that Mizrahi as well as Ashkenazim
were committed members of his organization and that the acts of
kidnapping as well as the silencing were made possible due by the
cooperation of what he called ―Mizrahi and Yemenite collaboratorsvii.‖ He
always directed his criticism to the Mizrahi community as well. For
instance, in his detailed account of how a Shabac agent tried to stop him,
he quoted the agent as saying: ―who are you fighting for? Your
communities are just going to stab you in the back!‖ In parenthesis
Meshulam wrote: ―unfortunately, there is something to it, but with the
young generation ‗the generation of the Mizrahi intifada’ there is a great
mental change, God willing‖ (p.1).
Meshulam was politically aware and situated his protest on a continuum of
a long line of Mizrahi protesters saying: ―Ben Harush – was one Mizrahi
that couldn’t be bought‖ and ―the fire of Wadi Salib is bubbling, but this
time it is going to be different.‖ Reuven Abarji, who was one of the
leaders of the Black Panthers, said Rabbi Meshulam and his group met
with the former leaders of the Panthers a few times back in 1991 wishing
to learn from their experience and the Panthers participated in several
demonstrations; ―Meshulam’s organization was a direct continuation to
the Panther’s radical politics, meaning: setting a challenging agenda
against the Ashkenazi hegemony. Just like us, [the Panthers] they paid a
high price‖ (2007, 144).
While denouncing the legitimacy of a ―state that sold its children‖ and
refraining from voting as an act of protest, Meshulam still claimed that all
its members served in the army and were loyal taxpayers.
―All the thousands of members of this organization are working people by
day and studying Torah at night. We are not political people, we do not
vote in the election…but we all served in the army, not for the state,
which we don’t recognize, but for the people of Israel. We are also not
interested in receiving any money from officials state institutions… despite
the fact that we are all tax payers citizens of this country.‖ (issue 2, p.1)
In another article from the first paper, Meshulam responded to a column
written in Yediot Aharonot on February 17, 1994, by acclaimed author

10
Amos Oz. The article titled ―The end of hypocrisy, or an answer to the
author Amos Oz‖ defined Oz’s demand for an immediate investigative
commission in connection to events in Hebronviii as ―double standard‖.
(just a reminder:) Meshulam began his article using the moral outrage
already evident in the title of Oz’s article ―To call a murder murder,‖ and
framed his article with the subtitle: ―to call the institutionalized selling of
children a crime against people.‖ He then reviewed the history of the
Babies affair and the governments’ strong objection to an open door
public investigation. He further brought, as a moral comparison, the story
of Yossale Schumacher that was stolen by his grandparents in the 1960’s,
prompting then Prime Minister Ben-Gurion to order ―the country’s best
security forces to look for him in Israel and abroad…indeed within three
and a half months, they found him in the US and brought him back to his
parents.‖ ―How is this possible‖ Meshulam wrote ―that thousands of
children that ‗no one knows where they are buried’ to this day, don’t
amount to the same standard of one Yossale, or dozens of Palestinians…
Yes, yes this is hypocrisy of the first degree, by the state and the
media…this is dictatorship with a democratic face – a wolf in a sheep’
clothing. (Vol.1, p.7)‖ He ended with a sting directed at Oz saying: ―Mr.
Amos Oz got our first letter…that was sent to many in the press,
academia, and politics; so far he never responded, definitely not in the
form of an ‗impressive’ article in this country’s ‗Pravda’ix. (p.8)‖

Forced Silence
In 1999, and after nearly five years in jail, Rabbi Meshulam was released
in a fragile physical condition. Rabbi Meshulam’s son claimed that one of
the conditions for his father’s release was that he must not investigate the
Yemenite Babies Affair any further, a demand that many activists claimed
was essentially undemocratic.
In November 2005, Emmanuel Meshulam (Rabbi Meshulam’s son) left
Israel with his wife and three children. He claimed his family and close
friends were subject to harassment by the Israeli government and that
Shabac (Israel’s secret service agency), and secret agents demanded they
reveal information about the Yemenite Babies Affair. The family sought
political asylum in Canada. Shortly thereafter, the Israeli press reported in

11
Yediot Aharonot that Israelis ―fooled‖ the Canadian government into
granting them political asylum. Allen Baker, Israel’s Canadian
ambassador, publicly stated that these Israelis were lying about political
harassment claims: ―By granting them political asylum, you are hurting
the image of Israel and unjustifiably presenting us as a state where
citizens are persecuted‖ (Yediot Aharonot October 31, 2006). Other
articles in the media framed Meshulam’s request for political asylum, in
similar terms to his father’s 1994 struggle. Since the name Meshulam
carried an already existing meaning in the media and with the public,
familiar Orientalist references such as ‗crazy fanatic’ and ‗paranoid’ fit
perfectly with the new story. Some of the articles in the mainstream
media defined Emmanuel Meshulam as ―scary‖ and mentally unstable in a
similar vain to description used to refer to his father over 13 years earlier.
For instance, an article in Yediot Aharonot (March 14, 2007) reported, ―His
part imaginary part fantasy stories are meshed into a ‗paranoia’ salad . . .
This is a man that, if he wants, can sweep a fanatic crowed, just like his
father did more then a decade ago.‖
In response to these articles and others conveying similar claims,
including Canada’s Jewish press, Emmanuel Meshulam wrote an open
letter to Canada’s Israeli Ambassador Allen Baker (February 15, 2007):
―The same corrupt officials who ruined my father also saw to harass me
and many of my entourage and the people close to me… I was banished
from the land of my fathers….to a foreign land where I didn’t even
understand the language . . . Later I discovered that my ‗Zionist’
interpreter whose job was to explain what I was saying to the immigration
authorities, had conveyed lies rather than my words.‖
In a phone interview with Emanuel Meshulam from his now Canadian
home he said life isn’t easy for him. He insists on defining his departure
from Israel as a deportation and not immigration. ―I was harassed since I
was 14 years old‖ he said ―I just couldn’t take it any more and feared for
the safety of my family.‖ According to Meshulam the Israeli authorities
accused him of holding documents, allegedly obtained by his father,
proving that the state of Israel performed medical experiments on
Yemenite babies. ―They don’t care about the kidnapping of babies any
more,‖ he said, ―the medical experiment is the real issue they don’t want

12
to expose. Since I don’t have any documents they made me leave the
country‖ (Interview summer 2008).

Lack of Closure Future Coast

The unresolved tragedy of the Yemenite Babies Affair will not fadewith
time, as some state leaders hope. The wounds of long-suffering mothers
and fathers only deepen as the younger generations see the injustice
wrought upon their families and community. The kidnapping of my aunt’s
baby remains a vivid memory. Many people of my generation have made
an unbreakable connection with the past and vowed to fight for the
recognition of their parents’ narratives.
To avoid consequences stemming from civil discontent, more dialogue is
needed. The state and the public must fully listen and truly regard
parents’ narratives; they have a right to be heard. As noted historian
Howard Zinn wrote in A Power Governments Cannot Suppress: ―If history
is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past,
it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden
episodes of the past…‖
Moreover, in the absence of dialogue about the transgressions of the past,
acts of oppression reoccur. As Esther Hertzog (2005) noted, there is a
direct connection between the kidnapping of Yemenite babies in the 1950s
and what she calls the systematic removal of children from their families
in Israel today. ―… Children are still a resource for the government to
maintain its power . . . all the while using rhetoric and ideology that
justifiesany means including violence by the controlling institutions all the
while denying any responsibility for these actions‖ (12).
Hertzog’s analysis demonstrated how state welfare and absorption
organizations infantilized Ethiopian immigrants for their own benefit, for
instance, despite good intentions. Major decisions, such as the children’s
education, were once again made without consulting parents. Hertzog
claimed the integration of Ethiopian families into Israeli society was
influenced by the same Eurocentric biases that dominated the absorption
of Mizrahi and Yemenite Jews in the 1950s. Both were seen as
―traditional‖ societies in need of rescue and enlightenment.x Hertzog noted

13
that ―behind this image of patronage and responsibility lies also the
suspicion and anxiety about criticism‖ (38).
To date, more than 1,000 complaints have been filed with one or more of
the three commissions investigating the Yemenite Babies Affair. Despite
the many legal problems with the final commission’s report, the numbers
are still horrifying, making the often-cavalier attitude of decision makers
and the media even more shocking.xi
The state and the media have told Yemenite parents and other Mizrahim
that their experiences, memories, and pain are not relevant. No society
can build a healthy future with such a stained past. Yael Tzadok, a
journalist who investigated the affair for the Voice of Israel explained:

Organized crimes performed by people against other people of their own

nation have occurred all over the world, including similar affairs where
babies were used as an ―asset‖ that is negated from ―unworthy‖ families
and granted to ―more worthy‖ ones (in Canada, Argentina, Australia). We
didn’t invent it. Yet, while other countries have started a process of
revealing the truth, listening to the victims, healing the wounds and
heading towards forgiveness and reconciliation, here in Israel we won’t
even admit that it happened. We believe that we, Jews, are more moral
than other nations… And yet here we are, with our own homemade
racism… What does it say about the Jewish state? This is why you find
massive silencing from the government and the press. We are a society
that lives with a very big gap between what we pretend to be and what
we really are.

i
The nurse was audio taped by Avner Farhi, whose sister was kidnapped from Ein-Shemer Camp in

1950.
ii
Over 0,111 complaints were submitted to all three commissions combined. Rabbi Meshulam’s

organization claimed to have information about 1,700 babies kidnapped prior to 1952 (450 of them

from other Mizrahi ethnic groups) and about 4,500 babies kidnapped prior to 1956. These figures were

neither discredited nor validated by the last commission. Shoshi Zaid, The Child is Gone [Jerusalem:

Geffen Books, 2001, 19–22).

14
iii
During the immigrants’ stay in transit and absorption camps, the babies were taken to stone structures

called baby houses. Mothers were allowed entry only a few times each day to nurse their babies.
iv
See, for instance, the testimony of Naomi Gavra in Tzipi Talmor’s film One Way Road (1993) and

the testimony of Shoshana Farhi on the show Uvda (1996).

v
Despite this law, many of the testimonies given to the public commissions investigating the Affair,
were given in closed doors and were declared confidential for 70 years.
vi
For an allorate analysis of the media coverage of Meshulam’s protest see Madmoni 2003 and 2009.
vii
This was one of the reasons many Mizrahim felt threatened by Meshulam and joined the public
rejection of his protest.
viii
In February 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a settler from Hebron shot and killed 29 Palestinians, and
wounded many more, while they were praying inside the Ibrahim Mosque, in the Cave of the Patriarch
in Hebron. Shorty after, the Israeli government appointed a commission of inquiry headed by then
president of the Supreme Court Judge Meir Shamgar.
ix
By Pravda, Meshulam is referring to the country largest circulating newspaper Yediot Aharonot.
x
For Shohat, the kidnapping formed part of the broader Eurocentrism of the Zionist Enlightenment

discourse of progress and modernization, viewing itself as rescuing Middle Eastern Jews (Shohat

0644(. See also her analysis in “The Narrative of the Nation and the Discourse of Modernization: the

Case of the Mizrahim” Critique 10 (Spring 1997).

xi
These findings were often presented to the public as low numbers, as if “only 96” missing babies

could be accepted and forgotten.

15
 Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims
[Series] What the Zionists Have Done to Jewish Arabs
Written By David ShashaDocumentary Review: ―The Ringworm Children‖ (2004)

What if I were to tell you that the Arab government of Morocco in the 1950s forced
100,000 Jewish children to be rounded up and taken to a medical facility where they
were given radiation treatments of 350 RAD for the ostensible treatment of ringworm?
What would you do? What would the outcry be in the Jewish community? Would there
be a feeding frenzy in the Jewish media and in the general media such as the New
York Times which continues to feed the Jewish beast of the Holocaust on a regular
basis? What would be said about Arabs and their incipient Anti-Semitism? To put this
in some current perspective, we have recently learned that a new committee has been
formed to link the 1941 riots in Baghdad known in Arabic as the FARHUD to the Nazi
Holocaust. Steps are now underway to take an isolated if tragic event in Arab Jewish
history where the total number of Jewish deaths was no more than 300 if that much
and turn that event into a HOLOCAUST. This committee is bent on taking the FARHUD
and making it a mandatory part of the Holocaust curriculum in the US. It is clear that
the concern with demonizing the Arabs has become a malignant obsession for Arab
Jews who wish to curry favor with the Ashkenazi establishment and serve the Israeli
HASBARAH campaign that is such a crucial part of Jewish self-knowledge at present.
How quickly do you think would word spread in the media of the near-homicidal
treatment of 100,000 Jewish children by their Arab hosts? Would such a revelation
make the FRONT PAGE of every newspaper in the US and Europe and ISRAEL? You
bet. So why have we not heard about these 100,000 Jewish victims of radiation
treatment? The problem is that the radiation treatments were not administered by the
Moroccans or any other ARAB government – these lethal treatments were
administered by the ISRAELI DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH!
―The Ringworm Children‖ is a brutal testament to the continued ASHKENAZI RACISM
that has made the sojourn of the Sephardim in Israel one of the most shameful
episodes in the history of our people. The story is simple if brutal: Many of the
Ashkenazi Zionist officials were conflicted about immigration of Jews from the Arab
world – particularly those from North Africa. Upon arrival to the newly created State in
the 1950s, Sephardic Jews were subjected to various forms of official and social
discrimination. They were sent to ma’abarot, transit camps for immigrants that

1
became part of the ongoing debilitation of what were then called Benei Edot ha-Mizrah
– the Oriental communities. To my knowledge the largest public scandal – outside of
the institutionalized racism of the Zionist founders – involving the Sephardic
immigrants was the famous case of the YEMENITE BABIES – a scandal that involved
the kidnapping of Yemenite children by the medical authorities that provided the
children for sale to Ashkenazi parents in Israel and Europe while their parents would
be given death certificates and no corpses to bury. The scandal of the YEMENITE
BABIES has been subject to years of hearings and committees but the real truth
remains to be publicly uncovered. The recent revelations of the GAZEZET scandal
make the YEMENITE BABIES issue pale in comparison. GAZEZET is the Hebrew term
for ringworm. Dr. Chaim Sheba, the first Surgeon General of Israel and an avowed
racist who believed in the principles of using Eugenics as a social tool, was loath to
accept the immigration from North Africa. Sheba demanded as a health official that
any immigrants with family members who had health problems be barred from
moving to Israel. And when the first immigrants came from Morocco, he demanded
that they be treated for ringworm. As this scandal revolves around ringworm, a now
easily treatable skin disease that is not very well known today, I quote from the
American Cancer Society’s assessment of the disease’s threat in the period under
question: The only established environmental risk factor for brain tumors is radiation.
Before the risks of radiation were recognized, children with ringworm of the scalp (a
fungal infection) often received low-dose radiation therapy, which substantially
increased their risk of brain tumors in later life. As the experts make clear in the film,
ringworm was a common childhood ailment along the lines of lice. The ringworm was
caused by a communicable fungus that created irritations of the scalp. Old world
treatments included unguents and vinegar. The disease though communicable was not
fatal and would eventually go away of its own accord. Radiation treatments were sadly
more dangerous than the disease itself. Dr. Sheba, according to his writings, became
obsessed with this ringworm issue in regard to the North African immigrants. In his
role as a public health minister he demanded that all North African children be sent to
health centers to receive RADIATION THERAPY. As the film points out, the regimen of
forced radiation based on eugenics was on the wane in the US after the revelations of
Nazi experiments in the Concentration Camps and the vast scientific evidence from
Japan after the nuclear devastation in 1945. The scientific community by 1952 was
well aware of the dangers of radiation and the short and long-term impact of this type

2
of treatment on individuals – especially children. Dozens of lawsuits were being
settled in the US courts with compensatory damages being awarded to the victims of
these cruel experiments. This did not deter Dr. Chaim Sheba – the Josef Mengele of
Israel.
He went to the US on a fundraising mission to get radiation machines – X-Ray
machines from a company named Picker that continues to do business in Israel – and
the funds to administer a mass program of radiation of these Sephardic children.
According to the relevant documentation the 1948-1955 budget of the radiation
program was 300,000,000 Israeli Pounds. The entire budget of the Israeli Health
Ministry for the same period was 60,000,000 Pounds – the 300,000,000 figure was
more than the ENTIRE BUDGET for the same period. Where did all the money come
from to administer this evil project? The film sets out the tantalizing but
unsubstantiated idea that the Israeli government took money from the US
government which was interested in continuing its medical research through
experimentation, but could not legally do so. Israel, a poor and fragile young country,
would be a perfect place to conduct these experiments. This sense of experimentation
fit in well with the Ashkenazi Zionist establishment’s racist policies and attitudes
towards Sephardim. Sheba merely acted on the racist value system of the Ashkenazi
establishment in setting out his eugenics program to deal with the GAZEZET. In ―The
Ringworm Children‖ we see how Sheba was able to conduct his evil machinations.
With the obvious complicity of the medical community, health professionals and
political figures, Sheba forced over 100,000 Sephardic children into various medical
centers throughout the country to undergo radiation treatments that were in the
range of 350 RAD per application – and many of the victims were given repeated
applications. According to the eyewitness testimony presented by victims in the film,
no precautionary measures were undertaken – no screens or special clothing to
protect the children. This policy included having no health professional in the room
while the radiation was being administered – as those workers knew the dangers of
such massive doses of radiation – in the realm of HIROSHIMA-like numbers. Parents
of the children were told that their children were being taken on a day trip – and were
charged for the trip! Hundreds of doctors and nurses conducted these treatments
under the auspices of the Israel National Socialized Health system and yet the records
of these treatments have disappeared and according to the film remain unavailable to

3
the victims – many of whom continue to suffer with brain tumors, cancers, epilepsy,
sterility, cerebral palsy and other nefarious and debilitating diseases.
In 1994, a committee was formed to bring this issue to the attention of the Israeli
government and legal apparatus. A swirl of lawsuits and actions were undertaken with
a stonewalling on the part of the Israeli establishment. Experts presented by the
government were connected to the Health Establishment including Professor Baruch
Modan who seemed to have held the files of many of the victims. Modan died of a
heart attack while the campaign was going on – he appears in the film before his
death and at a town hall meeting provides the victims with no substantial information
on his knowledge and the mass of materials that he had in his possession from the
early 1960s. The film implies that Modan may well have had knowledge of secret
dealings between the US and Israeli governments. There is little question that the
dangers of radiation therapy were known at the time of the Sheba applications. In
1952 the International Atomic Commission had presented guidelines for the
application of radiation treatment which recommended a one-time dosage of no more
than .3 RAD while Sheba had ordered dosages – sometimes multiple – of 350 RAD!
Sheba is a criminal of Mengele-like proportions – of this there is no doubt. All those
who participated in the execution of the program were also guilty of serious
malfeasance. Those who have continued to cover this up for the government and legal
institutions of Israel – many of them are actually interviewed in the film – are also
indirectly responsible for crimes against the Sephardic victims of this barbarity on the
part of the Ashkenazi Zionists.
There are a number of issues that emerge from the film:
· There is the foundational and perpetual anti-Sephardi racism that permeates the
Ashkenazi community – in the West and in Israel. Such racism has allowed the plight
of the GAZEZET victims to fester with no public outcry or even a mention in the
American media.
· The criminal sense of racial superiority that enabled this to happen is a basic part of
the Zionist phenomenon. If this is what Ashkenazim do to their fellow JEWS, what
won’t they scruple to do to NON-JEWS?
· What of justice for the victims? There is the issue of full disclosure of the medical
files that might save the lives of those who have been lucky enough to survive this
cruelty. And then there is the issue of full adjudication of claims and compensation for
the victims and their families.

4
· How is it possible that a prestigious hospital complex is named after Chaim Sheba?
Should not a public campaign to remove his name from the hospital be created?
· And finally, what of the children and grandchildren of the victims who are now
dealing with a truly genetic catastrophe of the highest proportion. Ironically, by
asserting that Sephardim were a (eu)gene(t)ic danger to the Ashkenazim of Israel
when they were nothing of the sort, the racist Sheba did in fact create genetic health
issues for many generations of Sephardic Jews in Israel.
As any politically-aware Sephardi knows, the criterion for assessing Ashkenazi
culpability in all matters of malfeasance is extremely high – so high that many of the
victims are shown in the film as being completely amazed by the standards that were
demanded of the victims to prove their claims. Such is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of
the standards that have been set for claimants of Nazi abuse. We can recall no setting
of any STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS for Holocaust claims while such limitations are
placed on the GAZEZET victims. Ashkenazim do not hold themselves to the same
standards when they are accused of being the perpetrators of criminal activity as they
do for those who they claim have committed crimes against them! So while we sit
here watching the FARHUD committee of foolhardy and naive Sephardic Jews who are
more Ashkenazi than Sephardi, the matter of the GAZEZET remains a closed book to
the American Jews and a nightmare for those Sephardim in Israel who must feel that
no one cares about them at all As they watch the repeated claims of the Holocaust
survivors fill the pages of the US and European media and the ongoing schnorring and
infighting between Jewish groups to get the HOLO-CASH from Germany, Switzerland
and the rest, these poor and sick Sephardim have no one of influence to help them
make their case.
Since ―The Ringworm Children‖ was aired by Israel’s Channel 10 in August 2004 not
one single article has come out in the US media – the articles by Aryeh Dayan in
Haaretz and the controversial Barry Chamish review, both of which were included in
our Sephardic Heritage Update, were printed in Israeli publications – the SHU being
the only Sephardic journal in the WORLD that continues to advocate on behalf of
Sephardic rights and justice for the Sephardim. The film is now being screened in the
US by LINK TV, a small and relatively obscure non-profit San Francisco-based group
of radical hippie-types who are concerned with social justice for Third World peoples.
The station is not carried by any US cable systems and no announcement of the
screenings has been made in any US media outlet.

5
The question you the reader must ask yourself is, WHY IS SUCH A STATE OF AFFAIRS
ACCEPTABLE TO YOU?
· How long must we accept the depredations and the brutal racism of the
ASHKENAZIM that is reflected by the official organs of the Jewish world – and
reinforced by the common accusation from Ashkenazim that such RACISM DOES NOT
EVEN EXIST.
How long must I be told by Ashkenazim and Uncle Tom Sephardim that I am myself a
racist and that I am creating unneeded divisiveness in a Jewish community looking for
POSITIVE ways to create a healthy and vibrant society?
· How many cancellations have I received on my newsletter e-mail list from
ASHKENAZI RACISTS who have blithely and with great pretense and arrogance served
to demonize me for my writings and my social activism?
· How much have I personally and professionally been threatened – by friends and
enemies alike – and called upon to – as they tell me – LAY OFF THE ZIONISM?
I am here to say that after we all take the time to understand and internalize the full
scope of what happened to the GAZEZET victims – all 100,000 of them – we will all be
able to more clearly see ASHKENAZI RACISM for what it is and be free to do
something about it.
Ashkenazim have wisely formed a unified front to protect their communal interests.
We see advocacy groups popping up each and every day to deal with issues that
trouble that community. But when dealing with JUSTICE FOR SEPHARDIM we have
ZERO – NOTHING to help our own people. ―The Ringworm Children‖ is a film that is
brilliantly executed and fully realized. It is a masterpiece of social activism that tells a
story that is at the very existential and political core of the Zionist project and the
massive wrongs and injustices that it has wrought against people of Middle Eastern
extraction.
As Sephardim we must get our heads out of the proverbial sand and DO SOMETHING
to protect our brothers and our communal interests.
We must stop demonizing our real leaders and activists and finally accept that we
need to respond in a forceful way to the Ashkenazim who have done all this to us.

6
 The Occupation Doesn't Stop at the Checkpoint
by Yehouda Shenhav

I. The New Israeli Left

The new Israeli Left -- Zionist and liberal -- reinvented itself immediately following the
1967 war.1 During the 1948 war and its aftermath, the Zionist Left had difficulty in
working out the contradiction between its socialist obligations to social and political
justice and being an inseparable part of the Zionist national occupation of Palestinian
lands, upon which the new state of Israel was established. The occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 provided, first and foremost, a partial solution to
this schizophrenia. With the opening of new expanses over the Green Line, the
Zionist Left gained some breathing room and could now elegantly separate the "here"
from the "there," to create for itself an identity and new agenda which separated the
"external" (outside the 1967 borders) from the "internal" (within the 1967 borders).
The first deals with Palestinians in the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. The second deals with the different groups within the jurisdiction of the state of
Israel, mainly with Mizrahi Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel. "There," the
definitions are based on nationality; "here," they are based on social class (including
Israeli Palestinians). Thus, the Left created and instituted two political discourses,
which supposedly do not meet. The fact that the two establish themselves as
separate discourses prevents us from seeing how they create each other and how the
distinction between them actually erases three important facts. First, that the
bifurcation between there (the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip)
and here (normal society) is artificial and false. Second, and not without any
connection to the previous fact, that the occupation regime does not stop at the
checkpoint nor at the Green Line. It is woven into the internal fabric of society in
Israel, at all levels, and is created within it. Third, that the Israeli occupation regime
is directed not only outward but also inward, into the society in Israel.

II. The Israeli Border Regime

Israel has never recognized clear-cut external boundaries. It has never reconciled
itself to ceasefire borders. The border served as a one-way valve. It was meant to
seal movement from "there" to "here," but all the while allowing free movement from
"here" to "there." In other words, it was meant to hermetically stop the movement of
"infiltrators" in the 1950s, those that came to visit their assets, which were

1
confiscated by the absentee landlord law (any property owner who left Israel between
29 November 1947 and 1 September 1948 and went to an enemy country). But a
sealed border does not prevent Israelis from crossing the border.2 After all, how could
we conduct retaliation operations and revenge? How could we hike to exotic and
desirable places like the ancient city of Petra in Jordan? It is customary here to say
that the long arm of the security forces would catch up with them anywhere. These
border crossings were always the object of desire for "the best of our boys," many of
whom were sons of the cooperative settlement movement (the moshavim and
kibbutzim), the cradle of the Zionist Left. The border not only served as a one-way
valve or thin line. It became a site, a space of its own. It is enough to take notice of
the cultural terms used to define this space: "no man's land," "the frontier," "the
border zone."3 After it became clear to the Left that the occupation did not pay off for
the Jews (corruption of the youth, the demographic phantom) the Green Line became
a symbolic Maginot Line ("with some changes in the border"). The Green Line became
a fetish.

III. Fetishism of the Green Line

The fetishism of the Green Line has a dialectical dynamics. It purifies the occupation,
reorganizes and elevates it to channels that deny the intensity and injustices of the
Israeli occupation machinery. This fetishism allows the artificial separation between
the "good guys" and the "bad guys"; it creates a moral indifference and hides the fact
that the Israeli colonial occupation is found everywhere, not only over the Green Line.
I will give two examples for the political and ethical mistakes which this approach
creates. The first one exemplifies how the ethical indifference of Israeli sociologists
reproduces the fetish of the Green Line. The second one exemplifies how the
symbolism of the Green Line effaces the fact that the occupation regime is turned
inward, to within Israeli society as a whole.

IV. Ethics and the Neutrality of Sociologists

In the summer of 2004, Michael Burawoy, then President of the American Sociological
Association, asked to me to deliver a lecture about public sociology in Israel and
Palestine at the annual conference of the association in San Francisco. Burawoy is a
radical sociologist from Berkeley, an exceptional personality in American sociology.
Burawoy invited 25 critical sociologists from all over the world, with the overt
purpose to "return American sociology to its natural greatness, provincialize it," and

2
thus recognize its particularity. With pleasure, I agreed to his request. For years it
has bothered me that Israeli sociology has clearly been a subcontractor of American
apolitical research paradigms, and that there is very little similarity between these
paradigms and the context we live in.4 The uncritical import of American research
paradigms for understanding Israeli society is an institutionalized phenomenon with
problems that should be seriously assessed. Because academic promotion of Israeli
sociologists is dependent on publication in international journals, most research is
written in English for American sociologists. Very often, the price they pay for seeking
"universality" is either researching societies other than one's own or downplaying the
specificities of local politics when they do research on Israel. In preparing my lecture
at the conference, I checked how sociologists in Israel react to so central an issue as
the occupation and its injustices. You will not be surprised that, like many social
scientists, Israeli sociologists rarely research the occupation, and refrain from taking a
position on ethical questions with the disclaimer of academic neutrality. That's how
sociology established itself from the beginning. The German sociologist Max Weber
once wrote that one has to distinguish between science and politics. Weber really
meant to defend science from politics, but perhaps he also wanted to defend ethics
and politics from the technocracy of scientists. I wonder if following upon Weber it is
possible to ask to defend ethics from the violent neutrality of social scientists. For our
purpose, I want to show that the fetishism of the Green Line is central in the
formation of a neutral and apolitical consciousness of social scientists in Israel.

V. Moral Indifference

In 2004, within the five largest universities in Israel, there were some 133
sociologists; two of them are Palestinians, 14 are Mizrahi Jews. All the rest, 117
sociologists, are Ashkenazi Jews (only 34 of them are women). Between 2002 and
2004, among the 133 sociologists, how many took a moral stand against the
occupation? Eight only, which is about six percent of the sociologists (the same ratio
is found among historians; and nine percent among philosophers). How many of
them belong to protest movements? Six only, that is four percent of the sociologists.
How many signed two different petitions in those two years? Seven persons only;
about five percent of the sociologists. But what is more worrisome is the fact that in
the current political reality, the occupation has never become a real paradigm in the
Israeli academe. Only one sociologist, Yuval Yonay, teaches a course on the
occupation; only six sociologists research the occupation in any direct manner. In the

3
early 1990s Baruch Kimmerling (and here one can add Oren Yiftachel) broadened the
category of "Israeli society" to include the territories beyond the Green Line, but
without much success.5 In most sociological scholarship, Israeli society is imagined as
within the Green Line (Israel's pre-1967 borders). They see the occupation as a
temporary phenomenon, like an accident in the political history of Israel, and not an
integral part of the social and political fabric of Israel. Why? Are the territories, which
have been occupied for most of Israel's history, really another planet? Is what is
happening there separate from what is happening here? The answer is No with a
capital N . This liberal blindness is anchored in a fetishism of the Green Line by the
Israeli Left.

VI. No Good Guys, No Bad Guys

The distinction between good guys, the liberal Left within the Green Line, and the bad
guys, paramilitary groups in the settlements over there, is artificial. True, many of
the settlers are land robbers. But let not the Left use this in order to massage their
conscience as was done following Rabin's assassination.6 Yossi Sarid, the former left-
wing Meretz Party leader, for example, formulated the connection between Hebron
and Jerusalem as one between two different countries: The State of Judea and the
State of Israel.7 Are they really two countries? If that were the case, who is
providing the settlers with the economic and physical infrastructure? Who is providing
them with the infrastructures for water, sewerage, electricity, and telephone lines?
Who is providing them with health services and education? What is the role of
organizations such as the Histadrut (Israel's General Federation of Labor), the Jewish
National Fund, the Jewish Agency, and the United Jewish Appeal as secondary
contractors administering the occupation? How many thousands of dunam did the
Board of Trustees of the Jewish National Fund acquire in areas "of strategic value" in
the West Bank?8 How is it that we have an independent Council for Higher Education
for institutions of higher learning in the occupied territories? Who teaches the soldiers
of the occupation, or the settlers and their children, in universities in Israel? Who
supplies the legal infrastructure for the destruction of tens of thousands of Palestinian
homes since 1967? Who builds and paves the roads that crosscut the West Bank?
Who drives on the new bypass "apartheid" road 443 from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and
back? Who speaks about the settlers as "our brothers"? And I haven't mentioned the
soldiers, who come from good homes in Tel-Aviv, or the security inspectors who
implement racist practices of the country at the airport, the demographers who make

4
a career out of counting the heads of Arabs, or the correspondents of the occupation,
the majority of whom claim to be liberals. The settlements are not a spontaneous and
random project of a few eccentric people. There is here state planning into which
Messianism has been inserted, and not the contrary.

VII. A Good German is a Dead German

In 1945, Hannah Arendt wrote, "A good German is a dead German" -- an expression
common in Germany during the war. In racist Israel the expression has been pegged
onto the Arabs, but its meaning distorted. Hannah Arendt wanted to explain that in
Nazi Germany the distinction between good and bad people was not possible, just as
Adenauer's "zero hour" was problematic. Arendt asked how it is possible that millions
of Germans became overnight "normal" because of a political decision. How is it that
millions of Germans were cleansed of guilt in the eyes of Israelis and only the
Palestinian Mufti remained a Nazi in the historiographic consciousness? In the
Germany of 1945, an expression circulated that only a German found hung on a tree
was a good German precisely because the Nazis had hung him. And what about the
rest of the Germans? It is not clear. Here, in Israel, thank God, they have yet to
hang any opponent of the regime, but there is no need. The occupation is an integral
part of the society in Israel, not a foreign implant. It is enough to observe how the
government planners of the disengagement from the Gaza Strip threatened the
settlers that the country and the corporations "will turn off the faucets" -- that is, the
health clinics, the bank branches, the gasoline companies, electricity, and schools.9
Israeli society is both the source and outcome of the occupation.

VIII. Old-Fashioned Values

Not many in Israel noticed that the settlers from Gush Katif (a bloc of 16 Israeli
settlements which was situated in the southern Gaza Strip), who struggled against the
evacuation, received, not unexpectedly, reinforcement from the "salt of the earth,"
the veteran workers' settlement movement. At Moshav Nahalal in the Galilee, about
400 people (once erstwhile settlers) from this movement announced the
establishment of a headquarters to struggle against the evacuation. One of the
organizers of this initiative, hailing from Moshav Moledet, said: "Gush Katif arose from
the cooperative settlement movement of the moshavim and kibbutzim. It founded the
Labor Party. We know what it means to establish a settlement and hold onto the Land
of Israel." The coordinator of Kibbutz Hamadia added: "We want to signal to the

5
government that it is still possible to believe in old-fashioned values."10 But for the
present moment, as historian Idit Zertal and journalist Akiva Eldar show in their book
The Masters of the Land: the Settlers and the State of Israel 1967–2004, the settlers
in the occupied territories are doing the dirty work directly. And the filth which the
settlers are carrying out under state patronage is anchored deeply in the political
theology of the workers' movement.

IX. The Zionist Border Regime

It is possible to distinguish between two types of border regimes. One is the

neoliberal border regime which is based on lowering economic borders (easing the
entry of capital and cheap labor) while raising the political borders (making more
difficult granting rights). Migrant workers are a classic example. Only rarely will they
obtain political rights. These borders find expression in administering not only Israeli
citizenship, but also additional spheres, like the Jewish body and racial purity. Last
year it came to our notice that Chinese migrant workers had signed a contract which
forbids them from having sexual relations with Jewish women. The second border
regime is based on blurring the external political borders while raising the internal
borders -- be they national, economic, status, or ethnic. This border regime can be
called a global colonial one. Israel answers to both models of border regimes. Why
does this occur? The reason is simple: the distinction between "external" and
"internal" in Israel is artificial.11 Rejection of internal borders would almost collapse
the Israeli regime. The internal borders are means to stop the collapse of Zionism
within the space within which it lives.

X. External Borders Melt, Internal Borders Harden

The more the external boundaries dissolve and become blurred ("The Separation
Fence," "The West Bank Barrier" or "The Wall," "The Philadelphia Route" on the border
between Gaza and Egypt, "disengagement," "withdrawal," and "reinforcement"), the
internal boundaries between social classes and ethnic groups harden. We deduced
this when we examined the feudal regime of privileges that administers Israeli
territory. Within the Green Line, not one new Palestinian settlement has been built
since 1948; many communities remain legally unrecognized. Between 1995 and
2001, only 0.25 percent of state lands were transferred for Arab use. The amount of
land under Arab ownership ranges between 2.5 and 3.5 percent of all the land in the
country.12 Palestinian citizens of Israel have no access to land, to the Civil

6
Administration's Planning Department, Israel Lands Authority (the holding company
for most of the land in the country), or para-state Zionist organizations that
administer lands on a racist basis, such as the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish
Agency. The distribution of land in the Galilee shows the ethnic distortion within
Jewish society as well as between Jews and Arabs. Sixty-three percent of the land in
the Galilee is under the jurisdiction of regional councils, the majority being Ashkenazi
Jews (of European origins), who make up six percent of the population. In contrast,
21 percent of the land is under the jurisdiction of local municipalities, the majority
being the Mizrahi Jews (originally hailing from the Muslim world). Land under the
jurisdiction of local Arab municipalities comes to only 16 percent, while the Arab
population makes up 72 percent of the total population of the Galilee. Recently, we
are witnessing a significant increase in "border disputes" within the country.13 There
are not only political conflicts on land resources; they denote the glaring distortion
upon which the Zionist ideology is based -- expansion by appointing its typical
representatives (regional councils) in order to hold on to assets, and prevention of the
expansion of "others," mostly Palestinians but also Mizrahi Jews.

XI. Internal Borders

The distorted spatial distribution finds expression in the allocation of lands between
the regional councils and the local authorities, in accordance with their taxation
potential. While more than 70 percent of the country's population lives in urban
areas, the regional councils -- the Jewish Ashkenazi feudal aristocracy of the Israeli
republic -- control about 80 percent of the country's land, not only agricultural areas
but also industrial areas housing many industries with high taxation potential.14 The
regional councils maintain an almost total control over land reserves in Israel and the
territories with the highest tax potential. The Tamar Regional Council, for example,
has an inhabitant/land reserves ratio of 1:1000 in comparison with the development
town of Dimona. It is a good idea to read once more this data. For every kilometer of
land for a resident of Dimona, the resident of the Tamar Regional Council has 1000
kilometers. Moreover, all that yields money is within the jurisdiction of the Tamar
Regional Council: the nuclear reactor near Dimona, the Dead Sea Works, the hotels
along the Dead Sea shore, gasoline stations. It would be enough if some of these
were transferred to Dimona in order that the development town would no longer be
dependent on the state. Such is the situation in many development towns and
Palestinian settlements. This spatial control, which is constituted by political,

7
economic, and cultural control, amazingly agrees with the internal grammar of the
Zionist border regime. This is also called internal colonialism, that is to say, control
over space through ethnic and racist segregation.

XII. Building the Wall

The main purpose of the Wall which Israel is building in the West Bank is not to
protect Israeli civilians from terrorist attacks. The Wall is clearly political, and the
international community easily recognized this. It is a wall whose purpose is to annex
occupied lands. It is a wall that creates expulsion (population "transfer") of
Palestinians trapped between the Green Line and the route of the barrier. It is a
barrier which upsets any possibility of creating territorial continuity for areas under
Palestinian sovereignty. The Wall is not a border between two countries. It moves on
its own and marks itself. We find similar walls within the Green Line, in Lod, Ramle
and Jas'r el-Zarka. They allow physical segregation between Jews and Arabs in mixed
cities. But most of all, the Wall expresses the internal colonialism in Israel.

XIII. Between State and Society

It is customary for us to distinguish between state and society and even to formulate
a connection between them in different ways. Members of the leftist Meretz Party and
the Peace Now Movement once proposed a superficial and limiting formulation:
"Money for the Neighborhoods, Not for the Settlements." This slogan is a false one:
the monetary and fiscal policy in Israel is not related to the occupation, but is
generated by the American neoliberal ideology, which exists independently. Dani
Gutwein proposed another formulation, according to which the welfare state of Israel
(if it ever existed) was moved from within the Green Line to the territories, for Jews
only.15 There, the settlers receive all that is ascribed to the classic welfare state: full
employment, subsidized housing, health, and subsidized education. The movement of
(non-ideological) settlers to the territories stems from the inequality within the Green
Line. The end of the occupation goes by the reduction of inequality among Jews
within the Green Line. These two formulations (Peace Now's version and Gutwein's)
are based on instituting the separation between state and society. What I am trying
to say is that state and society are one and the same. What is customary to see as
social, for example, changes in internal borders, is also political, because these are
based on the same principles.

8
XIV. The Metaphysics of Inequality in Israel

In his well-known Discourse upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality
among Mankind, Rousseau wrote on the issue of boundaries. "The first man who,
having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying, 'This is mine' and found people
simple enough to believe him was the real founder [ . . . ] [of inequality]. How many
crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race have
been spared by the one who [ . . . ] [had indicated this lie about fencing the fence]."
Rousseau set out to secularize inequality, just as Marx did afterwards. They removed
inequality from theology and metaphysics and situated it in society itself. This is also
the case for changes in borders. If the existing municipal boundaries were eliminated
and redefined, not according to the Zionist principles of occupation, then a large share
of the inequality in Israel would disappear. But this is not going to happen so fast,
because until then it will be explained away in a metaphysical manner. They will say
that the poor don't work; that they are poor because they have large families; they
will grind out innumerable, unfounded economic truths, such as "a rise in the
minimum wage produces unemployment"; and they will also quote the ultimate
metaphysical argument "We admit that there were prejudices in the 1950s, but what
do you want today? Why are the Mizrahi Jews unable to extricate themselves?" The
prejudices were not only in the 1950s; they exist here and now, and the border
regime is one central example. This regime reproduces the ethnic-national distortion
here and there. It's the same regime -- an occupation regime directed inward against
society in Israel.

XV. Total Struggle Against the Occupation

The struggle against the occupation must be total. It must be an anti-colonial

struggle that will connect between external colonialism and internal colonialism. It
cannot separate issues of inequality from issues of political justice, or the opposite. It
means boycotting companies that produce goods for perpetuating the occupation,
such as those companies which produce goods while oppressing their workers in Israel
or outside of it. It is a struggle which understands the occupation in its totality. Not a
separation between here and there, not a separation between state and society, not a
separation between politics and culture, but an outlook which sees the occupation as
an inseparable part of the imperial history in the Middle East.

9
Notes

1 In this context, see Shenhav, Yehouda, 2001, "The Red Line of the Green Line," in Ofir, Adir (ed), Real-
Time, Tel Aviv, pp. 205-210 (Hebrew).

2 See the excellent study of Kemp, Adriana, 1997, Talking Boundaries: The Making of Political Territory
in Israel 1949-1957, Ph.D. Thesis (Hebrew), Tel Aiv University.

3 See Eyal, Gil, 2006, The Disenchantment of the Orient: Expertise in Arab Affairs and the Israeli State,
Stanford University Press, Stanford.

4 See Shenhav, Yehouda, 2000, "Does There Exist an Israeli Sociology," Israeli Sociology, Vol. 4, 675-680
(Hebrew).

5 Baruch Kimmerling, 1992, "Sociology, Ideology, and Nation Building: The Palestinians and their
Meaning in Israeli Sociology," American Sociological Review, Vol. 57, 446-460.

6 In this context see Ariella Azoulay who challenges the ideological setup which imposes a choice between
"the incitement thesis" of the political left and "the weeds thesis" of the political right. To Azoulay, this
division disconnects the assassination of Rabin from the mechanisms producing violence in Israel society,
common to left- and right-wing people, the religious and secular, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews, men and
women. These mechanisms do not break down the public into good guys and bad guys; they are not
polarized between top-down supervision (one system) and an alert democracy (the other system). Azoulay,
Ariella, 2000, "The Ghost of Yigal Amir," Theory and Criticism, Vol. 17, 9-26 (Hebrew).

7 Sarid, Yossi, "Excuse Me, The Pain Is Over," Ha'aretz (Part 2) (Hebrew), 24 January 2005. For criticism,
see Zertal, Idit, Eldar, Akiva, 2005, The Masters of the Land (Hebrew).

8 For example Barakat, Amiram, "Despite its Declarations, the Jewish National Fund Acquired Tens of
Thousands of Dunams of Land in the Territories," Ha'aretz (Hebrew), 14 February 2005, p. 5A.

9 Report from the adviser to the Primer Minister on closing the valves. See Harel, Amos, "On July 20
Electricity and Water Will Be Cut Off," Ha'aretz (Hebrew), 22 February 2005, p. 4A.

10 Hassun, Nir, "Moshav and Kibbutz Members Established Headquarters against the Disengagement,"
Ha'aretz (Hebrew), 15 February 2005, p. 4A.

11 Lev Grinberg has written on the relationship between the inside and outside with reference to the
concept of democracy. He is of the opinion that there is a connection between the absence of democracy in
military rule over Palestinians in the occupied territories and the limitations of democracy within Israeli

10
society proper. He also used the concepts "imagined democracy" and "imagined borders." See his
"Imagined Democracy in Israel," Israeli Sociology (Hebrew), Vol. 2/1, 209-240.

12 For detailed statistics, see Yiftachel, Oren and Kedar, Sandy, 2003, "On Power and Land: The Israeli
Land Regime," in Shenhav, Yehouda (ed), Space, Land, Home: The Origin of the Israeli Territorial Regime,
Tel-Aviv (Hebrew), pp. 18-52.

13 Hakeshet Hademocratit (Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow), Nov. 2000, "Land and Social Justice: The
Entrenchment of the Agricultural Rights in the Land Compared to the Rights of Public Housing Tenants,"
Position Paper.

14 These statistics are based on Ravit Hananel's research. She also prepared for the Hakeshet
Hademocratit the working paper on "The Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow for Reforms in Amending Municipal
Borders," Tel Aviv, Nov. 2004.

15 Gutwein, Dani, 2004, "Notes on the Class Foundations of the Occupation," Theory and Criticism, Vol.
24, 203-214 (Hebrew). See News from Within, Vol. XXII, No. 4, April 2006.

11
 Mediterranean Quarterly
A Journal of Global Issues
Duke University Press
Volume 12, Number 3, Summer 2001
pages 128-143

The Synagogue as the Civil Society, or How We Can Understand the Shas
Party

By Omar Kamil

We teach our children the things that are relevant to them: Jewish history, Sephardi
religious customs, Torah, Mishna, Jewish values, and not the French Revolution.

—Senior Shas activist in an interview in Jerusalem, 19 April 2000

IN THE SOUTH OF ISRAEL, far from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem but not very far from
Beer Sheva, lies the poor, sleepy town of Yeruham. In the 1999 Knesset elections, the
results for Yeruham were clear: One Israel, 8.6 percent; Likud, 14.3 percent; Shas,
30.1 percent. Yeruham, which recently made headlines in Israel for its record
unemployment figures (12.5 percent), was established in the 1950s as a
1
"development town" and is inhabited today mostly by the families of immigrants and
their descendants from Arab and Islamic countries, the so-called Sephardim.2
Constituting about half the Israeli Jewish population,3 the Sephardim are regarded as
being relatively poor and working-class, having a low social status, often living far
from the main cities, and considering themselves religiously traditional (mesortim).
Politically, in the 1950s they supported the dominant Ashkenazi-linked establishment,
represented in Mapai. Since the middle of 1960s they have become a major political
force by solidly voting for the Right, especially for the Herut (freedom), later Likud.4
Neither the Israeli political Left nor Right, which are both Ashkenazi, has succeeded in
integrating the Sephardim into Israeli political, social, and economic life. The new
hope of the Sephardim is called the Shas Party.5 Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say
that Israeli political, social, and cultural development since 1983 cannot be fully
comprehended without understanding the genesis and development of the power of
Shas, the haredi Sephardi party.6 Formed in 1983, Shas won four Knesset seats in its

1
first appearance at the polls. In the 17 May 1999 general election, it won a staggering
17 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, only two less than Likud, the second largest party
(see table 1). It attracted support among the Sephardim who live in the country's
poorest development towns and neighborhoods.

Table 1
Gains by the Shas Party in Israeli Elections since 1984

Year of Number of Percentage Knesset

elections votes of overall Seats
vote

1984 63,600 3.1 4

1988 107,000 4.7 6

1992 130,000 4.9 6

1996 260,000 8.7 10

1999 430,676 13.0 17

Source: Yoav Peled "Towards a Redefinition of Jewish Nationalism in Israel? The

Enigma of Shas," Ethnic and Racial Studies 21, no.3 (1998): 703; Knesset homepage
at, www.knesset.gov.il. [Web Editor's Note—In the 2003 Knesset Shas lost 6 seats but
still held a respectable position even as the liberal parties made strong recoveries.]

In this essay I aim to explain the social success of Shas among the Sephardim. Within
the framework of the civil society debate, I argue that Shas offers the Sephardi what
the Israeli state fails to do: integration into Israeli society through a network of
educational and social service institutions. Adopting political strategies akin to those
used by Islamist movements throughout the Arab world, Shas penetrated the Israeli
state by bypassing it. Through its activities, the leadership of Shas aims to create a
new Jewish cultural identity based on the Sephardi Jewish custom (minhag).

The Civil Society Debate in the Middle East

THE TERM civil society has had different meanings, not only in a theoretical
framework but also in various social contexts.7 However, the expression is used today

2
to indicate how groups, clubs, and organizations act as a buffer between state power
and the citizen's life.
Civil society does not work as a "bubble" within the state but is strongly related to it.
It cannot be regarded as a voluntary association within the state but as a state-free
zone, with an alternative concept of social relations and social orders.8 With regard to
the religious institutions and their functions as a part of civil societies, the debate on
civil society in the Middle East, particularly, deals with the role of Islamist
organizations.9 These include the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Jordan, and Syria and
the National Salvation Front in Algeria, for example. According to Baruch Kimmerling,
where the state defines itself in Islamic terms, civil society defines itself in secular or
other nonreligious terms, and vice-versa. The rise of civil societies in the Middle East
has led to growing interest in state-society relations. Why does the state in the Middle
East allow the development or the very existence of such societies? The answer to this
differs from state to state.
In some societies the state is too weak to be able to prevent the appearance of a civil
society; in other cases the state feels powerful enough not to perceive itself as
threatened by the civil societies. However, the most interesting cases are those where
the state succeeded in recruiting or coopting the civil society and its leadership to act
as the overt or covert agents of the state.10
The debate over civil society deals almost exclusively with Arab and Islamic societies
in the Middle East. I argue that the different organizations of the Shas Party function
as a part of the civil society in Israel and were not only tolerated but even supported,
at least from the middle of 1980s until the middle of 1990s, by the Israeli state. Thus,
Shas' civil society was in a way autonomous so long as its goals did not conflict with
the interests of the state. Only since the second half of the 1990s has the Israeli state
taken more control of social and religious activities of Shas.
Furthermore, I argue that the civil society of the Shas Party—in contrast to the
conventional sociological concept of society—is an active entity and not just a passive
aggregate of people that possess some imagined collective identity. The leadership of
the Shas Party aims to gain a kind of social reward for itself and the Sephardim as
beneficiaries of the civil society of Shas. They hope to become a part of the
establishment through their party's social activities and to move the Sephardim from
a peripheral status to the center of Israeli society.

3
The Israeli Ashkenazi State and
Its Internal Other, the Sephardim

TO UNDERSTAND why Shas is attractive to the Sephardim, one has to go back to

the early years of the Israeli state, when hundreds of thousands of Jews from North
Africa and the Middle East were pouring into the fledgling country. These new arrivals
met a dominant and seemingly impregnable Ashkenazi establishment bent on shaping
a "new" Jew, who would be secular and Western in outlook.11 In the process, the
country's leaders ignored the cultural mores and traditions of the Sephardi Jews. Also,
many of the Sephardim were sent to far-flung, undeveloped regions of the country,
such as the Negev, where they were housed in transit camps and where infrastructure
was thin and jobs scarce. Social dislocation soon followed as the family structure
began to disintegrate and a growing number of young Sephardi men became involved
in crime. The Ashkenazim who had established the state strove for a position for
Israel in the Western world. The Sephardim, whatever Westernization they may have
undergone, were disturbingly Oriental to Ashkenazi Jews. They were dark, they
continued to adhere to much of their tradition, and their language had the guttural
characteristics that German Maskilim12 had carefully removed from the Hebrew
language.13
The Ashkenazi Left, which dominates political, social, economic, and cultural life in
Israel, was torn between two cherished identity projects. On the one hand, they were
deeply committed to Westernization, and the massive influx of Jews from the Levant
could, as they saw it, drag Jewish society back to its not-too-distant Oriental state. On
the other hand, they were equally deeply committed to free immigration of all Jews
and hoped to make the new Oriental immigrants the state's Jewish laborers, and so
they could not solve the problem by restricting the Sephardi influx. Indeed, the
inferior standing of the Sephardim in Israeli society is not anchored in their supposed
traditional Oriental culture but rather in the subordinate nature of their early
encounters with the Ashkenazim in Israel. The structure of the relations between the
Ashkenazim and Sephardim is a structure of dependency: senior positions in the
business world, control of capital, dominance of the political institutions, and power to
make decisions that determine the major directions of the development of the society
as a whole are all in the hands of the Ashkenazim. The Sephardim, by and large,
possess no capital, provide low-rank labor, and have relatively little representation in

4
the corridors of political power. Consequentially, the Sephardim constitute a periphery
to an Ashkenazi core.14
The Sephardim arrived in Israel as refugees, stripped of their material possessions,
confused, and dispossessed. The educated among them were also deeply committed
to Westernizing themselves and intended to underline their social distance from
Israel's Arab neighbors. To construct them as Oriental, the Ashkenazi establishment
used the same symbolic discourse that the Sephardi elite had themselves adopted,
one which resonated with their sense of self. And just as the Ashkenazi internalization
of the East-West dichotomy caused them to exclude Sephardim, so the Sephardi
internalization of the same dichotomy paralyzed their ability to resist their own
exclusion. Sephardi leaders not only believed in the construction of themselves as
Eastern, they also believed that their Oriental identity was a legitimate reason for an
inferior social position.15
Under the dominance of the Ashkenazi Left, Sephardim occupied a peripheral position
in Israeli society and developed a hostility to those in dominance. The Israeli right
wing under the leadership of the Ashkenazi politician Menachim Begin made use of
this hostility. Begin brought the Sephardim onto his side in his political rivalry with the
Ashkenazi Left. The Sephardim pinned their hopes on Begin, and they supported him
up until the end of Ashkenazi political dominance in the Knesset elections of 1977. But
at the beginning of the 1980s it was already clear to the Sephardim that Begin was
not going to change their peripheral position in Israeli society, and they sought for an
alternative political or social power to invest their hopes in anew.
Up until today the Israeli Ashkenazi establishment has been—according to the
Sephardim point of view—sorely lacking in understanding. Stories of Yemenite Jews
having their side locks cut off16 and of immigrants being sprayed with DDT on arrival
in Israel became legendary.17 The sense of shame these immigrants felt about their
identity and culture has been passed on to their children. One successful second-
generation Sephardi public relations executive told me how his father used to hum Om
Kolthom songs only in the privacy of his bathroom because he was too embarrassed
to be heard humming the tunes of the legendary Egyptian singer in public. He also
recalled the shame he felt when his grandmother fetched him from school dressed in
traditional clothing. A young Sephardi journalist remembers how she was
embarrassed to mention her family name when she first arrived at the university
because she feared it identified her as Sephardi and might handicap her chances.
Moroccan-born David Levy, a former foreign minister who rose from being a

5
construction worker to the top ranks of the Likud leadership before recently teaming
up with Labor leader Ehud Barak, once recalled how, when he and his friends were
working in the kibbutz fields as hired help in the early years of the state, the kibbutz
bosses callously ignored their requests to move their pail of drinking water out of the
sun and into the shade.
To sum up, in their endeavor to Westernize Israeli society, the Ashkenazi
establishment believed that the Sephardim had the potential to change the project
fundamentally through Levantization. Struggling for a way of incorporating the new
immigrants without losing ground on the Westernization project, the Ashkenazim
resolved the dilemma by integrating the Sephardim into the lower levels of Israeli
society, where their impact on the emerging identity, culture, and society would be
minimal.

Shas as the Sephardi Alternative

SINCE ITS ESTABLISHMENT in 1983, Shas has been a stable and increasingly
powerful presence in the Israeli political and social arenas. Its electoral and social
successes bewilder not only journalists but also social scientists.18 The reason for this
confusion lies in the conventional methods that have been used for the analysis of
Israeli political parties and interethnic Jewish relations.
There are three errors of analysis in the present literature about Shas:
1. The dichotomy of religious-Zionist versus religious-a(nti)-Zionist (haredi), which is
usually used in Israeli social and political science to explain and analyze Israeli
religious parties, is irrelevant in the case of Shas. This dichotomy is a product of
Ashkenazi Judaism and helps us to understand only the religious Ashkenazim's view of
their own relationship to Zionism and the state of Israel. Shas is a product of Sephardi
Judaism, which is completely different to the Ashkenazi one. In order to understand
the development of Shas as political and social movement, we must move away from
this conventional analysis and try to understand Shas on its own terms, the Sephardi
terms.
2. The labeling of Shas as a haredi party shows how analysis of the party is still in its
infancy.19 The fact that most of Shas' leaders are graduates from educational
institutions of the haredi party of Agudat Jesrael does not justify the classification of
Shas, itself, as a haredi party. Haredi parties do not join any government coalitions in
which they would bear collective ministerial responsibility for the rule of secular law,

6
as opposed to the halacha, Jewish religious law. Unlike all true haredi parties, Shas
has fully participated at cabinet level in all Israeli governments since the party's
establishment. Also significantly different from other haredi parties is Shas' attitude
toward Zionism. Whereas the conventional haredi parties reject Zionism as the
ideology of the state of Israel, Shas aims to redefine a Zionist ideology based on
secular elements into an ideology that is based only on the Sephardi interpretation of
Judaism, the Sephardi minhag.
3. Some scholars see Shas as a right-wing, extreme party, while others see Shas as
moderate and left-oriented. Scholars of the first group substantiate their view by
referring to the attitude of Shas toward domestic Israeli affairs. For the second group
of scholars, the Response of pikuah nefesh20 of Rabbi Ovadia Yossef, the head of the
Shas Council of Sages, serves as a basis for their opinion.
The political behavior of the Shas party cannot be pigeonholed as either Right or Left
(commonly referred to as "extremist" and "moderate," respectively, in Israeli political
science circles). Shas has joined Israeli governments of both the Left and the Right
and has sat in government with the secularist-left Meretz party. The presence of
Meretz members in the cabinet was a factor cited by other religious (Ashkenazi)
parties among their reasons for not joining the government.
To sum up, I stress that the leadership of Shas take a pragmatic political course that
allows the party to place itself outside the left-right dichotomy and to find a modus
vivendi with all other Israeli parties.
For some scholars, Shas embodies a Sephardi-ethnic party with a message of a
separatist nature. However, the fact that the bulk of Shas voters are Sephardim does
not mean that Shas is an ethnic party with an ethnic-separatist message. The
adjective Sephardi has for Shas only a religious meaning. Certainly, Shas aims to
reestablish the dominance of Sephardi Jewish religious rulings against the currently
dominant "other." That other, however, is not the Ashkenazim in general but the
Zionist, especially the Labor Zionist establishment and the completely politicized
Ashkenazi religious establishment, which has marginalized—in various ways—the
Sephardim since the beginning of the Zionist settlement of Palestine.21 Rabbi Yossef's
wisdom and simultaneously his secret of success lies in his ability to mobilize his
supporters not against the Ashkenazi ideology in general but rather against the
secular and non-Jewish components of that ideology.

7
Former Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel and spiritual head of the Shas Party, Rabbi
Ovadia Yosef,
from ha-Rav 'Ovadyah by Ronen Kedem,Yedi'ot Aharonot Books, 2002, page 88.

The leadership of Shas stresses the social, political, and economic inequality between
the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim. As a political party and a social movement, Shas
holds to the idea that not just the Ashkenazi Left but both the whole Ashkenazi
Zionist-secular establishment and the Ashkenazi religious establishment are
responsible for the peripheral position of the Sephardim in Israeli society. Both secular
and religious Ashkenazi establishments have cut the Sephardim off from their cultural,
religious, and traditional roots and placed them in inferior and peripheral status in the
society.
Shas "reveals" to the Sephardim an alternative way, in which all Jews of Israel, both
Ashkenazim and Sephardim, can be unified under the crown of the Torah as it is
interpreted in Sephardi Judaism. This different way of Shas is—in the eyes of the
8
Sephardim—not just a spiritual and moral matter. The Sephardim hope thus to benefit
socially and economically, and because of that, they support the Shas Party with
enthusiasm.

The Synagogue as Civil Society

THE SYNAGOGUE was for Sephardim in Arab and Islamic countries more than a
place of worship. Sephardi synagogues had a social dimension, for the entire social life
of the Sephardim took place there. Community activities such as marriages, exchange
of information, social gatherings, medical care, religious study, and so on took place
at the synagogue. Membership of a synagogue conveyed to the Sephardim a feeling of
unity and security.
When the Sephardim came to Israel, they encountered a secularized Israeli society
that bewildered them. Looking for security and a confidential atmosphere, the
Sephardim turned to the Ashkenazi synagogues, which were completely
institutionalized and politicized and were not able to offer the Sephardim any kind of
support. Today, synagogues under the control of Shas offer the Sephardim everything
that the Ashkenazi synagogues were not able to offer then and function as a social
and religious home.
The civil society of Shas is self-contained in its own community and centered in
synagogues based on Jewish fraternities. The recipe for success of these civil societies
is very simple: offer help to everyone who needs it. In order to realize this motto,
Shas established an independent educational system, religious schools, synagogues,
and mikvaot (ritual baths). It rehabilitated delinquents and drug addicts, provided
support for large families, created jobs, and improved housing.22
Where the state fails to offer acceptable living conditions in the peripheries and slums,
Shas' civil society is very active. For one of the Likud's most active loyalists in Beer
Sheva,23 Yossi Gozlan, Shas turned the south of the country into its first priority
national project.
They [the Shas members] are everywhere . . . Every time there is a problem in Be'er
Sheva or in any of the neighboring towns, one of their ministers is sure to show up
and offer help. They know how to take care of their own. It would be no exaggeration
if I were to tell you that when the next elections roll around, they will increase their

9
Knesset representation to 20 or more seats. It's very simple. Shas does what the rest
of the country is sick of doing.24
The relations between the civil society of Shas and the Israeli state can be divided into
two phases. The first phase began in the second half of the 1980s and continued until
the middle of 1990s. In this period the state was absolutely sure that it had Shas and
its civil society under control. Based on a model of state-society relations, Gal Levi has
analyzed the behavior of Shas toward the Israeli state and vice versa. According to
Levi, the state sees Shas and therefore its civil society as acting in the interest of the
state.25 In order to "beat" the extreme national militant-religious movement Gush
Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful)26 and the left-leaning ethnic identity promoted by
secular Sephardi movements, the state welcomed and supported the moderate
traditional religious tendency of the Shas Party and its civil society as an alternative.
Shas received financial support from both left-wing and right-wing governments in
Israel and with the help of this money extended the activities of its civil society.
Indeed, the appearance of Shas on the Israeli stage led to a reduction in the number
of supporters of Gush Emunim and the Sephardic ultrasecular groups.
No Israeli government has been able to engage in conflict with this new political and
social power, since Shas has consolidated its position in Israeli social and political life.
Because the two big parties in Israel, Likud and Labor, are not ready to govern
together, Shas has managed to hold the balance of the power and consequently
increased its electoral record over the past seventeen years. The price that Shas has
consistently demanded for its participation in government has been considerable
financial support, which flowed mostly into the social activities. With the governmental
funds, Shas has been able to build an excellent network of social and educational
activities under the name El hama'ayan (To the Wellspring), which is represented
throughout the country. The Israeli state was overburdened and welcomed volunteer
activities from all religious parties, because such activities are not perceived as
subversive to the state and its basic interests.
But Shas felt powerful enough to take a dissident stance and tried through its civil
society to realize its version of an Israeli identity based on Sephardi custom among
the Israeli public. This aim of Shas contradicts those of the state, which always
foresaw an Israeli identity based only on the values of Zionism.
In the second half of 1990s, the state began to see Shas as a threat to its interests.
The Israeli state's answer to the activities of the Shas civil society went in two
directions: first, to restrict state financial support of Shas, and second, to declare the

10
improving of the social status of the Sephardim as the most urgent task of the state.
In order to wither Shas, the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak began
by putting brakes on the state's financial contribution to the Shas civil society. This
drying-out policy was not effective, because Shas as one of the central political forces
in the land threw its whole political weight into the fight against it.
It was also Barak who placed the social problems of the Sephardim at the top of the
Labor Party's agenda. In June 1997, in a surprise move by Labor, its convention was
held not on its home ground in Tel Aviv but on the arid soil of the development town
Netivot, which is inhabited by Sephardim. On that occasion Barak, who succeeded
Simon Peres as party leader, gave an important opening speech in which he begged
forgiveness of the Sephardi immigrants on behalf of the Labor movement and
promised to do all he could to improve their disadvantaged status in Israeli society.27
After his election as prime minister in May 1999, however, Barak concentrated on the
peace process and neglected a social agenda. The failure of Barak's government to
take effective measures to improve the social life of the Sephardim has meant more
and more success for Shas civil society.

The Message

ON KANFEI NESHARIM STREET, near the haredi Har Nof neighborhood in

Jerusalem, is located the headquarters of the Shas' educational network, called
Ma'ayan Hahinuch Hatorani (the Wellspring of Torah Education). A group of very
active rabbis manages the network. These include Yehuda Cohen, head of the Yakir-
Yerusalalyim (Knowledge of Jerusalem) yeshiva; Eliahu Abba Shaul, son of Rabbi
Benzion Abba Shaul, who was previously the president of the network; Reuven
Dangur and Shmuel Pinhasi (head of a yeshiva and rabbi of a Jerusalem synagogue,
respectively); Rueven Elbaz, head of the Or Haim (Light of the Life) institution; and
the administration's chairman, Moshe Maya, formerly a Shas member of the Knesset
and currently member of the party's Council of Torah Sages.28 With a budget of
approximately $50 million and with more than forty thousand children in
kindergartens, elementary schools, and other educational institutions all over Israel,
Ma'ayan Hahinuch Hatorani is a serious challenger to the state educational system.
According to Shas figures released in early 1999, the party's educational network
includes 146 elementary schools nationwide, 682 kindergartens, 50 junior high

11
schools, and 86 day-care centers. Shas also claims to have a total of twenty-four
hundred school teachers, principals, and supervisors and an additional twenty-two
hundred kindergarten teachers and teacher aides. Education ministry figures are
lower, but they, too, testify to the vibrancy of the Shas educational network.
With what Yossi Dahan has called the ideology of "chocolate milk and a roll,"29
Ma'ayan Hahinuch Hatorani attracts more and more children from secular and
traditional religious families. The fact that these schools offer low tuition fees, free
transportation, meals, and a full school day—state-run schools end instruction at 1
P.M.—make them very attractive for working parents. For a fee of just $250 per
month, far less than any public school, Shas schools offer a school day three hours
longer than the public schools'.30 The Shas system provides students with
transportation to and from school and a hot lunch at very low prices, sometimes even
free, depending on the number of children in the family and the parents' financial
situation. Further, these schools offer adult-education classes, tutors for Bar Mitzvahs,
women's support groups, youth activities, immigrant absorption programs, and
scholarships for yeshiva students.31
Successive governments have been happy to buy Shas' political support since 1983 in
exchange for allowing the party to build a vibrant educational network that is state
funded but not state supervised and in which pupils are encouraged to show
allegiance to rabbis rather than the state. Indeed, just one visit to any school run by
Ma'ayan Hahinuch Hatorani is enough to gain an understanding of the aims and goals
of Shas. Inside the classrooms, the walls are decorated with pictures of famous
Sephardi rabbis. In the spot normally reserved for a portrait of the president or prime
minister, pictures of Sephardi sages adorn the walls, including the mandatory poster
of Ovadia Yossef, the spiritual leader of the Shas party, and a picture of cabbalist
Yitzhak Kedouri. There are also quotations from the Old Testament. These images
reflect the goals and aims of the Shas school system: the revival of the Sephardi
religious custom, which should then serve as the basis of Sephardi cultural identity as
Shas understands it. The tools for achieving this goal are to be found in the
curriculum.
In the schools run by Ma'ayan Hahinuch Hatorani, religious studies are given priority.
The school day begins with the morning shaharit prayer. Lessons begin about forty-
five minutes later. The subjects: Mishna, Halacha, Talmud, Hebrew language, and
Sephardi Jewish history. Limudei holini (secular studies), which include English,
mathematics, natural sciences, geography, and history but not sociology or

12
philosophy, are less important and are covered in three hours per day. In state-
system schools that have adapted the long school day, the afternoon period is used to
offer students help with homework, tutoring, and various extracurricular activities. In
the Shas schools, students devote time to secular studies only after a full day of
religious studies.
The goal of the Ma'ayan Hahinuch Hatorani is clear: while the state school system
offers the "sons of the Israeli people" non-Jewish studies, the Shas school system
educates a new generation into Sephardi Jewish values.

Conclusion

THIS ESSAY has looked at the social activities of the Shas Party within the
framework of the civil society debate. It has explained the social successes of the
Shas Party within a model of state-society relationship. According to this model, the
state assisted in the creation of Shas as a moderate alternative to both the militant
Zionism of the radical religious nationalist Gush Emunim movement and the
"ultrasecular," leftist ethnic identity promoted by the secular Sephardi movement. In
addition, the state has been happy to buy Shas' political support over the past
seventeen years by allowing the party to build a vibrant social and educational
network that is state funded but not state supervised. On the other hand, as the
debate on civil society in the Middle East has shown, Shas has built its civil society for
and with the help of the Sephardim, an ethnic and peripheral group within Jewish
Israeli society. The Shas Party offered a new cultural identity that attracted
Sephardim. Through this new identity the Sephardim hope to improve their social,
political, and economic status in Israel and to move from their current peripheral
position to the center of the society.
With its social and educational network, Shas offers the Sephardim in the less
developed towns and in the slums and poor neighborhoods of the big cities different
kinds of educational, social, and economic support. It aims to challenge the state's
social order through a new Jewish-Israeli identity based on Sephardi customs.
The continued growth of Shas may depend on the type of economic and social policies
the state of Israel chooses to adopt in the coming years. The present policy of
vigorous privatization offers little solace to those at the bottom of the economic
ladder. If this process continues unabated, and is accompanied by growing

13
unemployment and continued cuts in social benefits, the gaps between rich and poor,
between center and periphery, will continue to widen, expanding the possible support
base of Shas as the party of the dispossessed.
As Shas' power has grown, there have been calls for a government program to
reverse the social split that Israel has been experiencing recently and that the party
feeds off. That would require mass investment in education and infrastructure—
especially in the country's outlying areas—so as to offer those in the lower classes the
possibility of upward mobility. It would also require a more inclusive, sensitive
approach to traditional Sephardi culture and identity.

About the Author

Omar Kamil is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Political Science, University of

Leipzig, Germany.

Further Reading on the Shas Party

Redefining Religious Zionism: Shas' Ethno-Politics by Aaron Willis

Shas—The Sephardic Torah Guardians: Religious "Movement" and Political
Power by Aaron P. Willis
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and his "Culture War" in Israel by Omar Kamil

Notes

1. The Israeli development towns are small urban settlements, located mostly in
outlying areas of the country, that were established in the 1950s and 1960s and
populated largely with Sephardi immigrants. See E. Ben-Zadok and G. Goldberg,
"Voting Patterns of Oriental Jews in Development Towns," Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 32
(1984): 16-27; Yoav Peled, "Ethnic Exclusionism in the Periphery: The Case of
Oriental Jews in Israel's Development Towns," Ethnic and Racial Studies 13, no. 3
(1990): 345-67. For the current situation of the development towns, see also the
reports of the Israeli journalist Daniel Ben Simon, all in Hebrew: "The Remains of the

14
Day: Ofra and Nitivot on the Day before the Elections," Haaretz, 20 May 1999; "The
Winter of Their Discontent: Beer Sheva and Ehud Barak after the Elections," Haaretz,
25 February 2000; "Glazed Eyes and Feet of Clay: Yeruham and the Closing of Its
Ceramics Factory," Haaretz, 24 March 2000.
2. Sephardi (Sephardim in the plural) is one of the most debatable terms in Israeli
sociology. The term's meaning is literally "Jews who came originally from Spain." In
the Israeli context nowadays, there is a difference between what Shas and its
supporters understand by Sephardi and what the rest of the secular public
understands. When the leaders of Shas speak of the Sephardim, they intend to
emphasize the importance of Spanish Jewish customs (minhag) as opposed to the
Ashkenazi customs as the authentic one for all Jews in Israel. From the point of view
of Ashkenazi Israelis, Sephardim means Jews who came from Spain and from Arab
and Muslim countries. The Jews of Spanish origin called themselves "pure-bred
Sephardi" (Sephardi tahor). The "pure Sephardim" considered themselves a separate
population, distinct from and above Jews who had arrived in the Holy Land from Arab
and Muslim countries. In this treatise I prefer to use the term Sephardim instead of
others such as Mizrahim or oriental Jews simply because it is the term with which
Shas identifies itself. See Haaretz 31 August 2000; Daniel J. Elazar, The Other Jews:
The Sephardim Today (New York: Basic Books, 1989), 15.
3. See Sami Shalom Chetreet, "Mizrahi Politics in Israel: Between Integration and
Alternative," Journal of Palestine Studies 29, no.4 (2000): 51-63; Youseff Courbage,
"Reshuffling the Demographic Cards in Israel/Palestine," Journal of Palestine Studies
28, no.4 (1999): 21-39.
4. For the electoral behavior of the Sephardim, see Shlomo Swirski, "The Mizrachi
Jews in Israel: Why Many Tilted Toward Begin?" Dissent, no.31 (1984): 77-91; Hanna
Herzog, "Penetrating the System: The Politics of Collective Identities," in The Elections
in Israel, ed. Asher Arian and Michal Shamir (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1992), 81-
102.
5. Shas is derived from the Hebrew Sephardim Shomerei Torah, meaning literally
"Sephardi Torah Guardians." Shas is also an another name for Talmud, which is itself
short for "the six orders of Mishna."
6. Haredi (plural haredim) means literally "God-fearing." I use the term in order to
avoid the inexact English "ultraorthodox believer," as it emphasizes that the reference
is more to a way of life than an ultra-extreme theological commitment.

15
7. It is not my aim to augment the discussion about the civil society with more
theoretical aspects. Rather, I use the results of the debate about civil society as a
theoretical framework that could help us understand the successes of Shas among the
Sephardim.
8. Baruch Kimmerling, "Elites and Civil Societies in the Middle East," in Elites,
Minorities and Economic Growth, ed. Elise S. Brezis and Peter Temin (Amsterdam:
Elsevier, 1999), 55-64.
9. J. Schwedler, ed., Toward Civil Society in the Middle East? A Primer (Boulder, Colo.:
Lynne Reinner, 1995), 13-5.
10. Kimmerling, "Elites and Civil Societies," 58.
11. See Baruch Kimmerling, The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Culture
and Military in Israel (Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001),
13; Joseph Massad, "Zionism's Internal Others: Israel and the Oriental Jews," Journal
of Palestine Studies 25, no.4 (1996): 53-68; Hannan Hever, "Mapping Literary
Spaces: Territory and Violence in Israeli Literature," in Mapping Jewish Identities, ed.
L. J. Silberstein (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 201-19.
12. The Maskilim ("the enlightened ones" in Hebrew) were eighteenth and nineteenth-
century Jews who engaged in secular rationalistic studies and facilitated the
acculturation of Jews to Western society. They were members of the Jewish
enlightenment (haskalah).
13. For the dealings of the Ashkenazim with their Sephardi counterparts in the 1950s
and 1960s, see Shlomo Swirski, Israel: The Oriental Majority (London: Zed, 1989), 1-
26; Massad, 54-9; and R. Shapiro, "Zionism and Its Oriental Subjects, Part 1: The
Oriental Jews in Zionism's Dialectical Contradictions," Khamsin 5 (1978): 5-33.
14. Shlomo Swirski and S. Katzir, "Ashkenazim and Mizrahim: Dependency in the
Making," Notebook for Research and Critique (Hebrew) (October 2000): 21-59.
15. See s. Ballas, "I Am an Arab Jew," New Outlook 34, no.6 (1991): 30-3; Peter
Demant, "Israel on the Orient Express," New Outlook 34, no. 6 (1991): 16-8.
16. See Aaron Willis, "Sephardic Torah Guardians: Ritual and the Politics of Piety,"
unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1993, 132.
17. On their arrival in Israel in the 1950s and 1960s, the Sephardim were
"disinfected" with DDT by workers from the Israeli health ministry. Many of the
Sephardim believed that the health officials did so with humiliating disdain. Such
"sins" against the new immigrants are generally considered to be the origin of the
Oriental resentment toward the Ashkenazi establishment. See G. N. Giladi, Discord in

16
Zion (London: Scorpion, 1990), 103-10; Shlomo Ben Ami, interview in Haaretz, 23
May 1997; Sami Michael, interview by the author in Ramat Golda, 4 June 2000;
Shimon Ballas, interview by the author, Tel Aviv, 16 March 2000.
18. See Peled, 703-27.
19. Previous works written about Shas have been a doctoral dissertation (see Willis)
and two master's theses. See Amir Horkin, "Political Mobilization, Ethnicity, Religiosity
and Voting for the Shas Movement," MA thesis, Department of Political Science, Tel
Aviv University, 1993 (Hebrew); Gal Levi, "And thanks to the Ashkenazim. . . . The
politics of Mizrahi Ethnicity in Israel," MA thesis, Department of Political Science, Tel
Aviv University, 1995 (Hebrew). None of them has been published so far. The only
publication has been Peled, "Towards a Redefinition."
20. According to pikuah nefesh, the saving of individual life is of greater importance
than other religious commandments that might lead to the sacrifice of the same life.
Asked his opinion about a possible withdrawal from the occupied territories, Rabbi
Yossef, in one of his most important responses, supported a withdrawal in order to
save Jewish life. For the details of his response, see E. Kopelowitz and M. Diamond,
"Religion That Strengthens Democracy: An Analysis of Religious Political Strategies in
Israel," Theory and Society 27, no. 5 (1998): 671-707.
21. Peled, 720.
22. Chetreet, 58.
23. Beer Sheva is one of the development towns in Israel and the capital of the Negev
region. The results of the last Knesset elections 1999 were clear: Shas, 22 percent;
One Israel, 15.2 percent; Likud, 13.6; and Meretz, 4.1 percent. See Ben Simon, "The
Winter."
24. Yossi Gozlan quoted in ibid.
25. See Levi, 2-12.
26. Vast amounts of literature exist on Gush Emunim as an ideology and a social
movement. Here I shall mention only some prominent works. I. Lustick, For the Land
and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (New York: Council of Foreign
Relations, 1988); G. Aran, The Beginning of the Road from Religious Zionism to
Zionist Religion, Studies in Contemporary Jewry, vol. 2 (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana
University Press, 1985); D. Weisburd, Jewish Settler Violence: Deviance as a Social
Reaction (University Park, Penna.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989).
27. Yossi Klein Halevi, "I'm Sorry," Jerusalem Report, 30 October 1997, 8-12,

17
28. This list of the administrative team of Ma'ayan Hahinuch Hatorani shows that
there is no professional pedagogue among the rabbis.
29. Yossi Dahan, Jerusalem Post, 15 August 2000.
30. For the 2000-1 school year, the fees of the public schools are about 1,300 Shekel.
See Haaretz, 15 September 2000.
31. Willis, 195.

Web Editor's Note

This document has been edited slightly to conform to American stylistic, punctuation
and hypertext conventions. No further changes to the text have been made.

This document is best viewed with 1024x768 pixel screen area.

Reprinted in accordance with U.S. copyright law.

18
 What Is There Between the Mizrahi Issue and Palestinian Nationalism

Prof. Yehouda Shenhav

For years there has been in Israeli society an enterprise of coexistence meetings
supported by the establishment and financed by liberal organizations trying to
advance what they call a "civil society". Around this enterprise developed an ideology
based in social psychology. These meetings have taken on the character of workshops
on interpersonal relations, stemming from the premise that interaction between
individuals diminishes mutual hatred and stereotypes (known in social psychology as
the "contact hypothesis"). This is, to say the least, a strange ideology. National
conflicts cannot be solved by workshops addressing stereotypes. A national conflict is
a political phenomenon the solution to which is to be found in the political arena and
not in the individual or interpersonal arena. To say that the conflict is between
individuals would be like saying that Yigal Amir assassinated Yitzhak Rabin because of
a personal conflict between them.
From here I would also like to cast doubt on the relevance of personal opinions
regarding political conflicts - particularly in the way they are expressed in opinion
polls. Such polls cannot reflect the depth of ethnic or national conflict. They are
subject to momentary whims of the public or to manipulations by political leaders, and
they erase the history of the conflict. Herbert Marcuse once said that the attempt to
understand our reality as it is does not necessarily mean learning "the facts."
This theoretical and philosophical position has implications regarding our discussion
today i.e. the connection between the Mizrahi and Palestinian questions. I would like
to propose that if the positions of the Mizrahim toward the Arabs are more militant,
this is at least partially the result of years of European Zionist ideology which regards
Arab culture with contempt. Having internalised this ideology, the Mizrahim learned to
reject their own Eastern, or Arab roots in order to get closer to the centre of the
Israeli collective. Rejection of their Arab roots is expressed in at least two ways. The
Mizrahim ,whose identity is split between their Jewish religion and their Arab cultural
roots, may choose to stress their religious identity at the expense of their cultural
identity. The religious path offers the Mizrahim a way to enter Israeli society while
rejecting their connection to Arab culture. Another form of rejection is to adopt an
Israeli identity and to deny the relevance of their Mizrahi identity.

1
Here I would like to look, through the Mizrahi issue, at the complex question of
Palestinian nationalism. The Israeli left, which for the most part remains Zionist,
Ashkenazi, and secular, has developed a standpoint that on one hand recognizes the
Palestinian question in all its complexity, and on the other hand denies the social and
ethnic issues of the Mizrahi question. I will present a few examples of this standpoint
and try to put them in a theoretical, historical, cultural and political context. I ask your
forgiveness ahead of time if the examples and commentary are not as organized as
they might be.
A few years ago I wrote an article entitled "Kesher Hashtika" ("A Conspiracy of
Silence") that was published in the "Ha’aretz" newspaper (Dec. 27 .)69’ ,Here I tried to
describe the blind spots of the Ashkenazi left. I tried to understand how it is that the
Ashkenazi Left recognizes the Palestinian problem .The Left, appearing as an
enlightened and progressive force in the country, was prepared for a Palestinian state
long before the present government agreed to it. On the other hand the same Left
took the lead in denying the Mizrahi question. This is an anomaly. How can we explain
the same group’s different attitudes toward "the East"? Perhaps part of the
explanation lies in the fact that the proposed solution to the Palestinian question is
separation. We can solve the Palestinian problem by drawing a border between them
and us. This is not an option with the Mizrahim .It is this difference that enables the
Ashkenazi Left to recognize the Palestinian, but not the Mizrahi question. Here lies
something that we must look into further. Zionism is a political theory built on a very
clear distinction between the Mizrahi and the Palestinian questions. The converging of
these two questions is one of the most threatening prospects for Zionist nationalism.
This could be seen in the 1970’s when the Panthers and Matspen movements joined
forces. I think that these efforts are sabotaged not only by the government agents
planted for that purpose, but by a cultural structure central to the Israeli political
system .For example even in the academic world there is a very clear distinction
between the historians that deal with the Palestinians and the sociologists that deal
with the Mizrahim .There is no attempt to integrate the two issues. This is particularly
unusual when they address the phenomenon called "population exchange in the
Middle East," or the "refugee question ."In 1948 the question of" Mizrahi refugees" was
already on the agenda, at least since Ben Gurion’s "one million plan" that he
presented in 1941. In research work that I conducted (published in Ha’aretz Apr. 4,
’98 as "The Perfect Robbery") I showed how the property of the Palestinian refugees
was regarded as being tied to that of the Iraqi Jews. This was well known by the time

2
that Benny Morris published his book ,The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee
Problem .Yet Morris did not see fit to mention a word about the connection that
existed between these two population groups in the political theory of the Israeli
government.
On the other hand there are those who write about the Mizrahim from a very critical
viewpoint, such as Yosef Meir in his book Shlichut Yavnieli Leteman"( Yavnieli’s Mission
in Yemen"). Meir writes that the attempt to capture the job market with Hebrew
labour was the primary incentive behind bringing the Jews from Yemen to Palestine.
The mission was to bring Jews who were considered "natural workers", or who worked
like Arabs .Though it is obvious that this was all a part of the Zionist nationalist
conquest of Palestine, there is not a word in this book about the Palestinian national
movement. That is to say that even in the supposedly open world of academic
knowledge there are barriers preventing the connection between the Mizrahi and
Palestinian questions .
When I look at my own biography I find nothing in the formation of my identity more
influential than the ethnic issue. My parents are Iraqi. My father was not a Zionist. He
came to Palestine in 1941 as a merchant, and he remained. My mother came from
Baghdad to Palestine in the 1950’s in what was called" Aliyat Ezra and Nehemia". I can
speak for hours about ambivalence surrounding my identity, creating dilemmas in my
childhood between my Israeli identity and my Mizrahi – Arab identity. When I brought
friends home my mother made it clear to me who were my good friends and who were
my bad friends .It was not in anything she said directly. But when I brought home an
Ashkenazi friend I received compliments, and when I brought home a Mizrahi friend
my mother made a face. After a while you get the message and begin to adopt
Ashkenazi ways of thinking.
My mother is a woman who knows how to enjoy herself. Arab culture is in her blood.
My parents had their circle of friends who would get together every Friday and have a
party. They had music playing from the Arabic radio station and the whole
neighbourhood could hear it. I would die from embarrassment. I would plea with her,
"What are you doing?!‖
―What’s the matter," she would ask, "this isn’t ‗culture?’ We don’t have doctors and
lawyers? We don’t have music"?
She forgets that during the week she has been sorting out my friends and establishing
my own place in the social structure. Almost every Mizrahi of my generation tells a
similar story of how, on the first Thursday of every month ,Um Kul Thum would begin

3
to sing and I would begin to tense up. As the Oriental tones filled the house my
mother would gradually make the radio louder and louder and I wouldn’t know where
to bury myself. I would try to turn the radio off and she would turn it back on and
make it even louder .I had become a foreign agent in my own house. This is a result of
external socialization that works very effectively. We internalise a very particular kind
of logic that I am now trying to understand.
For many years I tried to escape my Mizrahi identity and to deny the existence of a
Mizrahi issue. I adopted the position of the Ashkenazi Left that identifies with the
Palestinian issue and rejects the Mizrahim .I went to the United States where I lived
comfortably for several years. Upon my return to Israel in 1995, the issue exploded. I
was part of a group of second generation Mizrahim who founded" Hakeshet
Hademokratit Hamizrahit(" "The Mizrahi Democratic Spectrum )and
" I began to research
the Mizrahi issue. The issue did not interest me in the context of a Zionist paradigm. I
was not interested in discussing whether or not there is discrimination or a melting pot
etc. I wanted to reach the root of the discussion, and I began with Iraqi Jewry. Many
books have been written about Iraqi Jewry, but those that address the connection
between the Palestinian and Mizrahi issues have not been translated to Hebrew. Abbas
Shiblak, a Palestinian who wrote about Iraq, made this connection in his book The
Lure of Zion .This is one example of a book that was never translated to Hebrew.
Tough gatekeepers stand at the entrance deciding which literature on the Mizrahim can
be introduced to the Hebrew reader and which literature will remain outside. Other
examples of untranslated work that makes the Mizrahi - Palestinian connection are
Na’im Giladi’s book Ben Gurion’s Scandals ,and Shlomo Svirsky’s book The Seeds of
Inequality.
I began to dig in the archives in order to get a better understanding of the story of the
bombs in the Baghdad synagogue. This is a story that many people speak about but
no one really knows. In the course of research I came across a fascinating story that
ties in to the property of Iraqi Jews. The Zionist movement began to pay attention to
Mizrahi Jewry in the years 1941 – ’42. It was then that Ben Gurion introduced his "one
million plan ."Anticipating that many Jews will be annihilated by Nazi persecution
causing demographic problems for the Zionist movement, Ben Gurion decided that a
plan must be introduced based on Jews from Arab lands. In 1950 an agreement was
reached with Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri Sa’id, as a result of which a law was passed
allowing Jews to forfeit their Iraqi citizenship and leave the country without their
property. Of the 120,000 Jews in Iraq, approximately 1,500 registered to leave the

4
country. Around this time, working undercover as representatives of Solel Boneh,
Israeli Mossad agents began underground activities in Iraq. All of the sudden there
was an explosion in the Mas’uda Shem Tov Synagogue and immediately afterwards
24,000 Jews registered to leave the country. Abbas Shiblak describes in his book how
each time there was a fall in registration, another bomb went off followed by another
mass exodus. Five of these bombs did the job. In March 1951 the Iraqi parliament
decided to expropriate the property of the Iraqi Jews. Shortly thereafter, most of
those Jews who had still remained in Iraq left the country in an organized operation
and were brought to Tel-Aviv.
What does the State of Israel do with the story of the expropriated Jewish property?
In March 1951, Moshe Sharet informed the Knesset that the State of Israel now has
an account to settle with Iraq since the latter expropriated the property of its Jewish
subjects. The government of Israel allows itself to balance the value of the property
that the Palestinians left with the value of the property that was taken from Jews in
Arab lands. The connection is made by a political logic, however the basic assumptions
behind this interesting linkage are not very clear. What is the connection between
Iraqi Jews and Palestinians? How can the State of Israel use the property of Iraqi
Jews, which is not even in its hands, to settle the account of another problem that it
created?
In order to clarify this issue, I would like to tell you how systems of memory create
the Mizrahi understanding of the conflict. As I mentioned before, what one or another
person thinks is a product of a long history. These systems of memory are mobilized
and used to form the insight and positions of people. People’s standpoints do not take
shape on their own as an individual and rational process. What kind of memory do
Mizrahim consume regarding the Palestinian issue? We go to many memory sites such
as memorials ,museums etc. and we consume logic that shapes our viewpoints. I think
that a large part of the struggle over multi-culturalism in Israel is a struggle over
memory. For example the memory of the holocaust has been taken from the Jews for
the benefit of the State of Israel. We see it everywhere. The "marches of life "or the
trips of death in which children are sent to visit concentration camps in Poland is a
case of the State expropriating memory. This reached the height of absurdity three
years ago when General Yosi Ben Hanan suggested that the IDF( Israel Defence
Forces) use Auschwitz as a place to conduct initiation ceremonies for its elite units.
Pardon me for dwelling on examples of the holocaust, but here the examples are so
obvious that they work best in making my point. In 1952 the government of Israel

5
conducted a discussion on the proposition of establishing Yad Vashem .In the course
of this discussion Ben Gurion suggested granting Israeli citizenship ,or a "citizenship of
memory" to all Jews who died in the holocaust. What is the story behind this idea of
automatic and virtual Israeli citizenship? Naturally there is the element of our
identifying with those who suffered from the holocaust. But the point here is how the
holocaust is used for political ends .We could speak about how memorial sites
paradoxically isolate memory. Memorial sites are certainly not about individual
memories and in fact they are not about memory at all. Driven by an external logic
that isolates and constantly reproduces a particular memory, these sites are ultimately
more concerned with forgetting then with remembering.
Regarding the Mizrahi issue, which is connected to the Palestinian issue, it is important
to understand how memory works. The Mizrahim, as opposed to the Palestinians, have
a very ambivalent attitude towards Zionist nationalism. And Zionist nationalism has a
very ambivalent attitude towards the Mizrahim .There is tension between processes of
inclusion and exclusion in relations between Jewish nationalism and Mizrahim .It is as
if we are told, "You are one of us, but a distant relative." That is to say you are almost
like the Ashkenazim - but not exactly .As opposed to the Palestinians, you are a part
of the collective. However within the Zionist nationalist movement you are marginal
and have become ethicised.
In a letter to the German philosopher Karl Jaspers, Hanna Arendt once wrote
(paraphrased) "I’m worried. Adenauer has decided to regard 1945 as the ‗Zero Hour’.
That means that at the moment the war ended all of the Germans have become
normal. Seventy million Germans have become normal and the only remaining Nazi is
the Mufti of Jerusalem." Looking at Zionist historiography we can see how nationalist
logic creates memory to its convenience. Seventy million Germans have in fact been
exonerated while the Mufti still remains a Nazi.
In 1941 there was a pogrom in Baghdad. In this pogrom, known as the farhud 091 ,
Jews and 70 Muslims were killed. On the basis of evidence we have today it is known
that the British were interested in entering the city ,and that British soldiers were
involved in provoking the violence. They waited 84 hours allowing a degree of anarchy
to reign before making their move. It was classic colonial practice. Apropos memory, it
would be interesting to see how Iraqi Jews who were there see this event in
retrospect. The Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center is now publishing a book
entitled Sin’at Hayehudim Ufra’ot Be’iraq"( Hatred of the Jews, and the Pogroms in
Iraq"). In this book the farhud is described as part of the events of the holocaust. The

6
centre even sent a letter to the Ministry of Education asking why the holocaust in
Baghdad is not a major part of the State history program. All of this is part of the
Mizrahi aspiration to be included in the Jewish national collective by taking part in the
civil religion called the holocaust.
In my opinion the connection of the Mizrahim to the political right is circumstantial and
not essentialist .Mizrahim are not by nature any more right wing, nationalist, or
excitable than the Ashkenazim .The historical pact between the Right and the Mizrahim
is generally attributed to Menahem Begin’s climb to power in 1977. Though this was in
fact a significant change, the more important turning point was in 1967. This is the
Mizrahim’s formative year. They missed out on the war of 1948 since most of them
had not yet arrived in the country. The 1967 War was the Mizrahim’s first opportunity
to prove their loyalty to the State of Israel. Because of the intensity of the conflict the
Mizrahim had to prove that they were holier than the Pope. We are all familiar with the
efforts that Mizrahim make in order to avoid being mistaken for Arabs. How many wear
a Jewish Star or a "Hai" around their neck, and how many wear a kipa on their head
for national rather than religious motives? Internalised oppression is at least partially
responsible for the very nationalist positions that Mizrahim have adopted. I can find
nothing else that might explain why Mizrahim are more nationalist than Ashkenazim.
Finally I would like to say that there is something misleading in the Zionist Left’s
attempt to end the conflict by separation from the Palestinians. Sami Samoha
expressed this well in his call to adopt the Swiss model, ending the struggle over total
territorial domination .Zionism, after all, is a colonialist movement built on concepts of
Orientalism, negating the East. The question is whether these concepts will disappear
once there is peace. Will Arab culture and identity suddenly gain respect in the eyes of
the European Jews who have settled in Israel? The negation of the East and the
crystallization of western culture within Zionism is a powerful driving force. As Edward
Said expressed it, the East serves as a wall, or as "the other" which the West uses in
order to define itself .What kind of peace will bring the European Ashkenazi Jew to
suddenly like the East?
When Matan Vilnai became the Minister of Cultural Affairs he asked Professor Zohar
Shavit to prepare a report about policies regarding cultural matters for the year 2002 .
We interviewed her about the decision by Yosi Sarid to add poetry by Mahmoud
Darwish to the educational program. Sarid had said that the poetry chosen was
lyrical, or light poetry. This reflects the attempt to depoliticise every subject. Zohar
Shavit added that before introducing Mahmoud Darwish and Sami Michael, students

7
must learn Bialik and Amichai – in other words the canonized assets of Israeli culture .
Bialik was born in Odessa, Darwish was born in Birweh (Palestine), and Michael was
born in Baghdad, but Bialik is considered more Israeli than the other two .By placing
Darwish and Michael together, Shavit, with a slip of the tongue ,exposed what Zionism
constantly tries to hide i.e. the connection between the Zionist movement’s attitude
towards the Mizrahim and towards the Arabs.
First published in Neve Shalom Site

8
 Iraqi Jews arrive in Israel,
1949:"We are not refugees."
(Courtesy of the Babylonian
Jewish Heritage Center)

Last update: 15/08/2003

Hitching a ride on the magic carpet

by Yehouda Shenhav

Any analogy between Palestinian refugees and Jewish immigrants from Arab lands is
folly in historical and political terms

An intensive campaign to secure official political and legal recognition of Jews from
Arab lands as refugees has been going on for the past three years. This campaign has
tried to create an analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi Jews, whose
origins are in Middle Eastern countries - depicting both groups as victims of the 1948
War of Independence. The campaign's proponents hope their efforts will prevent
conferral of what is called a "right of return" on Palestinians, and reduce the size of
the compensation Israel is liable to be asked to pay in exchange for Palestinian
property appropriated by the state guardian of "lost" assets.
The idea of drawing this analogy constitutes a mistaken reading of history, imprudent
politics, and moral injustice.
Bill Clinton launched the campaign in July 2000 in an interview with Israel's Channel
One, in which he disclosed that an agreement to recognize Jews from Arab lands as
refugees materialized at the Camp David summit. Ehud Barak then stepped up and
enthusiastically expounded on his "achievement" in an interview with Dan Margalit.
Past Israeli governments had refrained from issuing declarations of this sort. First,

1
there has been concern that any such proclamation will underscore what Israel has
tried to repress and forget: the Palestinians' demand for return. Second, there has
been anxiety that such a declaration would encourage property claims submitted by
Jews against Arab states and, in response, Palestinian counter-claims to lost property.
Third, such declarations would require Israel to update its schoolbooks and history,
and devise a new narrative by which the Mizrahi Jews journeyed to the country under
duress, without being fueled by Zionist aspirations. That would be a post-Zionist
narrative.
At Camp David, Ehud Barak decided that the right of return issue was not really on
the agenda, so he thought he had the liberty to indulge the Mizrahi analogy
rhetorically. Characteristically, rather than really dealing with issues as a leader, in a
fashion that might lead to mutual reconciliation, Barak acted like a shopkeeper. This
hot potato was cooked up for Barak and Clinton by Bobby Brown, prime minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's adviser for Diaspora affairs, and his colleagues, along with
delegates from organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Conference
of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

WOJAC fails

A few months ago Dr. Avi Becker, secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress,
and Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents,
persuaded Prof. Irwin Cotler, a member of Canada's parliament and an expert on
international law, to join their campaign. An article by Becker published a few weeks
ago in the Hebrew edition of Haaretz (July 20), entitled "Respect for Jews from Arab
lands," constituted one step in this public campaign. The article said little about
respect for Mizrahi Jews. On the contrary - it trampled their dignity.
The campaign's results thus far are meager. Its umbrella organization, Justice for
Jews From Arab Countries, has not inspired much enthusiasm in Israel, or among
Jews overseas. It has yet to extract a single noteworthy declaration from any major
Israeli politician. This comes as no surprise: The campaign has a forlorn history whose
details are worth revisiting. Sometimes recounting history has a very practical effect.
The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC) was founded in the
1970s. Yigal Allon, then foreign minister, worried that WOJAC would become a hotbed
of what he called "ethnic mobilization." But WOJAC was not formed to assist Mizrahi
Jews; it was invented as a deterrent to block claims harbored by the Palestinian

2
national movement, particularly claims related to compensation and the right of
return.
At first glance, the use of the term "refugees" for Mizrahi Jews was not unreasonable.
After all, the word had occupied a central place in historical and international legal
discourses after World War II. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 from
1967 referred to a just solution to "the problem of refugees in the Middle East." In the
1970s, Arab countries tried to fine-tune the resolution's language so that it would
refer to "Arab refugees in the Middle East," but the U.S. government, under the
direction of ambassador to the UN Arthur Goldberg, opposed this revision. A working
paper prepared in 1977 by Cyrus Vance, then U.S. secretary of state, ahead of
scheduled international meetings in Geneva, alluded to the search for a solution to the
"problem of refugees," without specifying the identities of those refugees. Israel
lobbied for this formulation. WOJAC, which tried to introduce use of the concept
"Jewish refugees," failed.
The Arabs were not the only ones to object to the phrase. Many Zionist Jews from
around the world opposed WOJAC's initiative. Organizers of the current campaign
would be wise to study the history of WOJAC, an organization which transmogrified
over its years of activity from a Zionist to a post-Zionist entity. It is a tale of
unexpected results arising from political activity.

`We are not refugees'

The WOJAC figure who came up with the idea of "Jewish refugees" was Yaakov Meron,
head of the Justice Ministry's Arab legal affairs department. Meron propounded the
most radical thesis ever devised concerning the history of Jews in Arab lands. He
claimed Jews were expelled from Arab countries under policies enacted in concert with
Palestinian leaders - and he termed these policies "ethnic cleansing." Vehemently
opposing the dramatic Zionist narrative, Meron claimed that Zionism had relied on
romantic, borrowed phrases ("Magic Carpet," "Operation Ezra and Nehemiah") in the
description of Mizrahi immigration waves to conceal the "fact" that Jewish migration
was the result of "Arab expulsion policy." In a bid to complete the analogy drawn
between Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews, WOJAC publicists claimed that the Mizrahi
immigrants lived in refugee camps in Israel during the 1950s (i.e., ma'abarot or
transit camps), just like the Palestinian refugees. The organization's claims infuriated
many Mizrahi Israelis who defined themselves as Zionists. As early as 1975, at the

3
time of WOJAC's formation, Knesset speaker Yisrael Yeshayahu declared: "We are not
refugees. [Some of us] came to this country before the state was born. We had
messianic aspirations."
Shlomo Hillel, a government minister and an active Zionist in Iraq, adamantly
opposed the analogy: "I don't regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of
refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists."
In a Knesset hearing, Ran Cohen stated emphatically: "I have this to say: I am not a
refugee." He added: "I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land
exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a
refugee." The opposition was so vociferous that Ora Schweitzer, chair of WOJAC's
political department, asked the organization's secretariat to end its campaign. She
reported that members of Strasburg's Jewish community were so offended that they
threatened to boycott organization meetings should the topic of "Sephardi Jews as
refugees" ever come up again. Such remonstration precisely predicted the failure of
the current organization, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries to inspire enthusiasm
for its efforts. Also alarmed by WOJAC's stridency, the Foreign Ministry proposed that
the organization bring its campaign to a halt on the grounds that the description of
Mizrahi Jews as refugees was a double-edged sword. Israel, ministry officials pointed
out, had always adopted a stance of ambiguity on the complex issue raised by
WOJAC. In 1949, Israel even rejected a British-Iraqi proposal for population exchange
- Iraqi Jews for Palestinian refugees - due to concerns that it would subsequently be
asked to settle "surplus refugees" within its own borders.
The foreign minister deemed WOJAC a Phalangist, zealous group, and asked that it
cease operating as a "state within a state." In the end, the ministry closed the tap on
the modest flow of funds it had transferred to WOJAC. Then justice minister Yossi
Beilin fired Yaakov Meron from the Arab legal affairs department. Today, no serious
researcher in Israel or overseas embraces WOJAC's extreme claims. Moreover,
WOJAC, which intended to promote Zionist claims and assist Israel in its conflict with
Palestinian nationalism, accomplished the opposite: It presented a confused Zionist
position regarding the dispute with the Palestinians, and infuriated many Mizrahi Jews
around the world by casting them as victims bereft of positive motivation to
immigrate to Israel. WOJAC subordinated the interests of Mizrahi Jews (particularly
with regard to Jewish property in Arab lands) to what it erroneously defined as Israeli
national interests. The organization failed to grasp that defining Mizrahi Jews as
refugees opens a Pandora's box and ultimately harms all parties to the dispute, Jews

4
and Arabs alike.

Lessons not learned

The World Jewish Congress and other Jewish rganizations learned nothing from this
woeful legacy. Hungry for a magic solution to the refugee question, they have adopted
the refugee analogy and are lobbying for it all over the world. It would be interesting
to hear the education minister's reaction to the historical narrative presented
nowadays by these Jewish organizations. Should Limor Livnat establish a committee
of ministry experts to revise school textbooks in accordance with this new post-Zionist
genre? Any reasonable person, Zionist or non-Zionist, must acknowledge that the
analogy drawn between Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews is unfounded. Palestinian
refugees did not want to leave Palestine. Many Palestinian communities were
destroyed in 1948, and some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled, or fled, from the
borders of historic Palestine. Those who left did not do so of their own volition. In
contrast, Jews from Arab lands came to this country under the initiative of the State
of Israel and Jewish organizations. Some came of their own free will; others arrived
against their will. Some lived comfortably and securely in Arab lands; others suffered
from fear and oppression.
The history of the "Mizrahi aliyah" (immigration to Israel) is complex, and cannot be
subsumed within a facile explanation. Many of the newcomers lost considerable
property, and there can be no question that they should be allowed to submit
individual property claims against Arab states (up to the present day, the State of
Israel and WOJAC have blocked the submission of claims on this basis).The
unfounded, immoral analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi immigrants
needlessly embroils members of these two groups in a dispute, degrades the dignity
of many Mizrahi Jews, and harms prospects for genuine Jewish-Arab reconciliation.
Jewish anxieties about discussing the question of 1948 are understandable. But this
question will be addressed in the future, and it is clear that any peace agreement will
have to contain a solution to the refugee problem. It's reasonable to assume that as
final status agreements between Israelis and Palestinians are reached, an
international fund will be formed with the aim of compensating Palestinian refugees
for the hardships caused them by the establishment of the State of Israel. Israel will
surely be asked to contribute generously to such a fund.
In this connection, the idea of reducing compensation obligations by designating
Mizrahi immigrants as refugees might become very tempting. But it is wrong to use

5
scarecrows to chase away politically and morally valid claims advanced by
Palestinians. The "creative accounting" manipulation concocted by the refugee analogy
only adds insult to injury, and widens the psychological gap between Jews and
Palestinians. Palestinians might abandon hopes of redeeming a right of return (as, for
example, Palestinian pollster Dr. Khalil Shikai claims); but this is not a result to be
adduced via creative accounting.
Any peace agreement must be validated by Israeli recognition of past wrongs and
suffering, and the forging of a just solution. The creative accounts proposed by the
refugee analogy turns Israel into a morally and politically spineless bookkeeper.

Yehouda Shenhav is a professor at Tel Aviv University and the editorof Theory
Criticism, an Israeli journal in the area of critical theory and cultural studies

6
 Time to meet the Mizrahim?
by Shiko Behar *

In reply to a recent article in Al-Ahram Weekly by Fawzi

1948-1998
Mansour, Shiko Behar * speaks out on behalf of the
Years of dispossession
"uncommon sense" of the Middle East's own Jews

In an essay entitled "Culture and Conflict" (Al-Ahram Weekly, 386, 16-22 July),
professor emeritus Fawzi Mansour responded to five articles by Edward Said that had
appeared in the Weekly between 9 April and 25 June. His argument rested on the
following contention: "There is running through Said's articles a constant refrain that
jars and it jars because I find it demobilizing at a time when we need to gather all our
strength."
One of the first issues Mansour raised was Said's suggestion that possible links should
be explored between Arabs and Middle Eastern Jews in Palestine/Israel. (These Jews,
incidentally, call themselves "Mizrahi", plural Mizrahim, meaning Eastern Jews, not
"Sephardic Jews"). Mansour wrote: "I must admit to being surprised at hearing that
those Sephardic Jews who emigrated to Israel could be counted among those seeking
justice for all. [...] As far as I know, those Sephardic Jews who opposed the creation
of a Zionist state in Palestine, or objected to the more extreme practices of that state,
either stayed where they belonged or left for Europe. [...] More to the point: aren't
Israel's Sephardic Jews the section which most heavily tips the electoral balance in
favour of the ultra-chauvinist, ultra-Zionist Likud?"
What first strikes me on reading Mansour's remarks is the diametrical resemblance
between such arguments and those advanced daily by the Ashkenazi (European)
Zionist "left" in Israel. It would be hard to imagine a statement which better mirrors
the confusion, whether conscious or unconscious, that suffuses academic and political
perceptions, in Israel and the Arab World alike, of the history of the Mizrahim, both
pre- and in-Israel. Since Mansour's statements can be elucidated only within the
overall academic/political context of these perceptions, I shall discuss this context
first, then provide eight counter-arguments to Mansour's statements. Finally, I shall
conclude by my own interpretation of Said's argument.
PALESTINIANS AND MIDDLE EASTERN Jews did not encounter each other in any
significant political manner prior to the 1950s for two reasons. First, the indigenous
Palestinian Jews were inconsequential when counted vis-a-vis the number of non-

1
Palestinian Middle Eastern Jews. Second, the vast majority of Middle Eastern Jews
who ended up in Palestine/Israel were brought there during the 1950s after the
Ashkenazi Zionists had completed their 1948 destruction. Hence, any discussion of the
pre-1950s deals principally with non-Palestinian Arabs and Jews.
Most academic and political discussions about Middle Eastern Jews address their "pre-
Israel" or "in-Israel" history. "Both" histories are rarely discussed conjointly and the
reason, as suggested below, is not so mysterious. Within the prevailing trend of "two
histories" the academic/political division of labour in the region has long remained as
follows.
As far as the "pre-Israel" history of Middle Eastern Jews is concerned, Zionists present
it as a history of oppression and religious prejudice within the Arab world from time
immemorial. After establishing this ludicrous (a)historical fable, Zionists usually move
on to stress the (alleged) ideological commitment of Middle Eastern-Jews to Zionism.
Writers with an Arab orientation, on the other hand, tend to present this period
somewhat idealistically, as nearly flawless in terms of inter-religious relationships.
They therefore conceptualise the (politically engineered) emigration of Middle Eastern
Jews as the exclusive end result of Zionist activities and propaganda.
Zionists present this as a component of the "happy ingathering of the exiles." On
those rare occasions when they discuss the sharp divisions in Israeli society along
ethnic and class lines, their terminology is duplicitous. Thus one finds that Middle
Eastern Jews "suffer" from an "inferiority complex" and "culture shock", or that they
"came" from "primitive" Arab societies, which thus explains "the gap". In short,
Zionists never employ any of the terms needed to account for the Jewish ethnic split,
namely: racism, orientalism, oppression, exploitation, internal colonialism and
Ashkenazi anti-Semitic tendencies.
A further glance across the regional continuum reveals that Arab writers outside
academia (Palestinian journalists excluded) tend to disregard "in-Israel" issues.
Nevertheless, a few Arab-oriented scholars have been able to express some sympathy
for the Middle Eastern Jews as far as their "in-Israel" history is concerned. Take, for
example, Abdel-Wahab Elmessiri's The Land of Promise (1980) or Roger Garaudy's
The Case of Israel (1985). Both these authors devote paragraphs to the oppression of
Middle Eastern Jews under Ashkenazi-Zionism. They feel a little sorry for them, hint at
their "false-consciousness" and imply that their interests lie in allying themselves with
the Palestinians. Rest assured: nothing is too drastically wrong, according to such

2
studies. But the situation of the Mizrahim as presented in these works is, in fact, a
serious problem for the internal consistency of their anti-Zionism.
If these assessments do not originate in purely instrumental considerations -- that is,
do not seek simply to use the Jewish split to vindicate their authors' undoubtedly
justified opposition to Zionism -- but instead are the result of a genuinely universal,
consistent anti-Zionist/anti-racist position, then, one wonders, why is it that even
these few Arab scholars almost always restrict their analyses to the "in-Israel" history
of Middle Eastern Jews under Ashkenazi Zionism, and never express the slightest
concern or solidarity with their "pre-Israel" history? I should like to suggest that the
answer is to be found in the deeply dichotomous political/academic context within
which these discussions are currently held.
Given the apparent partiality of virtually all the voluminous literature surrounding the
modern state of Israel, it is hardly surprising that countless obstacles are placed in the
way of those critical Arabs and Mizrahim who actually initiate unorthodox alliances
and, in so doing, also come to talk about Middle Eastern Jews in a manner that rejects
the primordial/nationalist assumptions generally governing discussion of their "two"
histories. Thus, for example, a person who chooses to address the racist policies to
which the Mizrahim have been subjected under Ashkenazi Zionism may sometimes be
approved of by certain Arab circles and is always disapproved of in Zionist circles. The
Arabs approve because this person demonstrates that Zionist Israel -- in addition to
being utterly racist against non-Jews generally and Palestinians in particular -- is also
racist against non-Europeans even if they are Jews. The Zionists, for their part,
proceed in one of two ways: if this person is not a Jew, s/he is automatically defined
as an "anti-Semite"; while if this person is a Jew, s/he is immediately defined as a
"self-hating Jew", a "traitor" or a "knife in the back of the nation".
This picture changes slightly when instead of concentrating on the "in-Israel" cultural
and educational massacre of the Mizrahim, the very same person chooses to focus on
the politics pursued towards their Jewish communities in the 1940s and 1950s by
certain Arab regimes and/or groups such as the Egyptian Muslim Brothers, Misr al-
Fatat, the Iraqi Istiqlal, and their pseudo-secular or religious analogues in seven other
states.
In this case, this very same person will be approved of by the Zionist circles that had
just now turned against him or her, and will usually be disapproved of by a majority of
the Arab circles who would previously have been supportive. The Zionists approve,
because s/he has now chosen to investigate the xenophobic trend within Arab

3
nationalism. The Arabs for their part will express their disapproval in two ways: if this
person happens to be an Arab and proclaims his or her solidarity with the situation of
these non-Zionist Jews publicly and loudly, then s/he may be defined as "playing into
the hands of Zionists" or "a breaker of the united front". If this person is a Jew,
however, s/he will instantly be defined as too "hesitant" "confused" non-Zionist Jew
or, worse, as really having "hidden" Zionist motives.
FIVE DISTINCT AND INDEPENDENT arguments may be marshalled against Mansour's
contention that "Sephardic Jews who opposed the creation of a Zionist state in
Palestine, or objected to the more extreme practices of that state, either stayed where
they belonged or left for Europe." They are as follows:
1. Focusing exclusively on individual choices which were allegedly wide open to
members of the Jewish minorities, Mansour omits one pivotal factor: that the conflict
between Ashkenazi Zionists and Arabs in Palestine unleashed religiously-informed
feelings which altered the domestic context and created constraints within which
"choices" had to be made. This is why Mansour does not consider the political push-
and-pull factors behind what are still euphemistically described as "population
movements". This vision of "emigration" has been cleansed of all the relevant
domestic politics.
2. For the sake of argument, let us freeze these political variables. As an economist,
Mansour must know that, even then, the most decisive constituent element
determining the destination of Jews had little to do with the ideological, super-
structural realm, and was instead primarily rooted in the material infrastructure. Most
Middle Eastern Jews who could afford to emigrated to countries other than Israel.
3. Compared to Western states and their "immigration" policies, Israel posed fewer
obstacles. The newborn Zionist entity had to import the "black" manpower it needed
to kick start its undeveloped economy. As Ben Gurion explained with typical Ashkenazi
clarity: "Hitler, more than he hurt the Jewish people,... hurt the Jewish state... He
destroyed the substance, the essential building force of the state. The state arose and
did not find the nation which had waited for it." Only then were the Arabised Jews
suddenly needed.
Middle Eastern Jews were pushed into -- and undoubtedly pulled towards -- Ashkenazi
Israel thanks to the coincidence of three political forces far more powerful than
themselves. The first was the deliberate "assistance" they received from Israel and its
Ashkenazi emissaries throughout the region, who worked hard to consolidate
separations between Jews and non-Jews, as their European Zionism dictated. The

4
second was the equally deliberate "assistance" they received from such regimes as
those of Nuri al-Said or Zaydi Imam Ahmed, which were well-remunerated for
delivering their Jewish subjects by air to the promised land. The third was the
unintentional "assistance" given to Ashkenazi Zionism by the Arab groups mentioned
above. On top of this triple force, the "enlightened" Western states were as ever
reluctant to absorb "third world" people, "third world" Jews included. On more than a
few occasions, they even refused to take in the Ashkenazi victims of their European-
Nazi creation. In so doing, they extended their sins to include the Palestinians, who
thus became indirect victims of Nazism, as well as the direct victims of Zionism.
4. Contrary to the prevailing belief among some Arabs, the overwhelming majority of
Middle Eastern Jews -- the majority of Egyptian-Jews included -- neither held a foreign
citizenship that could enable them easily to emigrate to Europe, nor had they ever
benefited from the imperialist legal system of capitulations. In addition, all these Arab
Jewish communities were composed of many different classes. With the exception of
the ethnically diverse Egyptian community, most mirrored their societies exactly in
terms of their relationship to the means of production. Ergo, "Middle Eastern Jews"
and "capitalist compradors" are not, and must never be used as, synonyms. Even in
Egypt, no more than 23 per cent of Jews could ever plausibly have been categorised
in this way. Moreover, the term itself is a popular neologism which has no recognised
place in neo-Marxist economists.
Granted, there were Middle Eastern Jews who were Zionists. Like others around them,
during the 1940s and 1950s, some of these Zionists were undoubtedly involved in
horrendous acts. Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of Middle Eastern Jews were
non-Zionists -- not "traitors", "collaborators", "capitalist compradors" or a "fifth
column" -- and a significant portion of them were anti-Zionists, whether on Marxist,
liberal or religious grounds (his Eminence, the Egyptian Grand Rabbi Haim Nahoum,
included). This is simply fact, even though it remains "beneficial" for the two
nationalistic academic versions of this people's history to argue that most were fully-
fledged Zionists by their own free choice.
Critical Jews and Arabs who wish to account properly for the departure of 800,000
Jews from their countries of origin would do well to shift the focus of their research
away from the micro-study of the inner, super-structural or ideological, workings of
these nine mini-minorities, and towards the colossal interactions going on above their
heads between Ashkenazi Zionism and Arab nationalism. It is there that they can find
the answers to their questions. This approach would also have the advantage of

5
sparing us the exhausting and tedious nationalistic fervour which sadly governs most
existing accounts of the subject.
5. One should also recall here the successful campaign against the participation of
Arab Jews in the Théâtre de Beyrouth symposium to commemorate the 1948 Nakba --
a campaign which was, once again, implemented exclusively by Ashkenazi Zionists.
On these issues, Mansour knows more than he was prepared to say in these columns.
But it is counterproductive for universal anti-racist Arabs and Jews to cut round these
thorny corners. Even for anti-Zionist Arab Jews such as Ibrahim Sarfati, Salim Nassib,
Edmond Malih and others, it does not always matter whether they "opposed the
creation of a Zionist state" or "objected to its practices" or "left for Europe" (Malih and
others) or "stayed where they belonged" (Nassib, or Sarfati, the Marxist, in jail).
Mansour knows that it is not only several Lebanese newspapers and the Syrian
National Party (backed by the Syrian second bureau) who consistently contradict his
contentions. He knows that there are other establishments which still manage to have
so-called "problems" with (even non-Israeli) anti-Zionist Jews. Why is this so?
Because, as one of the Arab organisers of the Beirut symposium wrote, "we are being
accused of collaborating with Israel because ... we discuss with Jews from the Arab
world and voice a critique as much against Zionism as against repressive Arab
regimes and Arab nationalism." I am familiar with other universal anti-Zionist Arabs
who think like this gentleman, and like myself. Their work has another, crucial
contribution to make, beyond its own intrinsic value: it is of primary importance for
the non-Zionist consolidation of young, and otherwise "fearful" Jews, whose lives are
largely dictated from above by a European, non-Middle Eastern Zionist-Jewish
memory. True, this function may be secondary. But is it bad for anyone other than
Zionists -- and, perhaps, their diametrical mirror images?
There are three additional arguments I should like to make, with respect to Mansour's
surprise that "those Sephardic Jews could be counted among those seeking justice for
all" and to his (Ashkenazi) question "aren't Sephardic Jews those who most heavily tip
the electoral balance in favour of the ultra-chauvinist Likud?".
First, there is one key issue which divides pro- and anti-normalisation Egyptians.
While the small pro-normalisation group believes that it is important to engage "left"
Zionism -- meaning sub-sections of the affluent Ashkenazi elite, such as Peace Now
and Meretz -- the anti-normalisation camp believes that this is counterproductive. It
follows that the anti-normalisation majority-- quite justly -- does not distinguish

6
seriously between the right and left Zionist fists, since it is the same head that decides
when to use them, just as it is the same head which they strike against.
But if this is the case, then one wonders why is it that Mansour, as an anti-
normalisation intellectual, should suddenly choose to distinguish between right and
left Zionism where "Sephardic" Jews are concerned? Anti-Zionism needs to be
consistent on this point: it should distinguish always, or never, between right and left.
There should be no "Mizrahi exceptionalism".
Second, rereading Mansour, it is depressing to realise how Zionist fallacies can be
recycled in the most unusual places. Ashkenazi-controlled Israeli scholarship,
newspapers, television and "left" groups have been remarkably successful in their
tireless attempts (beginning in around 1977, when the authoritarian "Labour" party
lost power) to demonise and scapegoat the Mizrahim for all the ills and contradictions
that are an integral part of their creation (i.e. Zionism and Israel). There is no space
to go into this issue in depth here. I can only refer the reader to the writings of one
(Iraqi-Jewish) Mizrahi: Ella Habiba Shohat. Her 1988 study of how the Zionist "left"
generated this fallacious image of the Mizrahim is available in English, Hebrew and
Arabic (in the Palestinian Journal Kan'an), thanks to the long-standing collaboration
that exists between Palestinians, critical Mizrahim and others. This Ashkenazi fallacy is
responsible for the common and unfounded identification of post-1977 Mizrahim and
"ultra-chauvinist Zionism".
Lastly, I must be consistent myself. Critical Mizrahim do not, must not and,
unfortunately, cannot argue that there are no Mizrahi Jews who vote for right (and
"left") Zionist parties (as do 40% of the oppressed Palestinian "citizens" of Israel, be
they Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouin or Circassian). Therefore I neither offer
here, nor ask for, a primordial apologetic "discount" on their behalf. But circular
restatements of well-known Zionist problems do not get anyone anywhere, unless one
merely wants to help consolidate the current socio-political impasse and play (again)
into the hands of the divide-and-rule camp. This is why critical Mizrahim prefer to
invest their precious time in finding solutions to these problems with and within the
community.
Such critical Mizrahim do not ask for help or admiration from anyone. Unlike the
Ashkenazim and all too many others, they know perfectly well why and how the
colossal transformations of the 1940s and 1950s shattered the already heterogeneous
Mizrahi community beyond all recognition. Critical Mizrahim also know that because
post-1950s Mizrahi Jews were born into Israel's apartheid system of citizenship, they

7
have serious obligations to the victims of Zionism, the Palestinians. They therefore
support unconditionally and unequivocally the right of the exiled Palestinians to return
to their land, a right which must stand inalienable regardless of whether the Mizrahim
themselves wish to remain in this land where they now find themselves or not.
But critical Mizrahim, whose ancestors have a long continuous history across the
entire region and are in no sense merely "guests", do retain one right: the right to
remain sensitive to the often condescending and moralising tone in which they are
addressed by both Ashkenazi Jews and non-Palestinian Arabs. For the sake of a better
future for this remarkable region, perhaps it would be politically advantageous if
Ashkenazi Jews and non-Palestinian Arabs would first apply their lucid analytical skills
either to their own history, or to each other's, instead of fabricating convenient
simplifications of the "pre-Israel" Middle Eastern Jews or the "in-Israel" Mizrahim.
Likewise, critical Mizrahim should perhaps devote more time both to the radical
political reformation of the disordered Mizrahi block and to the dual de-nationalisation
of its current historical representation.
More fundamentally, any truly rigorous analysis of the Jewish collectivity would target
socio-political processes without necessarily equating them with voting patterns.
These processes affect the Palestinians whether one likes it or not. One thing, in any
case, is clear: Mizrahi Jews constitute the only critical mass within the Jewish
collectivity that possesses the reservoirs of historical, political, cultural and class-
based experience from which a sufficiently large question mark can be extracted and
placed at the end of every Zionist, or racist, proposition. I hold this truth to be self-
evident, even if Mizrahi Jews -- perhaps like their Arab counterparts across the nine
countries from which they originated -- have thus far proved quite incapable of the
political unity to which their destiny calls them.
BACK TO EDWARD SAID, who like other Palestinians before him was generous enough
to mention the "Sephardic topic". I, for one, was unable to find in his articles that
demobilising "constant refrain that jars". All that my (outsider's?) eyes could see was
a committed Palestinian who stated firmly what at least some other Arabs, Mizrahim
and others can only whisper, because they are less well-known: that the old ways
formulated for us by previous generations have failed, first and foremost in terms of
the objectives set for them by their inventors.
The previous generation failed to deliver the goods it had promised. Zionism still
prevails, and is perhaps "kicking even more strongly than before", as the Mizrahi
regional universalist Mordechai Va'anunu wrote from his Israeli jail. In the post-Oslo

8
period, genuine democracy, political and economic equality throughout the region,
and, consequently, the possibility of a just peace for the Middle East, are perhaps
more remote prospects than ever before.
Hence, in conclusion, I would like to suggest the possibility of exploring certain
original, horizontal alliances on the basis of shared political values. These are cross-
national, regional alliances which should attempt to transcend truly, not artificially, yet
with mutual respect, those religious identities that even Marxist groups throughout
the region have ultimately failed to come to terms with. If one happens to wish that
some elements of the new South African model is to have even some small chance of
influencing the Middle East over the course of the next millennium, then one absolute
prerequisite is to institute a new type of society-based political communication, right
here, right now.
This means communication between critical human beings across the entire region --
between all Palestinians, all kinds of anti-, non- and post-Zionist Jews, and also
progressive Arab nationalists -- because the conflict is regional, and has been at least
since the intifada of 1936-39. This communication should be pursued even if the
opening positions of the various parties are far from identical (especially given that
non-critical people in the region do not wait for anyone and do communicate with
each other). As long as one does not intend to move to heaven soon, or to exchange
opinions only with one's own shadow, these positions will most likely never be entirely
identical. If I recall right, this is the definition of democracy, anti-Zionist democracy
included. I may be wrong but this is my Mizrahi reading of Said.
Permit a final word to some of the most committed readers of the Weekly, the
personnel of Israeli authorities. Neither myself, nor other critical Mizrahim have
anything personal against Zionists or Ashkenazim as human beings. As many pre-
Zionist Ashkenazi knew well, democracy can never be divided along religious, ethnic
or racial lines. So please loosen your grip: this is the main reason why we are where
we are politically.

9
 A Year into the Lebanon2 War: NGO-ing Mizrahi-Arab Paradoxes, and a One State
Vision for Palestine/Israel *

by Reuven Abarjel and Smadar Lavie

Published in Left Curve no. 33, 2009 (PO Box 472, Oakland, CA 94604.
www.leftcurve.org; editor@leftcurve.org.
(Ed Note: the article below was written on the first anniversary of the Israeli/Lebanon
War of August, 2006. We are publishing it now as the authors feel that
the issues that the article covers are even more pertinent as we go to press in early
2009. However, given the Israeli attack against Gaza in December 2008, we
asked that the authors write a brief introduction, and they kindly obliged. This
introductory note was subsequently expanded into an article, “Sacrificing Gaza to
revive Israel's Labor party,” and posted at:
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10208.shtml)

A persuasion, religious or secular, can, at most, tinge the behavior of some of its
followers.
Historical experience shows that it is unable to change radically the behavior of the
majority over a long period by silencing the voice of their interests and their passions.
—Maxime Rodinson, Europe and the Mystique of Islam

*This article is based on a talk given at the Harvard Dept. of Anthropology and Center
for Middle Eastern Studies, 29 October 2007, Abarjel and Lavie ©2007. All Rights
Reserved.

Introductory Note (January 4, 2009)

Please note that this is a lecture version that does not including the many footnotes
referring to the vast bodies of evidence we used to write this essay: scholarly books
and articles, printed and electronic media articles, our journals and ―field‖ diaries, our
documented conversations with activists and community members, and our own
documentation of the Lebanon2 war and post-war events.
We wrote the original Hebrew essay below in Tel Aviv and Ashdod during summer
2007, a year after Lebanon2 war. And now, as its English translation is going to print,
yet again Israel has initiated another heinous carnage against the Palestinians, with

1
the silent encouragement by the U.S., the European Union and their Arab
subcontractors, Egypt and Jordan. It is the beginning of January 2009, and as we’re
groping for words that span the distance between Minneapolis and Jerusalem, our
background noise is the Israeli TV that broadcasts the Skuds falling on Ashdod.
The forthcoming Israeli elections are the main reasons for the Gaza carnage. The
majority of Israel’s citizens, fifty percent, are Mizrahim (―Easterners‖, in Hebrew):
Jews whose origin is in the Arab and Muslim World, or from the margins of Europe.
They are the ones hit by the Hamas missiles. From 1948 on, the Ashkenazi-Zionist
Left-oriented regime purposefully settled the Mizrahim in the border zones of the state
as cannon fodder, in villages from which the Palestinians had been expelled, so as to
prevent the Palestinians’ right of return.
No wonder the Mizrahi vote has traditionally supported Israel’s Right Wing block. The
Right Wing, however, rejects relinquishing land for a so-called peace settlement. Our
article spells out the paradoxes that as this majority is engaged in an Arab cultural
renaissance, they shriek ―death to the Arabs.‖ Israel’s ―peace camp‖ is made up of the
European Ashkenazi (―Eastern European,‖ in Hebrew) elite. Ashkenazim, whether
Right or Left wing, are only thirty percent of Israel’s citizens. Their Left can portray
itself in the West as enlightened and progressive because it relies on the Mizrahi
demographic majority to maintain its chauvinism. Yet, it is the leaders of the so-called
peace camp who started the present Gaza carnage, Lebanon 2, and each and every
war of Israel against its Arab neighbors. The ―peace camp‖ progenitors orchestrated
the Nakba [―catastrophe‖ in Arabic, by which Palestinians refer to their expulsion in
1948 –ed.] With the collapse of the Israeli government in Summer 2008, the polls
predicted that in the forthcoming February 10, 2009 elections, the Right Wing block,
led by Bibi Netanyahu, would receive a 65-70 mandate in a 120 seats Knesset. Both
the U.S. and EU leadership, as well as the Egyptian and Jordanian regimes, prefer to
negotiate with the centrist block of Israeli politics—the Barak-Livni led Kadima and the
Labor Party. The polls predicted a smashing failure for this block due to its almost
complete exclusion of Mizrahi representatives. The Right Wing does have Mizrahi
politicians, even though they serve their Ashkenazi masters rather than their
constituencies. The wailings of Mizrahim hit by rockets provide good copy in the
Western media. Our essay explains why, while the Mizrahi public is treated as second-
class citizens, the Israeli Ashkenazi regime often sacrifices them in order to justify
wars. The post-war boom then invigorates the Ashkenazi controlled economy. Aside
from trying to shift the Mizrahi vote from the Right to the Center, another goal of this

2
war is to delay the impact of the global economic crisis on the Israeli economy, whose
crux is the military-industrial complex. If Hamas missiles had fallen on Israel's central
zone, where the Ashkenazi elite lives, the regime would immediately have nuked Iran
or, alternately, sat down to negotiate with the democratically-elected Hamas
leadership.
Our Lebanon2 essay spells out how the Ashkenazi block of the ―peace camp‖ has
always prevented—particularly after the Lebanon2 war—any possibility for dialogue,
let alone coalition, between our communities and the Palestinians, or Arabs in our
region. A narrow window of opportunity for constructive dialogue opened for a brief
period after the Lebanon2 war. Now, due to the heinous carnage the IDF commits in
Gaza, in the name of the Mizrahi border zone public, the window has been completely
shut.

The Last Year – Our ’Hood

A year after the Israeli regime ceased to bombard southern Lebanon, its assault
continues more mundanely in the West Bank and Gaza. By now the Israeli public is
used to a seasonal bloodletting, expected from what looks to them like the regime’s
intentional escalations of conflict. In a cyclical pattern, the Israeli establishment
expands its military control over non-Jewish civilians — beyond the everyday curfews,
roadblocks, land appropriations, house demolitions and targeted killings. These
escalations are targeted primarily against the Palestinians, but are also intended to
silence the ticking intra-Israeli social time-bomb, the Mizrahim. These are Palestinian
Jews, and Jews who immigrated to Palestine and then Israel from non-Yiddish-
speaking countries, mainly in the 1950s. Among the ruling elite Ashkenazim (Jews
from Yiddish-speaking countries), it is agreed that this bomb is much more dangerous
to their investment portfolios than the Iranian bomb. The seasonal bloodlettings are
authorized by government policies of Israel, as the Middle Eastern subcontractor for
the New World Order’s hegemon. The Israeli public’s tribal campfire is produced by
the Israeli media, whose journalists and private owners come from the Ashkenazi
Zionist sphere that proclaims itself ―progressive.‖ Last year’s war was the first time
the Israeli press’s death rite, those sidebar short obituaries of the fallen,
conspicuously mentioned not just their residence, but also ethnic marks. From the
soldiers’ last names and complexions, media consumers could guess their national
origins. The Hebrew language media was emphasizing that when Israel goes to war
against a sovereign state like Lebanon, the best of the Ashkenazim from the ruling

3
minority are still the ones who come to the aid of their country. This honor is not
extended to the fallen who are Mizrahi, Druze, Bedouin or Ethiopian. These Israeli
Defense Force soldiers come mainly from the dark majority of Israel’s large societal
margins, and they are the ones burdened with the unpleasant task of what the regime
terms ―ongoing security‖ in Gaza and the West Bank. Nevertheless, even when the
military lacks civilian trust, the ordnance display is still spellbinding to the Israeli
Jewish public — Mizrahim and Ashkenazim alike. This is why the next bloodletting is
supposed to restore civilian trust in the military.
Last year the Hebrew media consistently featured stories that economic growth was
up, and the unemployment rate down, since wars are good for the economy. Unlike
the minority White elite, however, the majority of the Israeli public, which is Mizrahi,
lacked the capital to get into the post-war business—the arms trade, or fortifying the
Lebanon-Israel borderzone, or reconstructing buildings damaged by Hezbollah
bombardments. Last year many truisms about the Israeli regime known only outside
the public sphere emerged into public discourse, mainly through the hegemonic
media. With awe and reverence, it reported steady erosion of public trust in the
courts. The Israeli legal system has long propped up the regime by providing a facade
of humanistic values, so the media used to be very careful when critiquing it. Major TV
channels and printed dailies flickered some light on waning public trust in the police.
Stories appeared about White elites turning to private security companies, often
related to Mafia clans, and also about the historical connection between crime families
and the Israeli governments dating back to the 1950s. Critical reporting on the health
and welfare services also increased. For the first time, media consumers were told
regularly, and in prime time, about the covert experiment in human engineering on
the disenfranchised non-European Jewish population, ongoing since the 1930s. The
media published investigative reporting about children removed from their families
into government forced boarding. A prime time investigative show interviewed people
who, as children, had been remanded by family courts into the full custody of their
pedophile or violent parents. Medical experiments performed without informed
consent in hospitals in Israel’s disenfranchised zones were exposed, as well as the
giving of addictive narcotics to women and children as a way to solve their socio-
economic problems. However, the ruling elite has told Mizrahim for half a century that
all this was done for their own good as part of Israel’s ―development.‖ Thus, despite
the publicity, many continue to watch or listen to the news, and hear facts, but deny
and repress connecting the dots to see the pattern of state violations of their human

4
rights. In the past year, the Mizrahi and Palestinian majority civilian population of
northern Israel realized they had been abandoned by their government. Their rage
was channeled into ―North Star,‖ a coalition of about 50 social NGOs. The descriptor
―social,‖ however, treats the situation only as a class problem, by eliding the
racination of Arabs, whether Mizrahim or Palestinians. When ―North Star‖ conducted
public hearings, about 200 civilian victims of the war testified as witnesses. North Star
leaders allowed Palestinians to speak about the connection between their Arab origin
and their residence in the economically distressed North—but not Mizrahim, whom the
leaders just labeled ―poor Israelis.‖ The hearings took place in Haifa, Safad, Nazareth,
and Kiryat Shmonah. The North Star Coalition, like the NGOs composing it, is funded
by the New Israel Fund (NIF). NIF is supposed to reflect an enlightened, left-leaning
Zionism. In the absence of a realistic state welfare policy, the NIF gradually started to
dictate the political, cultural and social agendas underlying the notion of welfare,
which in Israel is associated with civil protest. The NIF and its subsidiary, SHATIL,
have depoliticized and professionalized the NGOs by offering job opportunities in a
reality30 of job scarcity. When one becomes a professional, one has to conform to the
role expectations. Aside from the CEOs, who are mainly Ashkenazi, the NIF metes out
its funds into half-time, quarter-time, and one-eighth-time positions held mainly by
Mizrahim and Palestinians. This tactic confines as many grassroots activists as
possible in jobs of fragmented hourly pay, devoid of benefits and labor rights. As it
grants its NGO funds, the NIF has performed a Durkheimian Division of protest Labor.
The progressive-liberal elite are permitted to be ―post‖-Zionist, and to protest
violations of the human and civil rights of Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, or
even of Israel itself. The Palestinian citizens of Israel are considered the exotic,
freedom-fighting natives, who are there to prove how enlightened the state is, and
thereby how much the NIF supports it. So they, too, are allowed to generate
deracinated Human Rights protest. Their protest would be more effective if it
addressed current events, rather than abstract fundamental questions about the
feasibility of an oxymoronic democratic Jewish state.
The Mizrahi NGOs supported by the NIF—in case they refuse to turn into soup
kitchens or ―oceans of tears‖—are simply neutralized. Mizrahi feminism, due to its
dependence on foundations such as the NIF, has been transformed into a
subcontractor of mainstream Ashkenazi feminism. Following the now fashionable
funding trends, when Mizrahi feminist NGOs receive money for a project to do teach-

5
ins on Islamist feminism, their texts are usually mediated by the English language and
Islamophobic West, or the Muslim exoticizing West.
The public hearings of North Star were led by figures who are considered ―left,‖ but
are to be found in the heart of the hegemony: Yossi Sarid, Naomi Hazan, Uzi Dayan
and Butrus abu-Maneh. The reports about the hearings were composed by South
African émigrée law professor Frances Raday. The civil protest was segregated out,
into sparsely attended conferences whose only results were stirring position papers,
exciting mainly to NIF donors who read English. Such hegemonically sophisticated
forms of containing protest have been recognized by Mizrahi activists since the Mizrahi
Democratic Rainbow was founded a decade ago: PRing the Mizrahi struggle, but all
the while neutralizing the overlay between the Mizrahim and the racinated lacuna of
Mizrahi human rights. Last year the published media trumpeted that nearly a million
Israeli citizens had waded through all the red tape to get a European Union passport.
So many second-and third-generation descendants of holocaust survivors now see
Europe as an escape hatch. Most Mizrahim have no such way out of Israel. After 1948,
Zionists uprooted them from their homelands to become the demographic human
shield of the new Jewish state, since there were no more White Jews to bring to
Palestine. By perpetuating all the Arab/Israeli conflicts, and especially by refusing for
over 60 years to let the Palestinian refugees have their right of return to their
homeland, the Ashkenazi-Zionist elite has denied the Mizrahi right of return to their
own homelands in the Arab world. The silent Mizrahi public has begun to sense an
existential feeling that the Israeli state is being consumed, and there is no escape
from its destruction. Along the years, this public has gnashed its teeth and made
tremendous daily efforts, unsuccessful, to integrate into the Ashkenazi hegemonic
regime. In the last year, the integration fantasy slapped this public in the face.

Last Year – In the Region

Last year the Arab World, including Palestinians both at home and in their diaspora,
continued to discuss their situation through the nationalist dualism of Palestine/Israel,
derived from the finite binary categories of the Israeli occupation. This all-too-
common frame greatly distorts the multivalent Israeli realities. First, it conflates all
Jews, European and Mizrahi, no matter where they came from, or are now, into a
single Judaism. Then the frame deploys the very same mutually exclusive categories
that Ashkenazi-Zionism formulated from its onset, where all Jews either are European
or ought to strive to be European, and all Arabs cannot be Jewish. Ironically, Arab

6
protest is actually not against Judaism, but against Ashkenazi-Zionism, seen as the
enemy of Arab nationalism. Indeed Egypt and Jordan have been co-opted into
becoming subcontractors of the U.S. in the region. But the Syrians, and especially the
Palestinians and Lebanese, could have dared to initiate dialogue with the Israeli
periphery’s Mizrahi war casualties, who, like themselves, are mostly Arab. They could
have told the Mizrahim that, this time, they understand that the bombardments in
northern Israel, as well as the Qassam missiles in the Western Negev bordering the
Gaza strip, both actually serve the Israeli regime’s interest. Both intensify the enmity
between Mizrahim and Palestinians, since it is this very conflict that prevents the
Mizrahi public from rising up against the economic neo-colonialism that has so
completely impoverished it.
The Hezbollah and Hammas leaders could also have i pointed out that the Israeli
regime abandoned the Mizrahim not only on the battlefield but also in their bomb
shelters. Perhaps the Palestinians and Lebanese could have even tried to appeal to the
crisis-time essentialist discourse of shared roots, if they noticed that the borderland
Mizrahim, for the first time in their Israeli history, have started to realize that the
state has little interest in their recovery from the trauma of the war. Such overtures
could have wedged open some small fissures in the sloganish Mizrahi solidarity with
Israel’s White establishment, which considered the price paid by those killed in Sderot
and the North acceptable collateral damage for its plan. Israel’s unwritten policy is to
sacrifice the borderzone Mizrahi civilian population in the seasonal small-scale wars so
that most of the Mizrahim 31 will continue to have enmity against the non-Jewish
Arabs. And the Mizrahim do unite behind this enmity, rather than directing their
energies to resisting the intra-Jewish racial rifts inside Israel.
In the consciousness of the Arab World, as well as that of the Western Left supporting
it, the images of Mizrahim come from the Ashkenazi media: dark soldiers at the
roadblocks, Arabic-speaking SHABAK interrogators, borderzone settlers, and crowds
screaming ―death to the Arabs.‖ Why do Palestinians and other Arabs not question
this media when it comes to its Mizrahi images? It is in the interest of both the
Mizrahim and the Palestinians to weaken the hegemonic Ashkenazi power center that
has imposed itself on the Arab World. Only then can Israel/Palestine become an
integral part of the Middle East. A discursive dialogical tactic springing from the Arab
World, and flowing to engage the war-ridden Mizrahi public, could have offered them
alternatives to their Pavlovian shrieks. These shrill cries are their traumatized
conditioned reflex to the all-too-effective Zionist socialization. Besides, they know that

7
any Mizrahi who dared to speak out against the hegemon has been violently silenced:
see under Mordechai Vanunu, Tali Fahima, Uzi Meshulam and others. When the battles
stopped roaring last summer, perhaps a few articulations on the Mizrahi situation rose
from the Arab World. Any such commentaries in Arabic or English should be translated
into Hebrew for the Mizrahi communities, because few people in them can read the
originals. Zionism cut off the Arabic mother tongue from the Mizrahi communities fifty
years ago, and also made it next to impossible for Mizrahim to attend the elitist
schools where English is properly studied. Non-Zionist Mizrahi activists cannot
accomplish this essential translation task. With only meager resources, and no access
to tools for reading, translating and disseminating any such texts, they cannot even
translate their own activism into Arabic.

Activism on a Hair’s Breadth

To explore the problematics of non-Zionist scholarship and activism from an Arab-
world positionality, one could at best read translations into Arabic of work by Mizrahi
intellectuals. Most of them are grounded in the North American/European postcolonial
paradigm, and articulate themselves far over the heads of their communities. Those
belonging to the Israeli academy comfortably exclude themselves from the
communities’ Sisyphean daily labors through their dissociated writing style,
epitomized by their ―cut, censor and paste‖ technique of importing postmodern-
postcolonial U.S. theories into the vicissitudes of Mizrahi and Palestinian realities.
According to these academics, the anti-Arab racism of the Mizrahi community
embarrasses them, and is a millstone around their necks.
The uncritical importing of postcolonial theory into Israel’s academe, and then
translating Israeli academic self-proclaimed ―post‖colonial texts into Arabic, does not
generate tools that can support activism. Activism has to speak at least two
languages. One is the anti-racist, feminist ideational language designed to open
intellectual possibilities for reabsorbing Mizrahim into the Arab space. The other is the
language of practice activists must speak to help people find practical solutions to
their daily problems dealing with the regime’s authorities. Take, for example, a
Mizrahi community’s uprising against the regime’s plan to demolish their houses in
Kfar-Shalem as part of its ―eviction-and-rebuilding‖ project. Mizrahi activists raised
the community’s consciousness, pointing out it was no accident the regime threw
them into ongoing, long-term precariousness by settling them in the pre-Nakba village
of Salame. As soon as the real estate value increased, the regime demanded that the

8
Mizrahim vacate the land so that an elite neighborhood development could be built
there. The activists also confronted the community with another stark reality: the
Ashkenazi kibbutzim and upper-class neighborhoods, which were also built on the
Nakba ruins, have been spared the long-term precariousness of the post-Nakba
Mizrahi slums. No one has ever asked the Ashkenazim who live on the ruins of
Palestine to evacuate their homes for the benefit of other Ashkenazim. Not even the
Ashkenazi NGOs whose activism is around the Nakba commemoration have asked
this. They conduct commemoration tours in Mizrahi ghettos, but rarely visit the
Ashkenazi real estate bonanzas. The costs for non-Zionist Mizrahi activism are high. It
is not just that the regime bars activist grassroots leaders from jobs that would enable
them to afford permanent housing. They are also exposed to piercing criticism from
the very Mizrahi communities they live in and try to serve. This, despite the fact that
the community is visibly aided by their leadership and its tool box. But when these
activists talk with their communities, it is from the history of the racinated wounds
Zionism inflicted on the communities. The post-anti-Zionist Israeli Left, in contrast,
deals only with the wounds of the Nakba, which it appropriates unto itself to do
fundraising from donors situated in the Western world. Mizrahi communities are so
overwhelmed with issues of daily survival that they find it a discursive luxury to deal
with the Nakba. The Mizrahim are already living with their own catastrophe. Non-
Zionist Mizrahi activism in Mizrahi communities entails a built-in paradox. Activists are
followed around by the familiar calls of ―Death to the Arabs!‖ In contrast, they have
been pleasantly surprised to find that in the last year, over half the Mizrahi public
willingly admits that the Israeli regime is definitely racist toward non-Ashkenazi Jews.
These Mizrahim come from all economic strata and all shades of the political
spectrum. As the activists work, tiny fissures appear in the automatic-reflex
assumption that critiquing Zionism necessarily 32 entails having haughty Ashkenazi
privilege.
Unfortunately, no alternative cultural-social Arab discourse, written or activist, on
Mizrahi issues, can by itself coax into flower the budding consciousness emerging in
the Mizrahi communities. The written genre, translated from Arabic to English, arrives
in Israel through scientific periodicals or internet portals, and is thus readily available
not to Mizrahim, but only to the Ashkenazi ―Left‖ in academe. For them, Palestine, the
Arab World, and even the theory of Mizrahi-ness exist mainly in English. If there had
been an alternative Arab discourse on the subject of Mizrahi-ness distributed in
Mizrahi communities, the activists still would first have to do the hard work of helping

9
their people confront and explore the communal wound through their own non-
hegemonic narration of the communities’ histories. Because of the media bubble, and
the deep pain of the wound, most in the Mizrahi communities are incapable of self-
reflection independent of the Ashkenazi-Zionist master narrative. In the last year, the
activists have wondered whether the Palestinian public is also affected by the New
World Order that Washington dictates to the region. Is there in the Palestinian
Authority, or PA, as in Israel, a revolving door between the academy and the regime?
Are the same processes of academization and professionalization that transmuted
Mizrahi ―social‖ NGOs also infiltrating the PA NGOs? The Mizrahi activists are trying to
resist hegemony by dreaming up a more liberating discourse, and assume the
activists of Palestine would do the same. But how can they know? Not knowing Arabic,
aside from the spoken Judeo-Arabic some remember from their parental homes, they
live on the edge, hanging by a hair’s breadth. Due to the Arabic language barrier, they
cannot form coalitions with social justice NGOs in the Arab world. Ashkenazi NGOs use
their English to form coalitions with some of these Arab NGOs. Why do these Arab
NGOs succumb to the Palestinian nationalist-hegemonic order and its approach, that
they ought to continue talking peace with the Ashkenazim, or just boycott all Israelis
across the board? And, due to the Mizrahi activists’ English block, they have no
budget adequate to challenge the peace and co-existence fantasy the Ashkenazim
wish to produce.
In any case, the Palestinian political system, like those of all Arab states, continues to
reject any attempt by a non-Zionist Mizrahi grassroots leader to initiate intra-Arab
rapprochement through public communication. Mizrahi activists experience similar
rejection from all the NGOs of the Arab World’s public spheres struggling for political,
social, gender and cultural justice. Much of the Israeli oppression in Palestine is
accomplished by means of an intentionally cumbersome bureaucracy that kills a
person slowly. The arbitrarily ever-changing and never-ending rules and regulations
wear down a person’s confidence that life makes sense. The random curfews, house
searches, arrests, and random openings and closings at hundreds of checkpoints
result in lost work opportunities, lost medical appointments, lost family ties, lost civic
life, lost demolished houses, lost fetuses. Finally, the apartheid wall. Throttling the
soul leads to ailments of the body. This strategy accomplishes a sociocide through
sheer bureaucracy. It was honed when the regime deployed it on the Mizrahim and
the Palestinian citizens of Israel in the 1950s, during the period of the military rule
and the transit camps. The intra-Israeli bureaucracy is not as brutal and

10
phantasmagorical as that in Gaza and the West Bank, but after sixty years of its
relentless abrasion, the Mizrahi communities are burned out. Each individual feels
chronic stress from the endless round of desperate encounters with lower-level
Mizrahi bureaucrats subservient to the Ashkenazim who hired them. Lacking the
learned skill of form-ology, or the money to hire an attorney, and having transferred
his or her loyalty to a state conceived as Jewish for everyone Jewish, s/he is all alone.
The support system of the extended family was shattered long ago by the Zionist
state promising equal rights for all the Jewish citizens of the nation. The Zionized
Human Rights NGOs have only a limited toolkit of legal aid. They know that if they file
a class action suit arguing against intra-Jewish racism in the Jewish state, they will be
going against their own ideology and will lose their funding as well. This is the Mizrahi
sociocide. It results from the sudden panic at a knock on the door that might be the
police, ordered ex parte by the bailiff court, to confiscate a family’s refrigerator, stove,
beds, and kitchen table due to a bounced $ 50 check plus accrued interest and fines.
Day-long lines in the sluggish legal aid offices, when one falls a week behind in paying
the rent and must plead, in vain, for a decent lawyer to delay eviction. More long lines
in the National Security office, for the pittance of a welfare allowance after it was
denied because an unauthorized search by the welfare detectives found one less or
one more toothbrush in the home than the number of residents declared. Long lines
at the NGOs for handme-down expired food. Long lines at the forced employment
bureau. And then, the chronic anxiety about the knock on the door from the welfare
officers of the family court, coming at dawn to remove the children, for their own
good, to the government’s forced boarding school system, since the family has failed
to make ends meet and is therefore unfit to parent. Weaker after each round with the
labyrinthine bureaucracy, many just give up and know it is hopeless to try to claim
whatever supposed rights the law gives them.

Mizrahim, the Holocaust, and the Haybar Syndrome

Last year, the Mizrahi Piyut (sg., hymn; piyutim, pl., Heb.) movement received
legitimation, even in the White Israeli public sphere. The traditional piyutim are Arab-
Jewish masculine liturgical poetic texts, sung to the 33 melodies of classical Arab
composers. For years, these piyutim were sung in the synagogues and homes of
Mizrahi communities. Now, in addition, piyutim with new, simpler melodies are sung
by both men and women in community centers built with lottery money, and even in

11
academic research institutes, where they are yet another exotic jewel in the necklace
of Mizrahi containment.
The rabbis and cantors ignore the connection between Judaism and the melodies’
source in the golden age of Arab high modernism. This activity is considered
unchallenging to Zionism. When Jerusalemite Rabbi Haim Luk performs the Piyut
liturgy before the Moroccan parliament and royal family, he enjoys applause for his
Arabness. Women have been allocated popular tune classics in Arabic, or Hebrew
translation of Arabic. But in Israel, all these singers refuse to publicly identify with
anything Arab, since they are afraid of the Pavlovian response from the Mizrahi
community, even though in private events Mizrahi families not only sing and dance in
Arabic, but even hire Palestinian musicians. The inherent paradox occurs because the
Mizrahi public thinks that its own Arab singing can autonomously exist within the
―Israeli‖ regime, unrelated to Zionist injustices. A Mizrahi cultural revival is also taking
place in independent theaters, where plays are performed in a Judeo-Arabic dialect
from Iraq, Morocco or Yemen, or in Farsi. Mizrahi audiences pack these shows. There
is also a blossoming of underground Mizrahi budget movies, similar in structure to the
well financed grand Egyptian cinematic dramas. Mizrahi activists simply have no
money to mobilize around these current trends, nor have they ever had the financial
means to show the deep connections of this cultural revival to the Arab World. Nor
can they expose the Zionist censorship which pressures agents of the Mizrahi-Arab
cultural revival to compose melodies and texts in praise of the IDF and the
occupation. Non-Zionist Mizrahi activists long for the revival’s artists and musicians to
get down from the Zionist stage. But what other stage do these artists have? Could
they collaborate with cultural actors in the Arab World? No, the latter are unwilling to
collaborate with Mizrahi artists and musicians who publicly support the Zionist project.
As long as there is no alternative stage, it will be necessary, even easy, for Mizrahim
to keep living the paradoxes. They play the game of Ashkenazi-Zionism: they get its
funds to situate their Arab plays on its stage, yet to pollsters working for the
hegemonic media, they anonymously complain that Israeli Ashkenazim are racist
against Mizrahim because of their Arab origin. So on stage they sing their songs in
Judeo-Arabic; in the stage of the real world they shriek ―death to the Arabs.‖ All the
while the Ashkenazi-Zionist regime brags about the rare success stories of feeble
token Mizrahim in academe, the government, and the higher echelons of civil service.
Last year, the mirage-like bridges the Israeli regime tried to build during the Oslo
process and the al-Aqsa Intifada were totally exposed. These peace bridges were

12
supposed to connect Israel to the PA, but the PA was and is already totally dependent
economically and politically on Israel’s elite. These bridges grew from an apolitical
interpretation of the identity politics trend in Western Europe and the U.S. in the early
1990s. The local interpretation of this identity carnival attempted to link—in a
postmodern manner—the World War II holocaust with ―the New Middle East.‖ The
Oslo peace festival brought with it a media wave of well publicized Shoah tourist
peregrinations. Mizrahi and Palestinian tourists, like the Ashkenazi ones, were funded
by the government’s education ministry to fly to visit Eastern and Central European
concentration camps. One ought not trivialize introducing Mizrahim and Palestinians to
the in situ horrors of the Nazi monster. Yet for Mizrahi youth, these journeys replaced
the Ashkenazi Israeli Youth Movement’s excursions. Like those trips, a Shoah tour is a
rite of passage to socialize Mizrahim into the heart of Israeli-ness. The brief tour,
sometimes lasting only 24 hours, and occurring a year before Israelis are drafted into
the IDF, requires them to absorb an intentional erasure of actual history, as if nothing
happened to the Jews between the Hebrew Scriptures and the Zionist movement.
Shoah tours can be seen as the core of Israel’s Enlightenment belief. To maintain it
requires what Israeli educators term ―civic pluralism.‖ This depends on a Shoah
interpretation wherein the concentration camps and monuments have been Zionized
through overdetermined commodification. In these journeys the normalization of the
Shoah is expressed in, among other things, a tourist agenda including visits to
concentration camps during the day, but participation in cabaret performances of sex
workers in the evening. It is hardly remarkable that, after such a roots treatment,
Ashkenazim can open a new page for themselves in Europe, articulated by a German,
Polish, Lithuanian, or any other passport of the EU. Last year, preoccupation with
Mizrahi and Palestinian Shoah tours took up more than the usual time around the
tribal campfire. Could Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Iran and other Arab states
in the region organize well publicized ―roots trips‖ to their various countries for the
Mizrahim who came from them? Could Arab regimes facilitate the option of passports
for Mizrahi communities to use in times of duress? In case they ever do, we would like
to alert Arab regimes to the fact that the Ashkenazim, as the owners of the peace
discourse, will probably want to manage the Mizrahi travel agency for Arab World
roots trips, as a subsidiary of their ―New Middle East.‖ These days, even secularist
discourse in the Arab World has been influenced by the Islamist movements’
sophisticated, timely transnational civic agenda. Nevertheless, offshoots of these
movements reveal a 34 modernist Islamist fundamentalism that permeates the public

13
sphere, and radiates also toward the Mizrahim. Non-Zionist Mizrahi activists who
participate in Palestinian human rights demonstrations are weary of slogans like
―Haybar, Haybar, ya-Yahoud; Jeish Muhammad saya`oud‖ (―Haybar, Jew,
Muhammad’s army / Will return in all its glory.‖) It solves nothing to invoke missiles
by the names of Haybar 1 or Haybar 2, or to give Friday mosque sermons
contextualizing the Intifada through Haybar, or to keep conjuring up the battle of
Haybar (628 C.E. in South Arabia) in the context of Israel and Zionism, let alone
Judaism. The political Islamist leadership is careful to use the term ―Zionism‖ to be
clear, but this care is not taken in mass demonstrations against Israel. It is
exasperating to the activists, who realize Israel is not Yahoud, and neither of these is
Zionism, to hear the three nouns interchanged constantly at demonstrations. This
conflation is everywhere: in pirated cassettes enjoying mass popular circulation; in
clerics’ sermons played from cassettes on long distance intercity buses; on local
buses, in the markets, and in many other public spaces of the Arab World and its
diasporas. Criticizing the Israeli regime by misusing language in this way is
counterproductive to any Mizrahi-Arab coalition-building. It is no better than the
Mizrahi communities’ cries for ―death to the Arabs.‖ Yet with all this said—no Arab
ruling entity has abused the Mizrahim as much as the Ashkenazi-Zionist regime has. It
kidnapped their babies and sold them for adoption. It sterilized their women without
informed consent, because it considered them unable to improve the gene pool of
Jewish genius. It irradiated their children under the auspices of the U.S., in a
disguised ―medical‖ treatment. It shattered the Mizrahi extended family structure. The
regime impoverished the Mizrahim by denying them proper education and thus gainful
employment. In order to perpetuate the military conflict between Israel and the Arab
World, the regime has blocked any possible solution for the Palestinian refugees’ right
of return, and thus has blocked, and will continue to block, the Mizrahi right of return
to their own sources, even for a roots visit.

One State, Palestine/Israel, and the Mizrahi Predicament

In the last year, the word ―Isra’il‖ has appeared frequently in the Arab media as a
replacement for the old term ―The Zionist Entity.‖ This does not mean a normalization
of Israel in the heart of the Arab World. It does indicate a transnational comeback of
the one-state solution as the only way to resolve the question of Palestine/Israel. This
new one-state vision has trumped the former Zionist trump card—The Wall. Israel
builds the wall, expropriating Palestinian land, in order to segregate the West Bank

14
and Gaza from the amorphously borderless ―Isra’il‖ created in 1948. The regime
expands Isra’il by military might but then mouths a discourse of surrender, to cash in
its ill-gotten gains as bargaining chips when it is strategic to temporarily rein in its
aspirations for a Greater Eretz Israel. Nor is the comeback vision compatible with the
operational official line of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and the West Bank,
because the PA also advocates two states for two peoples. From the Mizrahi point of
view, to assume that there are only two peoples involved here, diametrically opposed,
is a binarism utterly inadequate to the realities. Last year, following publicity on
statistics about the ethnic distribution of the fallen in post-1967 occupied Palestine,
Mizrahi mothers have been encouraging their offspring to join the ―gray refusal‖ track.
The IDF, recently termed ―the military of phalanges‖ by Ashkenazi-Israeli Military
Science scholars, has become the Mizrahi upward mobility track into the heart of the
―Israeli‖ consensus. This gray refusal, both Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, is different from
the highly PR-ed Ashkenazi refusal familiar to non-Israeli readers, because the
parents of the new gray refuseniks lack the money, power, and influential network to
crown a media and law court aura around their children’s heads. The solution of ―two
states for two peoples‖ would have to be maintained by the cyclical war rituals and
bloodletting. Non-Zionist Mizrahi activists think such rituals cannot be sustained much
longer, and the one state vision might be the only viable way to resolve the perennial
Middle East Crisis. In the activists’ scenarios, though, a just resolution of all their lived
paradoxes still seems beyond reach, because there will probably be little or no space
to enact equal rights for the Mizrahi citizens of this one state. The activists assume
that with the establishment of a one-state Israel/Palestine, there will be massive
emigration. EU passport holders, mainly professional Ashkenazim, will get out. The
thin crust of Mizrahim who have risen to white-collar occupations in demand will
emigrate to countries like Canada, Australia, and the Latin American republics that
encourage immigration of wealthy professionals. The Christian Palestinians will
continue their pattern of emigrating from the West Bank and Gaza to their relatives in
the Palestinian diaspora of the Americas and Europe.
Will an Islamist patriarchal state be formed in Palestine/Israel, where Mizrahim who
stay will be a religious minority? Will there be a secular patriarchal state, ruled by the
Ashkenazi elite who would rather not emigrate because they know they would lose
their privilege and wealth by going abroad, where no one knows their family names,
descent, land holdings, etc., and thus no one can pull strings for them in every aspect
of life? Will they be ruling along with the Palestinian moneyed class and educated

15
technocrats? Will these elites once again exclude the majority population, the
Palestinians and Mizrahim, from access to education, equitable justice, financial
resources, networks of influence and reputation? 35 Mizrahim belong inextricably to
the Middle East. Most of them have nowhere else to go. Ashkenazi Zionism has forced
them to unlearn their histories, to hate and be ashamed of them, ever since it
imported its Yemeni Jewish ―natural laborers‖ to Palestine in 1882. In the year
following Lebanon 2, the Mizrahi communities in Israel have begun to unearth their
histories in their ancestral homes. They will first have to unlearn and peel off the
silences imposed on them by their respective elites, be they secular, traditionalist or
religious. As a therapeutic process, the Mizrahim could identify and reconstruct their
Arab-Jewish histories, being careful to distinguish between their own oppressive
patriarchy and the oppression from the state’s Ashkenazi-Zionist patriarchy. The
Mizrahim will need to demand equality and true partnership in the one state,
Palestine/Israel, which will be a permanent home for the now-silent Palestinian and
Mizrahi majority. In order to start a trust-building process between Mizrahim and
Palestinians, the Palestinian leadership might consider how to let go of pinning their
hopes on the Ashkenazi-Israeli Left.
Meanwhile, the Mizrahi communities can consider their right to identify themselves,
here and now, as the demographic majority on which rests the state of Israel. Only by
reclaiming this majority status can Mizrahim advance the peace process. But the
citizens of the Arab majority states in this region, also, ought to commit themselves to
promise the Mizrahi public, and by deeds, not merely words, that when the one state
comes to be, they will not be pushed away once again to its margins.

16
 Israelis and the Israeli War on Gaza
by Sergio Yani

The absolute majority of Israeli Jews support the current Israeli offensive in Gaza. They also
supported the offensive against Lebanon in 2006 and the successive offensives carried out in the
West Bank since 2000. We could explain this position as an expression of the colonial ideology
that feeds Zionism. However, this explanation represents Israeli society as being homogenous
and devoid of contradictions, and would thus misrepresent reality. Israeli society is highly
unstable and trapped within its own contradictions. It is precisely here that we should seek the
reasons underlying militarism in Israel. Mass immigration following the creation of Israel in
1948, not the successive wars with neighboring Arab states, was the greatest challenge facing
the Zionist project and its class structure. In its early years, Israel was forced to absorb a
population twice as big as the number of people of European origin who founded the state. The
primary intention for absorbing the immigrants was to supplant the Palestinian cheap labor force
which had been deported just after WWII. Yet the immigrants, who in the majority came from
the urban or rural middle-classes, resisted this process of impoverishment and
proletarianization. A series of popular uprisings in 1955 led the establishment to perceive the
social ferment in the immigration camps as a threat to the Zionist project. Several Zionist
leaders of the time wrote in their memoirs that they feared the Israeli Communist Party was
planning a revolution. The war of 1956, and the nationalist wave it aroused in Israel, created a
space in which to ideologically include the immigrants. All Israelis, immigrants or not, shared the
hardship of war and social discontent was relegated. Similarly, eleven years later, the 1967 war
and the nationalist wave it unleashed following Israel’s victory served as a tool to discipline the
independent trade union movement that had begun to develop. Wars did not unify the diverse
communities in Israel, but served to establish discipline within a fractured society. The wars, and
particularly the military victory of 1967, served to establish the ethnic fundamentalism that
characterizes the hegemonic discourse in Israel. This allowed the ruling classes to overcome the
social rifts and thus suggest a Jewish national identity. For this reason, the discourse of peace,
which does not propose solutions to the social upheavals of Israeli society, subverts the promises
of ethnic fundamentalism. With peace disappears the common danger that holds together the
unemployed in Sderot and the systems engineer in Tel Aviv. At the same time, peace makes
evident the social and ethnic rifts of Israel breaking its current façade of social stability. For that
reason, the most volatile period in Israel’s history were the years of the Oslo process. During this
period Israel faced previously unknown and startling political violence, and no government

1
managed to complete its full term. In this period, Israel had major general strikes and witnessed
the renaissance of ethnic identities and growing criticism of Zionist history.
The reemergence of neoconservative thinking, which reached its peak during the two terms of
George W. Bush, enabled the Israeli bourgeoisie to regenerate, becoming the department of
research and development of the global arms industry. The neoconservative politics in Israel
were put in place by Ehud Barak. Their first appearance in the Israeli political scene was through
a new offensive against the Palestinian people, both in the territories Israel occupied in 1967 and
inside the green line, which ended the peace process in all practical terms. Only later, during the
government of Ariel Sharon, were neoliberal economic and social policies implemented. As the
combined consequence of the Israeli offensive and the neoliberal policies, impoverished Israelis
can access the system through the military or private security agents. For those who cannot
access the system, there is always nationalist radicalization.
According to this logic, the suicide attacks at the beginning of the decade and later Hamas’
homemade rockets allowed Israel to rebuild a Jewish identity based on common security
interests. With these rockets, an impoverished and marginalized population, such as the
population of Sderot, returned to the center of the national consensus. Under a rain of rockets,
Sderot was transformed from a marginal town, where third-generation immigrants struggle to
survive, into a symbol of the fate of the Jewish nation.
Obviously, this process also requires the exclusion of the non-Jewish population in Israel and the
marginalization of its Palestinian citizens in public life. Otherwise, there would be a return to the
harsh social relations that began to be realized during the peace process. Cleansed of ethnic
privileges, an unemployed person in Sderot is a victim of the system.
The real Israeli is therefore built on an exclusive ethno-nationalism and the desire for peace
must lose it actual meaning and become a meaningless rhetoric ritual. Obviously this also
requires the exclusion of political forces that translate the desire for peace into a plan of action.
Therefore, it is not surprising that organizations and intellectuals well recognized abroad for their
pacifist rhetoric, supported the offensive against the Palestinian people at the end of September
2000, the offensive against Lebanon in 2006 and the current offensive against the Palestinian
people in Gaza.
But while the Zionist RIght justifies the war in terms of national security, the Zionist Left and its
intellectuals joined the consensus on the theme of national sovereignty.
For intellectuals like Amos Oz and Ari Shavit, and politicians like Haim Oron of Meretz, all of
whom recognize the ineffectiveness of the Palestinian rockets, the military offensive against
Gaza is justified because those missiles violated national sovereignty.

2
For these spokesmen of the Zionist Left, the massive bombing of the early days of the offensive
would be sufficient to restore Israel’s sovereignty. But the Zionist Right demands a final and
notable victory, such as the one in 1967.
Obviously, when the Jewish population has to choose between a symbolic victory as proposed
by the Zionist Left and a final one as the proposed by the Right, most would choose the final
victory.

3
A brief forward by the editor
We were obliged to omit footnotes and figure references for a problem of pagination.
We apologize with the authors and readers. For a full reading of the text, see
http://www.geog.bgu.ac.il/members/yiftachel/new_papers_eng/Cities.pdf

Between urban and national: Political mobilization among Mizrahim in Israel’s

‗development towns’
By
Erez Tzfadia, Department of Geography, Hebrew University, Mount Scopus,
Jerusalem, Israel 91905
Oren Yiftachel, Department of Geography and Environmental Development, Ben-
Gurion University of the Negev, P.O. Box 53 653, Beer Sheva 84105, Israel

Keywords: Elections, Immigration, Regions, Development, Zionism

Introduction
A large number of the Mizrahi Jews, who arrived in Israel from the Muslim world,
mainly during the 1950s, were settled in peripheral ‗development towns’. Their
political mobilization has emerged against a background of geographic marginality,
per-sisting deprivation and demographic instability. A recent period of mass
immigration from the former Soviet Union, coupled with repeated economic crises
associated with Israel’s globalizing, neo-liberal, economic policies, has further
destabilized the towns. Given their current population, which exceeds 800,000, and
the recent influx of immigrants, these immigrant towns have become a significant
component of Israeli politics and identity formation. Our paper aims to study political
mobilization of Mizrahim in the towns, and focuses on two central arenas: extra-
parliamentary protest and local election campaigns. These provide useful vantage
points from which to examine the changing patterns of mobilization and identity.
Notably, different ‗voices’ are raised in the two arenas: public protest is aimed
‗outside’ at the national state and other loci of power, while local election campaigns
are aimed ‗inside’, at the local voter. The difference between these ‗voices’ will link
our paper to the question of geographic scale and its socio-political significance. Our
research indicates that the public protest by Mizrahim in the towns has voiced
demands for a fairer share of Israel’s public resources, falling within the ‗legitimate’
boundaries of Zionist political discourse. In local election campaigns, however, the

1
Mizrahim raised a more intense political voice, focusing on competition against the
large number of ‗Russians’ immigrants who arrived during the 1990s. Local election
campaigns often transgressed the boundaries of accepted Zionist discourse, by
questioning the core value of immigrant absorption. What explains the different
agendas and discourses? We argue that the nature of political mobilization is rooted in
the intertwined influences of place (and hence, scale), identity and class. The dynamic
role of place is a central point in our analysis. It emerges as a major source of
communal identity and political power, constantly reshaped through social processes
(See; Agnew, 1987; Massey, 1994; Paasi, 1999). And further, place and identity are
composed of several ‗layers’, most notably corresponding to ‗national’ and ‗local’
scales. The former pertains to the formation of the Israeli-Zionist nation, and the
critical role of the development towns in the making of Israeli-Jewish space, while the
latter focuses more on the actual town, and may be indifferent to national
imperatives. While the towns were created as peripheral and impoverished places in
the attempt to Judaize the land, they have now become a significant—and
threatened—ethnic and political resource. The Mizrahi voice is thus pitched differently
in the two arenas: it demands resources from the state and economic forces, while
attempting to maintain control over the local ‗turf’. Hence, our examination also
reveals some ‗cracks’ in the Zionist nation-building project: Mizrahi Jews in the
periphery are developing alternative outlooks and voices (especially, but not only,
ultra-orthodox Sepharadic identity), which aims to transform the nature of Zionism
from within, while using the development towns as a major source of power. This has
yet to present an open challenge to the Ashkenazi-dominated Israeli state, but the
level of consent awarded to state dictates is gradually declining. Our basic assumption
holds that ethnic goals and identities are constantly reshaped by material and political
circumstances. At each time/space configuration, an ethnic group will make use of
what it con-siders to be the ―correct‖ identity to advance its interests through public
mobilization. This is particularly salient when an immigrant group resides in a
community whose ethnicity is regarded as having a low social status, and especially a
group whose identity, we contend, is ‗trapped’ at the margins of a settler society. The
connection between patterns of mobilization for protest in development towns and the
‗entrapment’ of their Mizrahim is central to the claims of this paper. A ‗trapped’
identity emerges in the gray area, between the centers of authority and wealth and
the excluded margins. Trapped communities have few alternative paths for identity
development or political mobilization, except the oppressive structure established by

2
the state. The main open option is inclusion at the national center, but this comes at a
heavy price of structural inferiority (see Swirski, 1989; Shohat, 2001).
However, no group would accept a ‗trapped’ position as final, and searches for ways to
undermine the oppressive setting. Such an attempt is likely to first emerge on a local
scale, where interests are immediate and concrete. It is on the local scale that the
group may begin to exploit small ‗cracks’ in the national hegemony. The suggestive
connection we are making between issues of mobilization, identity and geographic
scale, is one of the intended contributions of this paper.
To substantiate these claims, the paper reports on two research projects. The first
focused on acts of public protest in the towns, while the second studied local election
campaigns. The first analysis explores the position of peripheral Mizrahim in the
national place, identity and politics, while the latter examines their mobilization in the
local urban turf, and particularly vis-a`-vis the large influx of Russian-speaking
immigrants in recent years. Prior to the detailed account of development town
mobilization, let us outline some of our theoretical approaches.

Mobilization in the development towns

The creation of a Mizrahi ethno-class

Following Israel’s independence in 1948, a great many Jewish immigrants from a

range of cultures began to arrive in the country. The large numbers and cultural
diversity forced policymakers to adopt a policy of ‗rapid and optimal absorption’
(Eisenstadt, 1969). This policy sought to implement the concepts of ―Judaization-
dispersal‖ and ―ingathering of the exiles‖. The policy of dispersing the Jewish
population throughout the country—a key principle underlying the ethnicization of
space—was operationalized in a national program known as the ―Sharon Plan‖
(Sharon, 1951). This important policy document was named after Aryeh Sharon, head
of the Planning Authority in the Prime Minister’s Office in 1948– 1952. Sharon sought
to provide an urban plan for the state of Israel, in anticipation of a population of 2.5
million (Kark, 1995). This plan created a pyramid with five primary types of
settlement in a hierarchical relationship. One major category missing from the urban
landscape prior to the founding of Israel was Jewish middle-sized towns and urban
centers having a population of 6000–60,000 (Sharon, 1951; Troen, 1994). These
communities came to be called ―development towns‖. The development towns became

3
the main tool for implementing the policy of (Jewish) population dispersal and creating
a Jewish majority in the Galilee and Negev. Between 1948 and 1963, 27 development
towns were established as medium-sized peripheral urban centers, in realization of
the concept of dispersal. Most were far removed from Israeli urban centers. The towns
were populated through the provision of public housing to (mainly Mizrahi) homeless
and dependent immigrants who had little other residential choices (Yiftachel and
Tzfadia, 1999; Lewin-Epstein et al., 1997). Most of the few Ashkenazim sent to the
towns found their way to the center of the country, leaving the Mizrahim behind in the
development towns. Thus, paradoxically, the concept of ‗population dispersal’
undermined the concept of the ingathering of the exiles, since the segregated
development towns were virtually entirely populated by Mizrahi immigrants. Over the
years, these immigrants were subject not only to social, political, and cultural
marginalization, but were also at an acute economic disadvantage (Etkin, 2002). The
economic profile of all the towns relied on heavy and traditional industries, cheap
labor, and constant job instability (Razin, 1996; Gradus and Einy, 1984; Gradus and
Krakover, 1977).
The existence of towns distinctively inferior from mainstream Israeli society and
commonly patronizing behavior toward the Mizrahim, spawned widespread sentiments
of alienation and social marginality (Shohat, 2001).
The conspicuous gap between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim generated various scholarly
accounts. One perspective, drawn from neo-Marxist thought, views the settlement of
Mizrahim in development towns as a pool of cheap labor for the rapidly growing Israeli
economy (Shafir and Peled, 1998; Bernstein and Swirski, 1982). A complementary
analysis regards the establishment of development towns as a means used by the
dominant Ashkenazi group to advance the territorial goals of Zionist nationalism. In
other words, by transforming the Mizrahim into a settlement force, the territorial
interests of the dominant group were served, creating a Jewish majority in previously
Arab regions. During the process, these regions were also transformed from glorified
frontiers to stigmatized peripheries (Hasson, 1998). At the same time, the distancing
of Mizrahim from the economic and political centers enabled the dominant Ashkenazi
group to maintain its dominance over Mizrahim and Palestinians (Swirski, 1989).
This account links the development towns to the settler society model. The dominant
(‗founders’) group is composed primarily of Ashkenazim who settled in the territory
prior to the founding of the state, and the middle-class Mizrahi immigrants who
mobilized upwards; the native group is Palestinian-Arab; and the immigrant group is

4
composed primarily of Mizrahim who arrived from the Muslim world and more recently
from the ex-Soviet Union. A related approach defines Israel as a ―settling ethnocracy‖,
in which a European ethnic group controls the state apparatus (in the name of ‗the
nation’), unevenly incorporating later immigrants through various nation-building
projects. The ‗founders’ reinforce their dominance through their control of the state’s
evolving geography, economy and politics. Rights and capabilities are determined
mainly according to ethnic affiliation (Yiftachel and Kedar, 2000). How does this affect
the patterns of protest of Mizrahim from development towns?

Protest of the Mizrahi ethno-class in development towns

Our analysis of public protest includes all events expressing dissatisfaction in the
public sphere, especially against the state. Data were collected for the years 1960–
1998 from the reports of two national newspapers (Ha’aretz and Ma’ariv) and two
local papers (Kol HaTzafon and Sheva). Data about each act of protest were
translated into a numerical index based on the number of participants, duration and
intensity. Due to limitation of space, the presentation of results will be quite brief. In
the period under discussion, 345 acts of protest took place in development towns.
Public protest in the towns has been relatively persistent and consistent, if not
intense, apart from one exceptionally active year (1989); it has remained without the
volatility that would constitute a direct challenge to the settler ethnocratic regime.
This stands in contrast to far more intensive and often fluctuating levels of protest in
nearly all other organized sectors of Israeli society, notably the Arab citizens and
Jewish settlers (Herman, 1996; Lehman-Wilzig, 1990). The relative detachment of the
towns from the major political struggles of Israeli society was conspicuous in the early
1970s, when the Black Panthers movement mobilized many Mizrahim, especially in
Jerusalem’s poor neighborhoods, but managed to rally only scant support in the
towns. What about the fluctuations in protest? These, we found, were almost entirely
influenced by two related factors: macro-economic conditions and public policies. We
can note waves of protest surfacing during every period of economic hardship and
restructuring in Israel, which usually hits peripheral groups hardest. This occurred
during the mid1960s, the late 1970s, the mid1980s, the late 1980s, and the mid
1990s, when many demonstrations, rallies and media activities in the towns objected,
at times fiercely, to the rise in unemployment, the decline in services and the
emigration from the towns during these periods. And conversely, during periods of

5
government investment in the towns, and growth in local employment, such as the
early 1980s (when a ‗neighborhood renewal’ project was established in development
towns), or the early 1990s (the massive building for ‗Russian’ immigrants) the towns
remained relatively calm. What did peripheral Mizrahim mobilize against? Despite the
large number of events in and about the towns, we discovered, as noted, that the
range of issues has been quite narrow. The findings show that protest in development
towns focused primarily on economic themes, especially employment and wages: 62%
of the acts of protest dealt with economic issues, 22% with political issues, 11% with
planning issues, and 5% fell into the ―other‖ category. The narrow focus of protest is
especially conspicuous in comparison to other groups in Israeli society, who have
campaigned on a range of matters pertaining to the national agenda, including Israel’s
relations with Germany, Arab-Israeli wars, the occupation and settlement of
Palestinian territories, nature protection, religious-secular, Mizrahi-Ashkenazi and
Arab-Jewish relations within Israel, as well as matters pertaining to resource
distribution and service provision (Lehman-Wilzig, 1990). This relatively limited focus
and the consistent shunning of topics considered ‗ideological’, illustrates the
‗entrapment’ of peripheral Mizrahim within the Israeli settling ethnocracy. This setting
silenced their voice on issues at the basis of the oppressive system, and gave them
only limited options with which to challenge their marginal position, leading to the
emergence of a fairly docile ‗ethno-class’ identity. It is particularly striking to note the
virtual absence of public objection among peripheral Mizrahim against continuing
Jewish settlement in the occupied territories (Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza).
This has clearly deprived the towns of material and human resources. Instead of
objecting to on-going settlement activity, the Development Towns Forum (an umbrella
forum of mayors often voicing the towns’ collective concerns) accepted towns from
the occupied territories (Ariel, Ma’ale Adumim and Katzrin) into its ranks, thereby
indicating indirect support of the continuation of Jewish settlement. Why do leaders of
towns support further Jewish settlement activity? This, we suggest, reflects the
dependent and insecure position of peripheral Mizrahim within the Israeli ethnocracy,
‗cornering’ them to take a territorial-nationalistic and a pro-settlement (i.e. anti-
Palestinian) position. This impedes their ability to voice opposition to and challenge
policies that clearly affect them adversely. This collective identity is marked by a
strong desire to assimilate and integrate into the ‗core Israeli culture’, a pervasive
feeling of deprivation vis-a-vis the national center, and a drive for improving the
towns’ low socioeconomic position. The combination of economic deprivation and

6
social alienation from the Israeli center has recently given rise to a range of political
movements, which promote local patriotism, and especially Mizrahi Jewishness (Ben-
Ari and Bilu, 1987). Most notable has been the successful ultra-orthodox movement of
Shas. Returning to the topics of protest, why did Mizrahim in the towns avoid raising
ideological and controversial issues? Moreover, why did no significant political
opposition emerge from the deprived towns? We point to Mizrahi ‗entrapment’ within
Jewish settler society as the key explanation. The Jewish settling ethnocracy
institutionalized the superiority of the Ashkenazim in most spheres of society, creating
a dependency of the Mizrahi ethno-class on the Ashkenazi center. Thus, we should
view the issues of public protest not through the narrow lens of protest and its
motivations, but within the broader context of a society that is fractured and stratified
in both class and ethnic terms. This society was built by a powerful, Zionist-Ashkenazi
hegemony, which has worked to overlap Zionism, ―Israeliness‖ and Ashkenazi
identity. This power structure undermined every attempt to challenge its legitimacy
and left no alternative other than protest against the discrimination and deprivation in
the distribution of material resources. In overview, the nature of public protest reflects
a profound transformation of identity on a national-state level: from peripheral
ethnicity(ies) to a deprived ethno-class. This transformation has occurred under the
force of the settling Jewish (de-Arabizing) ethnocracy, which has wiped out the
Mizrahim’s culture while settling them in frontier regions, thus spawning the
emergence of a relatively uniform, marginalized (and mainly Mizrahi) ‗ethno-class’ in
the towns and across the state. In other words, the identity of peripheral Mizrahim, as
reflected in their protest activities, is most identifiable in terms of their national
peripheral socio-economic and geographic position, and not through a distinct cultural
or ideological stand. This, as we shall see, changes in the local arena, where we focus
on local electioneering. Here the new immigrants from the former Soviet Union (―the
Russians‖) provide a major focus. ‗Russians’ in the development towns: Background
Some 911,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union (‗Russians’) arrived in Israel
from late 1989 until the end of 2001 (Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, 2002). Like
most previous waves of immigrants, the majority of Russians did not arrive in Israel
for ideological reasons, but to improve their security and quality of life (Al-Haj and
Leshem, 2000). The economic and social beliefs of the immigrants were the product of
Soviet socialization, but also of exposure to Western culture after the disintegration of
the USSR (Lissak and Leshem, 2001). The will of the Israeli elites to absorb such a
large mass of immigrants is related to their Zionist desire to maintain Jewish majority

7
over the Palestinians, to their aspiration to preserve a secular majority over a growing
ultra-Orthodox population, and their wish to reinforce the country’s European culture.
In these senses, the arrival of the Russian immigrants served primarily the interests
of the secular Jewish Ashkenazim. Unlike previous waves of immigrants, the Russians
arrived in Israel when capitalist and individualist values were ascendant. This created
some space for norms that are different than, though not contradictory to, the core
Zionist ideology, and eroded the collective will to instill a uniform national culture
(Kimmerling, 2001). Instead, higher importance was placed on providing the
immigrants with housing and employment. This was reflected in a new policy labeled
―direct absorption‖, whereby an immigrant is awarded a package of benefits and
financial aid for a limited period to cover all social and housing needs. This is vastly
different to the absorption policy prevailing during the 1950s and 1960s, when the
state directed immigrants to public housing and prearranged employment (Hasson,
1992). But the government remained a key actor, shaping the location of immigrant
absorption through the construction of large-scale projects of affordable housing and
employment at the state peripheries, especially in the development towns (Tzfadia,
2000). These policies contributed to the settlement in the towns of some 130,000
Russians, many of an economically and socially disadvantaged background (Central
Bureau of Statistics, 1998). The rapid growth brought about not only an increase in
the towns’ population, but also significant changes in their ethnic composition.
Spatially, most of the Russians settled in new neighborhoods, which became spaces
distinct from the older urban sections, and sometimes constitute ―a town within a
town‖. Demographically, the towns lost their distinct Mizrahi character, and at present
accommodate 25–40% Russians (Tzfadia, 2000). The pattern of isolationism and
integration adopted by the immigrants contributed greatly to creating a distinct social
category—―the Russians‖. Although most of these immigrants came from a variety of
subcultures, some from Asia and others from Europe, the great majority speaks
Russian and tends to see itself as belonging to this category. Above all, this is how
they are perceived and categorized by mainstream Israeli society. Thus, clear ethnic
and cultural boundaries were drawn around the new immigrants, who emerge as a
distinct group within an increasingly multi-cultural Israel (Kimmerling, 2001). These
boundaries were accepted and reinforced by the founding of two immigrant political
parties with a clear Russian character, ―Yisrael b’Aliyah‖ (Israel in
Immigration/Ascendance) and ―Yisrael Beitenu‖ (Israel our Home). The two parties
(and especially the former) performed well in national elections, attesting to the

8
success of the Russians in acquiring political power as a distinct group. The success of
the parties also demonstrates their ability to convert their numbers and organizational
skills into political power in order to maximize their access to resources and budgets,
which were also used to buttress the ethnic walls (Kimmerling, 2001). The encounter
in the development towns between the two social groups, the Russians and the
Mizrahim, quickly led to competition over economic resources, which were already in
short supply. This competitive drive was intensified by a sense of relative deprivation
among the Mizrahim, in light of the benefits bestowed upon the Russians, such as
housing assistance (in new neighborhoods), tax breaks and help in finding jobs, and a
feeling that Israeli society is more indulgent toward Russian culture than it ever was
toward Mizrahim immigrants in the 1950s. The Mizrahim also note that the housing
benefits for the Russians are in excess of what they, the veterans, receive at present.
In the early stages of absorption, welfare services became a major arena of contest.
The ―direct absorption‖ policy decentralized the absorption functions, which had
previously been handled by the central government, leaving most of the absorption
work to the local authorities, including the provision of welfare services. The gap
between demand and supply led to competition over the available services from the
earliest stages of absorption. Later, the Mizrahim and Russians began to compete over
employment, notoriously scarce in the development towns (Lipshitz, 1992). The
struggle over these resources was conducted alongside other efforts of cooperation. It
illuminated, to both groups, the importance of control over place as a means to
acquiring not only economic, but also political and cultural resources. The next section
deals with control of place as reflected in local voting and electioneering.

Local elections

We begin by comparing statewide local election results in 1989, 1993, and 1998.
Later, this section focuses on the Mizrahi-Russian tension during the elections in two
development towns in the southern periphery of Israel, Ofakim and Kiryat Gat (see
Fig. 1). 10 These towns are representative of the geographic, social and ethnic
settings of most Israeli development towns, but as we shall see, offer two different
trajectories of local ethnic mobilization. In most local elections, Israel’s many political
parties combined into several main blocs: Labor; Likud; Russian immigrant parties;
local parties; small national parties; and religious parties. The religious bloc is divided
into Shas, a Mizrahi ultra-orthodox party founded in the 1980s following a split within

9
the ultra-Orthodox circles between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim, and other religious
parties. The municipal council elections held on November 10, 1998 brought to a
climax a number of dynamics that had begun in Israel in the 1980s, including the
diminished power for the large parties and increased support for sectoral, ethnic, local
or independent parties (Goldberg, 2001). In development towns, however, these
processes were particularly salient, as the boundaries between the sectors were
clearer, and personal familiarity with the candidate carried greater weight, if only
because these are small towns. It can be seen in Fig. 3 that the key dynamics in the
development towns were as follows. There was a significant drop in the election of
Likud members to the councils, from 30% in the 1989 elections to 22.6% in the 1993
elections, and to 13.6% in the 1998 elections. In parallel, there was a significant drop
in support for the Labor Party, especially in the 1993 elections. Then, Labor won an
average of 27.9% of the municipal council seats, winning only 13.8% of the seats in
1998. In contrast with the diminishing power of the many ‗mother parties’ (Likud and
Labor), there was a slight increase in the power of the local parties, in comparison
with the previous elections in 1993. In the 1989 elections, the local parties won
28.1% of the council seats, 22.3% in 1993, and 26.2% in 1998.
More importantly, the local parties became the dominant bloc on most councils,
indicating the increased importance of place over national or statewide political
concerns. Nevertheless, the local bloc is also rather fragmented, and hence often
ineffective.
Together with increased support for the local parties was a sharp increase in the
power of the Russian immigrant bloc, which captured 13.9% of all municipal council
seats in development towns. This achievement turned the immigrants into the third
largest, after the local and religious blocs. The immigrant bloc is composed primarily
of ‗Yisrael b’Aliyah’, the national immigrant party, but also ‗Yisrael Beitenu’ and other
local ‗Russian’ parties. The great homogeneity of the immigrant bloc enhanced its
power, in contrast with the splintered power of the local parties, and the partial
fragmentation of the religious parties (Shas, Agudat Israel,14 and other religious
factions).
The roots of this keen ethnic electoral struggle, beyond the feelings of relative
deprivation and competition over resources, relate to the existence of two distinct
identities in a small, isolated place. The multi plicity of identities in a small place tends
to sharpen the politics of identity, and thereby reconstruct and even essentialize
difference (Jackson and Penrose, 1993). The struggle between Mizrahim and Russians

10
to define which identity will be dominant in the small place is intertwined with the
struggle over political power and local resources, and is hence shaped by broader
fields of hegemonic influence, which determines resource distribution and identity
construction.
In the development towns we discerned the existence of two major hegemonic
influences. On the one hand, there was an internal-local hegemony, which
characterized development towns prior to the municipal council elections, when
Mizrahim enjoyed over-representation in local decision-making circles, while the
Russians had almost no voice (in the 1993 local elections, the Russians won 0.7% of
the seats in the municipal councils, even though the Russians comprised more than a
quarter of the towns’ population). On the other hand, from a broader perspective of
ethnic relations in Israel, the development towns remained on the margin of direct
Ashkenazi domination. Some use this setting and interpret state efforts to settle large
numbers of Russians in the towns, as an attempt to undermine their Mizrahi identity
(see: Shalom Chetrit, 1999). Therefore, the conflict between veterans and immigrants
in elections were also a reflection of the struggle of Mizrahim to protect their spatial
bases of political and cultural power in Israel. This was most noticeable in the
campaign of the Mizrahi-local movements, to which we shall return.

Veteran immigrants and new immigrants: Kiryat Gat and Ofakim

The main tension between Mizrahim and Russians is generated by the desire of the
Mizrahim to preserve their over-representation on the municipal councils, and by the
opposition of the Russians to that privilege. As found in previous empirical work, the
power of the development town, in the opinion of its Mizrahi residents, derives from
its ability to provide a relatively autonomous political space (Yiftachel and Tzfadia,
1999). Within this setting, both the Mizrahim and the Russians seek to increase their
control over local resources. Unlike the Russians, however, the Mizrahim perceive
much of their cultural identity to be linked to the development towns (Ben-Ari and
Bilu, 1987; Yiftachel and Tzfadia, 1999). In this sense, local government is perceived
as having the ability to protect that identity, reflecting the importance attached to
control over place; as Castells notes, protection of cultural identity is related to and
organized around a particular territory (Castells, 1983).
The intensity of the conflict differed from town to town, in keeping with two main
factors—the relative size of the Russian immigrant community and their level of local

11
organization. To illustrate the differences in intensity, two development towns in the
south of Israel were selected: Ofakim, which had a low-intensity conflict, and Kiryat
Gat, with a high-intensity confrontation. Prior to the arrival of the Russians, the two
towns had much in common. Both were established during the 1950s on the southern
periphery of Israel, in order to Judaize the Negev desert,nction as urban centers for
agricultural settlements, and supply housing for Jewish immigrants. Mizrahi Jews
mostly populated the two towns with their economies being based on labor-intensive
industrial development. Typical of peripheral towns, the narrow economic base could
not guarantee a decent standard of living. In 1997 the average income of wage
earners in Ofakim was 77% of the Israeli average, while in Kiryat Gat it reached 80%.
Other parameters also reflected socioeconomic weakness: a high rate of
unemployment, high rates of out migration and low educational achievement.
However, in the long run, some differences emerged between the two towns, reflected
in different growth rates, which saw Kiryat Gat reaching a population of 25,400 in
1983, while Ofakim reached a size of only 12,600 The difference was exacerbated
when, in 1993, a large Intel plant was established in Kiryat Gat, whereas two years
later Ofakim lost one of the major employers—the large textile factory of Uman.
The influx of Russian immigrants to Kiryat Gat and Ofakim caused a dramatic change
to the towns’ ethnic compositions. In December 2001, they constituted 27% of the
population in Ofakim, and 29% in Kiryat Gat (Ministry of Immigrant Absorption,
2002). Other indicators show that the groups of immigrants residing in both towns are
similar: about 23% arrived from the Asian republics of the Soviet Union; 25% of the
adult immigrants have an academic degree certificate and 25% of the immigrants are
aged 65 or more (Central Bureau of Statistic, 1998). The most important data on
Russian immigrants in the two towns is that until the recent elections, they were
conspicuously under-represented on both local councils. A major source of tension
between the Mizrahim and Russians in the towns is the sense of relative deprivation
felt by many Mizrahim. Ms. Hava Sultana (herself a Mizrahi) from Ofakim, who headed
―Veterans and Immigrants: The Hope of Ofakim‖, a joint party of newcomers and
former residents running for the city council, expressed this clearly: The tension
between new immigrants and veteran residents is a product of the discrimination. The
immigrants received more than Ofakim residents could attain…it caused
unrest…expressed as hostility toward them. This feeling grows because this is a small
town and there is frequent contact between the two groups…The fact that the new
immigrants are foreign, different, is not what caused the frustration and tension

12
between the veterans and the new immigrants (Interview with Hava Sultana, Ofakim,
October 2, 1998).
In the local election of 1993 Sultana won one out of 11 seats on the town council in
both Ofakim and Kiryat Gat, until this situation changed in the 1998 elections, as it
became clear that immigrants were the single largest bloc in both towns. The
similarity in relative proportion of the immigrant population in each of these towns
does not correlate with the power they gained in local elections. In Ofakim, two
immigrant parties ran for the council: Yisrael b’Aliyah, the national immigrant party,
and Veterans and Immigrants: The Hope of Ofakim, the joint immigrant-veteran
party, headed by Hava Sultana. The Yisrael b’Aliyah party won 13.3% of all the seats
on the council (2 out of 15 members), while the joint party did not pass the qualifying
threshold required to have a seat in the council. In Kiryat Gat, four immigrant parties
competed for the municipal council. Yisrael b’Aliyah, the national party, won 10.5% of
the council seats (2 out of 19). Among the three local immigrant parties, Atid Ha’Ir
[Future of the City] won 15.8% of the vote, or 3 council seats; the Bukharian party
won 10.5% of the vote, or 2 council seats, and Kiryat Gat of the Immigrants did not
pass the qualifying threshold. All told, the immigrant parties won 7 of 19 council
seats. More important, the Atid Ha’Ir immigrant party, headed by Alexander Wechsler
who also ran for mayor, garnered 31% of all the valid votes, just behind Albert Erez,
head of a local party called Mifneh [Turning Point] in Kiryat Gat, which won 34% of all
the valid votes for mayor. According to Israel’s electoral laws, a candidate cannot win
the elections unless gaining at least 40% of the vote. This often requires a second
round of voting for the two top candidates. This meant that Erez and Wechsler had to
run again in the second round; however, an unprecedented compromise agreement
was signed by Erez and Wechsler on November 16, 1998, preventing a second round,
which would have caused heightened tension and, possibly, violence. The compromise
agreement saw Erez continuing as mayor and Wechsler becoming his deputy, with
new and wider responsibilities.
The elections in Ofakim and Kiryat Gat differed. In Ofakim, almost no tension was
evident between the Mizrahim and Russians, as the latter vote was split. Those
immigrants who settled in Ofakim prior to 1993, and the elderly immigrants living in
protected housing in a new immigrant neighborhood, tended to support the rightist
Likud-NRP (National Religious Party) coalition. This bloc was headed by Yair Hazan,
who had been mayor in 1989–1993 and who was responsible for the absorption of
many immigrants. Perhaps it was his function during his first term of office that won

13
him votes of the elderly immigrants in these elections (Hazan was re-elected mayor in
1998). Other immigrants supported ‗Yisrael b’Aliyah’ which was poorly organized and
lacked leadership. The implications of this split among the immigrants can be gleaned
from the words of Yair Hazan, current mayor of Ofakim, about a month before his
election:
Because they [the Russians] don’t have leadership and the immigrant vote is
split…they pose no threat to control [of veterans in the Ofakim city government—E.T.
and O.Y.], and therefore there is no ethnic tension in town…The immigrant parties are
not trying to undermine the dominance of the Mizrahim… [The goal of the Russians
is—E.T.] to enlarge their share of the local pie…They have no leadership because they
are weak…a high percentage of elderly and single parents… (Interview with Yair
Hazan, Ofakim mayor, October 2, 1998).
In Kiryat Gat, on the other hand, although the immigrants split their vote for the
council into three separate parties, they united in support of Alexander Wechsler for
mayor. Due to his political experience — he had immigrated to Israel in the 1970s and
was active for many years in the Likud Party — Wechsler was able to unite the ranks
of immigrants. Despite his declarations that his party represents veterans as well as
immigrants, the Mizrahim called it ‗the Russian party’. To rally immigrant support,
Wechsler stressed the division between the veterans and the immigrants, with
emphasis on the distress of the newcomers. In other words, Wechsler took advantage
of political ethnicity to gain power. In one of his speeches, Wechsler said, ―I do not
deny the fact that there is a schism and polarization in the town…The polarization
wase here even before the elections. The new immigrants live in ghettos here, in an
atmosphere of ‗us’ versus ‗them’.‖
The awareness of the Mizrahim in Kiryat Gat that their control over ‗their place’ was in
jeopardy created considerable tension, which also turned into violence. The tension
reached a peak after the first round of voting, in which it became clear that a second
round would required between Erez and Wechsler. There were incidents of violence,
as dummy bombs were placed near Wechsler’s home, threats were made, and knives
brandished. All this took place in the context of continuing stereotyping with Russians
being labeled as mafia gangsters, prostitutes, and lacking any connection with
Judaism. These stereotypes were reflected in the following excerpt from the local
newspaper Ma Nishma after the agreement was signed between Erez and Wechsler:
―On Tuesday morning, after the agreement was signed between Erez and Wechsler,
suddenly all the local massage parlors and branches of the Russian Mafia were

14
‗closed’. Wechsler was acknowledged by his opponents to be Jewish, and all’s well that
ends well‖ (Ma Nishma, Issue 953, 1998, November 20, 1998, p. 26).
The elections in Kiryat Gat thus revealed the underlying tension between the Mizrahim
and Russians. As noted, this conflict peaked when the Mizrahim felt that their control
over the town was at risk. Several statements by Mizrahi residents in Kiryat Gat
appeared in the local press after the agreement, illustrating tension:
N.A.: ―…The compromise is a wise move. An atmosphere of hate was avoided…If
Wechsler had been elected, there would have been a Mizrahi uprising…‖
T.B.: ―…During the final week of the campaign, there was an atmosphere of war…‖
A.V.: ―A split and rupture between the Mizrahim and Russians…reflected in extremist
invective and physical and verbal violence…‖
M.B.: ―Had there been a runoff, the ethnic tension would have erupted…‖
Ofakim and Kiryat Gat represent the spectrum of ethnic tensions between the
Mizrahim and Russians, which was evident to varying degrees in most development
towns. Even in Ofakim, where intergroup tension was never violent during local
elections, the potential for violence existed had the Russian immigrants posed a threat
to Mizrahi dominance. It was the different organizational ability of the immigrants that
appears to have determined the intensity of conflict. In general, the more organized
were the Russians, the more intense became local electioneering. The elections in the
development towns reveal a Mizrahi protest against the Russians, but this appears to
have remained at a local level. The same action appears impossible in the national
arena, given the persisting hegemony of Zionism. This impossibility led the Mizrahim
to adopt a new strategy in order to defend their control in the towns, i.e. a
religiousnational strategy. Accordingly, the Mizrahim undermined the connection
between the Russian immigrants and the Israeli-Jewish nation, by claiming that most
of the immigrants were not ‗real’ Jews. Since belonging to the Israeli-Jewish nation is
defined by Jewish religious law, and since many of the immigrants were not
recognized as religious Jews, the Mizrahim could exploit an advantage in the field of
national belonging, and gain with it a high moral ground at the local level. By adopting
this strategy, Shas (the Mizrahi ultra-orthodox party), presented a powerful (if racist)
counter-narrative to the growing claims of Russians in the towns. This has occurred in
several towns, including an incident which received wide media attention in November
1999, during a demonstration against opening non-kosher Russian grocery shops in
the development town of BetShemesh; 1125 17 Rabbi Shmuel Bennizri from Shas
preached to a local Mizrahi audience: The Russians brought to Bet-Shemesh the

15
diseases from Russia. Heaven forbid, the following biblical text is turning into a
reality: when ye entered, ye defiled my land, and made mine heritage an abomination
[Jeremiah, 2,7]. They [the Russians] inundated the land with tens of thousands of
non-Jews, and they inundate the land with shops of abomination. Just after the town
has developed, the devils raised their heads and inundate Bet-Shemesh with their
abominations. Hence, Shas and the Mizrahim have used the national Zionist discourse,
which includes people according to their connections to (ethnic) Jewishness, but
modified that discourse to the local-religious circumstances, where the Mizrahim enjoy
an advantage. This allowed them to use an aggressive, essentialized rhetoric to
maintain their control in the towns. But, notably, this strategy is another sign of
Mizrahi entrapment: they could not challenge the pro-immigration (ethnic) Zionist
ideology, so they emphasized the issue of religious boundaries. This gave them a high
moral ground, within the very national project that continues to marginalize them. We
can observe this as a strategy adopted by a trapped ethno-class, which illustrates the
multi-layered nature of its collective identity.

16
 Soul-searching In the Mizrahi Movement
by Yair Sheleg

Last summer, Dudi Machleb, philosophy lecturer and veteran activist in the Sephardi
Democratic Rainbow movement, died of cardiac arrest at the age of 51. The Sephardi
Democratic Rainbow movement is an advocacy group promoting the rights of
Sephardim and Mizrahim, Jews of Middle Eastern descent. Shortly before his death,
Machleb published the article "Thoughts about Identity" in the anthology "Mizrahi
Voices." In the article, he took to task some of the prevalent approaches determining
the Mizrahi identity, and attacked the idea of defining Mizrahi Jews in Israel as "Jewish
Arabs," an expression that had found its way into the writing of some of veteran
Rainbow activists.
"I am not a Jewish Arab," Machleb wrote, "I am an Israeli born in Israel, the son of
Jewish Arabs." He also attacked the idea of severing from the national identity and
stated: "We are not free of this [Israeli] region, but have to work to change its rules."
Following his tragic death, Machleb's profound remarks turned into the focus of soul
searching about Mizrahi identity and, in particular, the expression it finds in the
Rainbow movement. Dr. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, who is not Mizrahi, but is close to
many of the Rainbow members, published an article in Haaretz, stating that Machleb
had touched on the very heart of the Mizrahi identity problem. Machleb's rejected the
"Jewish Arab," as "some kind of nostalgic illusion which ignores the implications of the
Israeli education system and socialization," Raz-Krakotzkin explained.
Machleb's article is not the sole reason for the soul-searching among the Rainbow
activists and those close to it. To mark its 10th anniversary in March 2007, the
movement will publish a book of articles on its history. (Machleb managed to take part
in editing the anthology, together with Prof. Yossi Yonah and Yonit Ne'eman.) The
book contains quite a few regrets and some new thoughts.
During the 10 years of its existence, the Rainbow has been identified with only two
specific struggles. The first was its petition to the High Court of Justice to prevent the
1
kibbutzim and moshavim from turning their agricultural lands into lands used for non-
agricultural purposes (on the grounds that if the land were used for other purposes, it
should be returned to the state so it could be handed over to more needy sectors of
the population). The movement won the case in March 2002, but the state and
agricultural settlements by-passed the ruling by thawing non-agricultural lands.
The second struggle - over the public housing law, which enables tenants to buy the
rented apartments in which they live with far-reaching benefits - was not a Rainbow
initiative. Rather, Knesset members, headed by Ran Cohen, promoted the law and
Rainbow gave it full public backing. The law was passed in October 1998, but it too
was not put into practice. Its application was frozen in the framework of the Economic
Arrangements Law, except for special sales by the Housing Ministry.
The Rainbow movement is submerged in self-criticism, although those who criticize it
do not all have the same criticism. The broadest consensus regards the failure to
attract a traditional and religious public. Already at its inception, some of the
traditional Mizrahi activists left the Rainbow, the most prominent of them being Dr.
Meir Buzaglo, because of their feeling that it was not in keeping with their worldview.
An outside observer claims there was "tension between the 'Iraqis' (the secular
activists), such as Yonah and Prof. Yehuda Shenhav, and the 'Moroccans' (the more
traditional activiists)."
The absurd thing is that both Yonah and Shenhav say retroactively that they would
not have had a problem with agreeing to a traditional character to the meetings.
Buzaglo is convinced that had he made a greater effort, "I would not have had a
problem having my demands met, but I thought that Judaism and tradition were the
heart of the matter - not something for which they would do us a favor and 'also'
observe."
Fixing the melting pot
Other significant criticism relates to the emphasis on Mizrahi identity at the expense of
a purely social struggle. Yonah says, "The emphasis on the politics of identity, on our
part, and in an even more effective way in Shas, gave rise to a counter-reaction by
Ashkenazi Jews that found expression both in racist anti-Mizrahi sentiment in the form
of the Shinui party and in the strengthening of anti-social economic policies. We
cannot shirk off responsibility for that."
This criticism also relates to one of the Rainbow's holy of holies: the multi-cultural
approach. In other words, the demand for legitimacy for varied identities instead of
the unified "melting-pot" approach. Buzaglo, whose approach is traditionalist for both

2
Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews, says: "I want to fix the melting pot, not destroy it. There
has to be a common Jewish message in which the Mizrahi Jews have a certain place
that was not meant solely for them ... If the struggle is for identity, then let it be
Jewish rather than Mizrahi, and if the struggle is for justice, why should it be for
Mizrahim?"
But even Yonah, who was among the composers of the multi-cultural text, today
phrases it more gently. "I was not sufficiently sensitive to the fact that people identify
multi-culturalism with the insularity of the ghetto, and the significance in fact is that it
harms social solidarity. Today I would have phrased it this way: As a democrat, I am
in favor of making it possible for people who wish to cut themselves off, like the ultra-
Orthodox Jews, to do so. But on a personal level, I am interested in a melting pot of
the integrative type, in which there is room for everyone's identity - as opposed to the
melting pot of the old-fashioned type which assimilated one kind of culture within
another. The old-fashioned melting pot merely strengthens the reaction of wanting to
be isolated."
Moshe Karif, one of the founders of the movement and its first spokesman, raises two
other points of criticism. One is the demand by one of the founders, poet Sami
Shalom Sheetrit, to turn Rainbow into a mass political movement. (Sheetrit left after
he saw his demand would not be met.) "I thought that if we were not a political
movement, we should at least focus on practical activities," Karif says. "But in any
event, we should not be a movement of intellectuals."
Departures from the movement
Yonah, on the other hand, does not express regret on this topic. "We were not
opposed in principle to a mass movement. Whoever wanted to act and to set up
branches certainly got our backing. However, it failed because of a lack of skills. The
argument was whether the agenda would be universal, would care for the rights of all
the deprived sectors, or whether it would take up right-wing positions to adjust us to
the public's taste. Since our universal positions did not get broad support, we
naturally became a movement of intellectuals."
Shenhav, another one of the founders, has an essentially different view of the events.
In his opinion, the Rainbow's problems do not stem from its own deficiencies, but
from historical processes. "From the start, the Rainbow was born only because of the
Oslo process and the feeling that soon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be solved
and Mizrahim of different political views would now join forces in the Mizrahi struggle.

3
The intifada of 2000 and the collapse of the Oslo process put an end to this
aspiration."
He also sees all the internal arguments and the departures from the movement as a
natural process in a radical movement: "First the Arabs left, since our struggle over
land did not relate to theirs. After that, Meir Buzaglo saw I was using a laptop on the
Sabbath and decided he would leave together with the traditional activists. The
feminists left because they contended the Rainbow was being run by men, and so on
and so forth."
He adds: "We conducted the struggle over land in the name of the right of 'state
lands,' and in this way, we separated it from the joint struggle over Arab lands. To my
regret, we also accepted the cultural racism that basically comes with the melting pot
approach - that merely tries to find a place for the Mizrahim, instead of posing a
challenge in principle to the question of national identity."
Even if the Rainbow did not enjoy great practical achievements, it contributed to
raising public awareness. "Until the 'rainbow' came along, the Mizrahi struggle was
associated merely with misery and weakness. This was the first time people who had
succeeded on a personal level were those who led the struggle. This created pride and
a model for emulation for the educated Mizrahi youngsters."
And what will the future hold? Some of those interviewed for the article said they
believed the Rainbow movement had lost its appeal. Nurit Hajaj, the current director
of the movement, believes this is far from the case and attributes the notion to
members who are no longer active in the movement. "There is a prominent
generation, well-versed in the media, that has left the movement, and these people
find it hard to be less dominant. Those looking in from the outside also believe no one
is left in the movement. It is true that today's activists are less famous, but there
certainly is activity. Our central theme continues to be the vast tracts of lands over
which local councils have given control to certain small communities at the expense of
the development towns that are in the same areas," she says.
In other words, it is possible that Shenhav and Yonah's intellectual Rainbow, which
was busy examining Mizrahi identity, has died; but perhaps the Rainbow, in its
political and social form, as envisioned in Sheetrit and Karif's disappointed dreams, is
trying to come back to life.

4
 Appendix 1

1. Adva Center: Information on Equality and Social Justice in Israel

(www.adva.org)
Pnina Motzafi-Haller, Mizrachi Women in Israel: The Double Erasure
(www.brandeis.edu/hbi/pubs/Epsteinworkingpaper.pdf); Yitzhak Laor, What is
Ashkenazi identity? (http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/what-is-ashkenazi-
identity-1.409090).
2. Meyrav Wurmser, Post-Zionism and the Sephardi Question
(www.meforum.org/707/post-zionism-and-the-sephardi-question)
Aryeh Dayan, Running Rings around the Victims, Haaretz, 5 dicembre 2007
3. Rafi Shovali, Not the Occupation Corrupts: A Critique of the Israeli Left,
www.alternativenews.org/english/1740-not-the-occupation-corrupts-a-critique-of-the-
israeli-left.html.
4. Yehouda Shenhav, What do Palestinian and Arab-Jews Have in common?
Nationalism and Ethnicity Examined Through the Compensation Question; Jews from
Arab Countries and the Palestinian Right for Return: An Ethnic Community in Realms
of National Memory (entrambi i documenti si trovano su
prrn.mcgill.ca/prrn/papers/shenhav1.htm)
5. ―The Economist‖, 23.04.1998, A Nation of Tribe: Rough Guide to a Fractious
Society;
Akiva Eldar, It's the economy, stupid
(www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1042339.html);
Arlosoroff Meirav, Cut child allowances, nix tax break on pension savings, OECD
counsels Israel;
Chetrit Sami Shalom, 30 Years to the Black Panthers in Israel
(www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?id=6831);
Testi a cura del Mizrachi Democratic Rainbow, www.ha-
keshet.org.il/english/english_index.html
Rapoport Meron, Suddenly they are called “squatters” (www.haaretz.com/print-
edition/features/suddenly-they-are-called-squatters-1.225574);
Rapoport Meron, The only thing we have to fear
(www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=766043);
Traubman Tamara, The Relevance of Ethnic Origin
(www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/918707.html).

1
 Appendix 2

Correlate papers
Birkner Gabrielle, More Arab Than the Arabs: Iraqi Writers Join Israel’s Literary Canon
(www.forward.com/articles/7856/).
Derfner Larry, Why I Envy the Settlers (www.jr.co.il/articles/politics/envy.txt);
Hanieh Adam, Class, Economy, and the Second Intifada
(www.monthlyreview.org/1002hanieh.htm);
Yiftachel Oren, Planning at the Frontline: Notes From Israel
(www.plannersnetwork.org/publications/2002_154_fall/yiftachel.htm);
Yonah Yossi, War by Other Means (www.newstatesman.com/writers/yossi_yonah)
Moshe Behar, One-State, Two-States, Bi-National State: Mandated Imaginations In A
Regional Void (www.middle-east-studies.net/?p=9435)
Abraham Serfaty, Écrits de prison sur la Palestine, Arcantère Éditions 1992

2
 Appendix 3

Two mails

Open letter written by Emanuel Yedidya Meshulam

The authorities are hounding the Rabbi’s son Ami

My name is Emanuel Yedidya (Ami) Meshulam – son of Rabbi Uzi Meshulam of Yehud.
There is nothing left for me to do other than cry out from the depths of my soul and
beg you, in the name of justice, for your help and to call, together with us, for an
official committee of investigation that is open for the entire Israeli people to see how
my father was hounded and how his blood was spilt, forcing him to be bed-bound, by
corrupt authorities who have control of all governmental and security offices in Israel
and use this control in the worst possible way by weaving lies and destroying
reputations via the press. They also make ugly attempts to wipe us out. Since 1987,
they have hounded us and attempted to instill fear in us, Meshulam’s family and
pupils, in ways that are beyond belief.
It might sound like what they call ―something out of science fiction‖ but they are
experienced in hounding people and hurting them, leaving no evidence or signs
behind them. It is my duty to record the following in order that the Israeli public not
say one day that they didn’t know and that they’d never heard anything on the
subject.
I intend to tell the painful, terrible story briefly and I hope that it will engender a
reaction from people with a conscience and that they will demand justice for those
who are innocent and are being hounded.
The Background
The meeting at the Shin Bet headquarters and the carrot and stick tactics
It was the end of 1987. My father had got together much documentary evidence
about the Mossad’s kidnapping, medical experimentations on and sale of Yemenite
children in the first years of the State, and he was summoned to the Shin Bet
headquarters at 2 Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem. He met someone there who
presented himself as Ilan Raz. This Ilan, who is feared by many prominent people,
explained to my father that he had set up this meeting in order to drive home why
my father should stop trying to investigate the terrible crime committed by the
corrupt authorities. He began by offering my father the ―carrot‖: the job of Chief

1
Rabbi of Israel for life in addition to other tempting suggestions. He was soon to
discover that nothing, tempting as it may be, could make my father, for whom the
Bible, the truth and the love of Israel came first and foremost, deviate from his quest
for moral, legal and religious justice.
When Ilan Raz realized that my father could not be ―bought‖, he changed his strategy
to that of ―the whip‖, meaning that he began a campaign of hounding my father and
his family using different tactics such as convincing the press to smear my father’s
name, in order that he end up in jail. In fact, this was Ilan’s way of destroying my
father with the agreement of a public incited by the press.
My father was not afraid and he continued to seek the truth and justice in the name
of his brothers, the people of Israel, all the while bearing in mind the laws of the Holy
Bible and the laws of the State of Israel (which does not implement the laws that it
makes).
But Ilan kept his promise and until 1988 he used his personal tactics against my
father whilst my father was engaged in getting personal testimonials from the
families of the kidnapped children.
The first independent audio exposition
In 1988, my father sent out 3 audiocassettes to the general public describing the
kidnappings, telling of the attempt to keep them quiet and of Ilan Raz’s threats. This
was cause for the corrupt authorities to remove their kid gloves and they began to
hound my mother and me too. I was still a young child and they came to my school
and threatened me. This was to be extremely traumatic for me and I did not, as a
result, have a proper childhood. Unfortunately, they did not stop there.
The Rabbi’s narrow escape from devious physical assassination (he was
wounded) and the beginning of his character assassination
In 1991 there was devious attempt to assassinate my father. It was only through the
help of G-d that he was saved from death but he sustained a wound in his sciatic
nerve from the bullet that went into his leg and still causes him excruciating phantom
pain according to the doctors and specialists. At the time, my father was not famous,
but the press began to besmirch his name and call him ―the guru from Yehud‖ or ―the
leader of a sect‖ even though nobody knew who he was.
The Rabbi petitions members of the Knesset and brings about a Sitting at the
Knesset
We went through hard times while my father was recovering from his wound. He
then began to address the press and to petition members of the Knesset in an

2
attempt to find a solution for the terrible crime that has been committed.
The only replies he had from the petition to members of the Knesset were from M.K.
Raanan Cohen and M.K. David Magen but his meeting with them yielded nothing. It
actually did quite the opposite: it brought about a mudslinging campaign via the
press whereby we had desecrated the Knesset synagogue. This was a pure lie.
Continuation of independent exposition via a play and then a pamphlet
When my father saw that nobody was going to help him, he decided to bring the
matter to the attention of the public on his own. He produced a play with taped
testimonials and documentary evidence about the crime committed. Three months
later he issued the first pamphlet in which he told the story of the families of the
kidnapped children and included much documentary evidence about the crime
committed.
That pamphlet was disseminated throughout the country and, in that way, my father
was able to bypass the regulated press and the impermeability of the establishment
and expose the crime committed. These steps taken by my father caused the corrupt
authorities to go a step further and to incite against my father in a way that would
totally destroy my father, his family and his pupils.
The police, in an act of incitement, besieges the Rabbi’s house – the Yehud
incident
The corrupt authorities systematically incited against my father. They harmed him,
his family and his pupils physically, with the help of the army, the police and the
Special Forces, which they enlisted in great numbers.
The forces besieged our house and disseminated the news to the press that an
eccentric sect was entrenched in a house in Yehud. From the outset, it was obvious
that the forces intended to carry out the threats issued by Ilan Raz. A sniper shot
directly into the neck of Yehiel Ben Abu, a pupil of my father’s, and it is a miracle that
he survived. This was only a few minutes after my father had spoken to
representatives of the police, Major General Gabi Lest and Brigadier General Yaakov
Raz, and asked them why they were besieging the house. It was obvious that they
had instructions from above and that the aim was to destroy my father and put an
end to his attempt to expose a terrible crime.
Knesset members come to the house in Yehud and sign an agreement with
Rabbi Uzi and the police representative
The next day – it was the eve of Pessach – a number of Knesset members, amongst
them Avraham Poraz and Dov Shilansky, came to our house. They represented their

3
political parties (Likud, Labor, Mafdal, Meretz) and, together with the police, they
signed and agreement with my father. The basic points were as follows:
1. There would be a public Parliamentary investigation committee dealing with the
matter of the crime of the kidnapping and sale of the Yemenite children.
2. The police would investigate the Yehud events under the supervision of a
lawyer of our choice. The police department that investigates police conduct would
deal with our complaint regarding police provocation. In this document, the police
admitted that the weapons we had were under license.
We all shook hands and MK Dov Shilansky said that he was proud to have his
name on an agreement together with that of my father. Even the police officers
understood that they had made a mistake, which is why they agreed to sign the
document. They even assisted in getting the Rabbi’s pupils who had been arrested to
get home in time before the Pessach holiday came in. Everyone was happy that
there was a solution in sight for terrible injustice and that the corrupt authorities had
decided to atone for their crimes.
Unfortunately, however, our happiness was short-lived: a day or two later, the police
began to systematically break the agreement, and they even went as far as to state
that they considered the agreement to be null and void and that they intended to
arrest my father.
The police callously breaks the agreement
It was quite obvious that they were not interested in arresting my father, but rather
in destroying him and his name. But how to do that in such a way that it looks
―natural‖? Well, they besieged the house for 2 whole months. During that time, my
father took me and his pupils to the television studios to appear live on Dan Margalit’s
program. No attempt was made to arrest him there either. Whilst our house was
being besieged, they continued to leak information to the public about this crazy
group of dangerous people entrenched in a house with a large stock of weapons. And
of course, once they had formed public opinion and everybody believed that my
father was ―crazy‖, ―weird‖ and ―leader of a sect‖, it would be much easier to carry
out what they wanted to do. Not one single one of the many media sources covering
the events reported the fact that hordes of people came to our house every day to
tell about family members who had been kidnapped, to collect information about our
cause, or simply to express support for my father.
The massacre by the police and the end of the siege
My father arranged to meet with General Police Commissioner Assaf Hefetz,

4
representative of the authorities, for one reason: to avoid bloodshed. When my
father arrived at the meeting, there was an attempt to kill him in the dark. Luckily,
the attempt failed and he said to Assaf Hefetz: ―You wanted me? Well, here I am.
But you will not shed blood in my home.‖ Unfortunately, this statement did not help
and at this moment, under cover of darkness, thousands of police and army
combatants, as well as snipers surrounded our house. There was also a helicopter
loitering above and four great big bulldozers (D-9) around the house. They cut off
the electricity and the phone lines and started to shoot indiscriminately at the house
in which my mother and my young brothers, aged between 6 months and 5 were
sleeping. The bullets shattered the windows and whizzed over the head of my 5
year-old brother. They continued to shoot mercilessly and one of the snipers made a
direct hit at the neck of Shlomi Assoulin, a pupil whom my father loved like a son.
And this is how Shlomi, only 21, a distinguished army officer loved by everybody who
knew him, was murdered in cold blood.
The trial with the obvious outcome – like that of Dreyfus
Then came the trial with the obvious outcome where my father and some of his pupils
were not even given the basic right to defend themselves properly. The Dreyfus-style
trial resulted in my father and those pupils being sent to jail for several years where
my father’s basic rights were not given him and were he suffered continual abuse,
clearly ordered by ―instructions from above‖. Even the prison authorities couldn’t
understand why we were not allowed to visit my father for a long period of time.
The injection of dangerous substances into the Rabbi’s body in order to
silence him
My father was moved to Shata prison in Emek Israel where the corrupt authorities
injected substances into his body for one reason only: to make it look as though his
whole body system had collapsed on its own. My father immediately lost
consciousness and was rushed to Haemek Hospital in Afula. The entire area around
the hospital was surrounded by police and security forces and we, the worried
members of his family, were not allowed to go and see him. Worse, we were not
even allowed to know anything about his condition, how he was feeling and what was
happening with him.
The Rabbi is released from prison in need of constant nursing care
In 1999, my father was released from prison. His whole body system was in a state
of collapse and he was bed-bound. His body was full of scars caused, according to a
skin doctor who had been to see him in his cell, by insect bites. He was released

5
from prison on the condition that he keep away from the matter of the Yemenite
children.
The authorities enlist collaborators among the Rabbi’s pupils to incite the Rabbi’s son,
family and pupils against him
Whilst my father was in prison and after he came out too, the authorities tried to
create chaos amid my father’s pupils. They had two goals: one was to spread lies,
fabrications and falsehoods about my father, his family and his pupils and the other
was to incite against my father whilst at the same time incapacitating his genuine
pupils. For this purpose, they enlisted collaborators amid my father’s pupils, enticing
them with promises of material rewards or persuading them with threats. These
pupils were at the service of the authorities and, unfortunately, most of them
succeeded in inciting some of the people who were closest to us, some of whom were
members of the family.
Those among my father’s pupils who realized what was happening and saw the extent
of the damage that the collaborators were inflicting decided that they wanted no
contact whatsoever with them and cut off from them completely.
If we thought that things couldn’t get worse, we turned out to be very wrong…
Because then the second phase began…
The authorities persecute Ami, the Rabbi’s son, openly
In 2002, not long after my first son was born, the corrupt authorities began to harass
me, asserting that I was continuing what my father had begun and attempting to
uncover the crimes committed against the Yemenite children. I told them that I
didn’t know what they were talking about and that I was only a young boy at the time
and that I had nothing to do with the subject. They, of course, were not interested in
anything I had to say and they summoned me for dozens of investigations during
which they put much psychological pressure on me to give them ―the abundant
documentary evidence that my father had given me‖. I have never seen any of this
so-called evidence, nor do I have any in my possession.
The terrible methods used by the authorities: destruction, intimidation, pressure,
threats
They conducted the investigations on the Sabbath and the holidays, late at night, and
I was not allowed to let anyone know what I was going through. They warned me
that, if I dared say anything, the public would claim that I was imagining things and
that I was crazy. In addition, they told me about how they had ―dealt‖ with several
famous people who had not obeyed them.

6
One example was that of a renowned journalist who had investigated crimes
committed by the authorities and wanted to expose them. They summoned him. He
was sure that he was coming for a normal investigation, conducted under the
auspices of a civilized democratic state but was, unfortunately, wrong. They injected
cancer cells into his throat in order to shut him up and they told him that if he told
anyone about what they had done, everybody would think that he was crazy. In
addition, they threatened to harm his family in a way that cannot be traced back to
them and looks to be inevitable, like a road accident for example.
“Either you bring all your father’s documents or you leave the country for
good, or else…”
During the investigations I was told that I had two choices: to give them the evidence
they claimed I had or to leave the country for good. If I left the country and told
anyone anything, they would find me and my family everywhere, in Israel and
abroad, and they would also harm my friends and their children.
We will frame you and your father for murder and we will make sure that it looks like
you have done it
I have none of the evidence that they claim I have and I asked them what would
happen if I refused to leave the country. Their answer sent shivers down my spine:
―if what we have threatened you with so far is not enough, we would like to remind
you of something that happened some time ago‖ and they told me about a doctor
who worked for the prison services called Dr. Yaakov Ziegelbaum. The doctor liked
my father, he knew about the substances that were being injected into him and was
very concerned. In the end, so the authorities told me, he knew too much and they
liquidated him! When the news came out, they accused Rabbi Uzi Meshulam of
making up the story and this way, they killed two birds with one stone. They then
reminded me that, soon afterwards, they arrested my brother-in-law Noam and
several other pupils with a lot of media coverage…they were quietly released about
two weeks later, but the authorities had succeeded in their quest to discredit them.
In answer to my question what would happen if I didn’t leave the country, they said
they would publish a newspaper article and spin a tale whereby my father and myself
had perpetrated the murder. They would pad the tale with other innocent pupils who
would end up serving life sentences, and, that way, we would all be totally destroyed.
I told that that they knew perfectly well that we have nothing to do with the murder
and they themselves admitted that they had committed it…
In order to show how serious they were, they told me that they had not closed my

7
brother-in-law Noam’s police file, just in case I refused to leave the country. If I
agreed to leave, my brother-in-law would have no more problems…
Strangely enough, my brother-in-law has been out of the country several times with
no problems despite the fact that they had ―reserved themselves the right‖ not to
close his criminal file ―just in case‖ they needed to bring out the story anew.
That is how, under threat, I was forced to leave Israel
And so I had no choice but to leave. Just over a year ago, on 28th November 2005, I
left Israel and was force to request asylum in Canada. I left with my wife, my three
young children and my brother-in-law. We arrived in Canada to the freezing cold of
the Canadian winter without knowing the language or the place, in the hope that they
would keep their promise not to harm my family and friends.
I am having similar physical symptoms to those of my father
But they didn’t keep their promise…I asked for the hearing in my asylum case to be
open to the public. A short time later, my blood sugar shot up sky high. It then went
back to normal with no medical intervention and the doctors were stymied (such a
thing is impossible in natural diabetes)
Despite their promise that they would leave me alone if I left Israel, the corrupt
authorities are not keeping their word
Two of my friends who the authorities claimed had also been involved in the things I
had been accused of came to visit us in Canada on Rosh Hashana to be part of the
―minyan‖and to testify in the asylum case. Wonder of wonders! The hearing was
postponed. And suddenly, around the time that the hearing was due to take place,
an article was published in Israel about Israelis requesting asylum in Canada and the
lies they tell about social, political and religious persecution. The article said that
Israel was asking Canada to provide information (!) about those seeking asylum.
Israel also wanted Canada to discuss each individual case – this is a violation of the
Geneva Convention!!!
(Investigating the matter of the newspaper article, I discovered that it had been
taken off a Human Rights Internet site called ―Bambili‖ where it had been posted
about 6 months ago, and it was definitely not a ―new‖ or ―news‖ item)
I realized that the Israeli authorities were doing all they could to postpone the public
asylum hearing in order to make the false accusations before I told my story to the
world here in Canada.
The friends who came here to testify for me are people with respectable jobs who
cannot spend an undetermined amount of time here because they need to get back to

8
work. The corrupt authorities understand that and are waiting for my friends to go
back home and then to make their false accusations. My friends will be arrested and
we will all suffer. Nobody will know that the whole thing was planned this way by the
corrupt authorities because the hearing was postponed and our story has thus not
been told.
Since there is nothing for us to do other than cry out, we ask you to tell our story and
to pass this letter on to everyone that you know.
Until when??
Please help us to prevent the spilling of the blood of father, of his family and of his
pupils. In the name of truth and justice, join us in our call for a public official
investigation that will put an end to persecution and make amends for the injustice
done to my father.

Note by the editor. Rabbi Uzi Meshulam died on June 21, 2013 at age of 60.

Open letter written by some Israelis of Mizrahi descent to their Arab peers

Young Israelis of Mizrahi descent write an open letter to their Arab peers, calling for
an opening of a dialog and evoking a past in which Jews, Muslims and Christians were
all part of a thriving Arab culture

We, as the descendants of the Jewish communities of the Arab and Muslim world, the
Middle East and the Maghreb, and as the second and third generation of Mizrahi Jews
in Israel, are watching with great excitement and curiosity the major role that the
men and women of our generation are playing so courageously in the demonstrations
for freedom and change across the Arab world. We identify with you and are
extremely hopeful for the future of the revolutions that have already succeeded in
Tunisia and Egypt. We are equally pained and worried at the great loss of life in Libya,
Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, and many other places in the region.
Our generation's protest against repression and oppressive and abusive regimes, and
its call for change, freedom, and the establishment of democratic governments that
foster citizen participation in the political process, marks a dramatic moment in the
history of the Middle East and North Africa, a region which has for generations been
torn between various forces, internal and external, and whose leaders have often
trampled the political, economic, and cultural rights of its citizens.

9
We are Israelis, the children and grandchildren of Jews who lived in the Middle East
and North Africa for hundreds and thousands of years. Our forefathers and mothers
contributed to the development of this region's culture, and were part and parcel of it.
Thus the culture of the Islamic world and the multigenerational connection and
identification with this region is an inseparable part of our own identity.
We are a part of the religious, cultural, and linguistic history of the Middle East and
North Africa, although it seems that we are the forgotten children of its history: First
in Israel, which imagines itself and its culture to be somewhere between continental
Europe and North America. Then in the Arab world, which often accepts the dichotomy
of Jews and Arabs and the imagined view of all Jews as Europeans, and has preferred
to repress the history of the Arab-Jews as a minor or even nonexistent chapter in its
history; and finally within the Mizrahi communities themselves, who in the wake of
Western colonialism, Jewish nationalism and Arab nationalism, became ashamed of
their past in the Arab world.
Consequently we often tried to blend into the mainstream of society while erasing or
minimizing our own past. The mutual influences and relationships between Jewish and
Arab cultures were subjected to forceful attempts at erasure in recent generations,
but evidence of them can still be found in many spheres of our lives, including music,
prayer, language, and literature.
We wish to express our identification with and hopes for this stage of generational
transition in the history of the Middle East and North Africa, and we hope that it will
open the gates to freedom and justice and a fair distribution of the region's resources.
We turn to you, our generational peers in the Arab and Muslim world, striving for an
honest dialog which will include us in the history and culture of the region. We looked
enviously at the pictures from Tunisia and from Al-Tahrir square, admiring your ability
to bring forth and organize a nonviolent civil resistance that has brought hundreds of
thousands of people out into the streets and the squares, and finally forced your
rulers to step down.
We, too, live in a regime that in reality—despite its pretensions to being "enlightened"
and "democratic"—does not represent large sections of its actual population in the
Occupied Territories and inside of the Green Line border(s). This regime tramples the
economic and social rights of most of its citizens, is in an ongoing process of
minimizing democratic liberties, and constructs racist barriers against Arab-Jews, the
Arab people, and Arabic culture. Unlike the citizens of Tunisia and Egypt, we are still a
long way from the capacity to build the kind of solidarity between various groups that

10
we see in these countries, a solidarity movement that would allow us to unite and
march together–all who reside here–into the public squares, to demand a civil regime
that is culturally, socially, and economically just and inclusive.
We believe that, as Mizrahi Jews in Israel, our struggle for economic, social, and
cultural rights rests on the understanding that political change cannot depend on the
Western powers who have exploited our region and its residents for many
generations. True change can only come from an intra-regional and inter-religious
dialog that is in connection with the different struggles and movements currently
active in the Arab world. Specifically, we must be in dialog and solidarity with
struggles of the Palestinians citizens of Israel who are fighting for equal political and
economic rights and for the termination of racist laws, and the struggle of the
Palestinian people living under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and in
Gaza in their demand to end the occupation and to gain Palestinian national
independence.
In our previous letter written following Obama's Cairo speech in 2009, we called for
the rise of the democratic Middle Eastern identity and for our inclusion in such an
identity. We now express the hope that our generation – throughout the Arab, Muslim,
and Jewish world – will be a generation of renewed bridges that will leap over the
walls and hostility created by previous generations and will renew the deep human
dialog without which we cannot understand ourselves: between Jews, Sunnis, Shias,
and Christians, between Kurds, Berbers, Turks, and Persians, between Mizrahis and
Ashkenazis, and between Palestinians and Israelis. We draw on our shared past in
order to look forward hopefully towards a shared future.
We have faith in intra-regional dialog—whose purpose is to repair and rehabilitate
what was destroyed in recent generations—as a catalyst towards renewing the
Andalusian model of Muslim-Jewish-Christian partnership, God willing, Insha'Allah,
and as a pathway to a cultural and historical golden era for our countries. This golden
era cannot come to pass without equal, democratic citizenship, equal distribution of
resources, opportunities, and education, equality between women and men, and the
acceptance of all people regardless of faith, race, status, gender, sexual orientation,
or ethnic affiliation. All of these rights play equal parts in constructing the new society
to which we aspire. We are committed to achieving these goals within a process of
dialog between all of the people of Middle East and North Africa, as well as a dialog we
will undertake with different Jewish communities in Israel and around the world.
We, the undersigned:

11
Shva Salhoov (Libya), Naama Gershy (Serbia, Yemen), Yael Ben-Yefet (Iraq, Aden),
Leah Aini (Greece, Turkey), Yael Berda (Tunisia), Aharon Shem-Tov (Iraq, Iranian
Kurdistan), Yosi Ohana (born in Morocco), Yali Hashash (Libya, Yemen), Yonit Naaman
(Yemen, Turkey), Orly Noy (born in Iran), Gadi Alghazi (Yugoslavia, Egypt), Mati
Shemoelof (Iran, Iraq, Syria), Eliana Almog (Yemen, Germany), Yuval Evri ((Iraq),
Ophir Tubul (Morocco, Algeria), Moti Gigi (Morocco), Shlomit Lir (Iran), Ezra Nawi
(Iraq), Hedva Eyal (Iran), Eyal Ben-Moshe (Yemen), Shlomit Binyamin (Cuba, Syria,
Turkey), Yael Israel (Turkey, Iran), Benny Nuriely (Tunisia), Ariel Galili (Iran), Natalie
Ohana Evry (Morocco, Britain), Itamar Toby Taharlev (Morocco, Jerusalem, Egypt),
Ofer Namimi (Iraq, Morocco), Amir Banbaji (Syria), Naftali Shem-Tov (Iraq, Iranian
Kurdistan), Mois Benarroch (born in Morocco), Yosi David (Tunisia Iran), Shalom
Zarbib (Algeria), Yardena Hamo (Iraqi Kurdistan), Aviv Deri (Morocco) Menny Aka
(Iraq), Tom Fogel (Yemen, Poland), Eran Efrati (Iraq), Dan Weksler Daniel (Syria,
Poland, Ukraine), Yael Gidnian (Iran), Elyakim Nitzani (Lebanon, Iran, Italy), Shelly
Horesh-Segel (Morocco), Yoni Mizrahi (Kurdistan), Betty Benbenishti (Turkey), Chen
Misgav (Iraq, Poland), Moshe Balmas (Morocco), Tom Cohen (Iraq, Poland, England),
Ofir Itah (Morocco), Shirley Karavani (Tunisia, Libya, Yemen), Lorena Atrakzy
(Argentina, Iraq), Asaf Abutbul (Poland, Russia, Morocco), Avi Yehudai (Iran), Diana
Ahdut (Iran, Jerusalem), Maya Peretz (Nicaragua, Morocco), Yariv Moher (Morocco,
Germany), Tami Katzbian (Iran), Oshra Lerer (Iraq, Morocco), Nitzan Manjam
(Yemen, Germany, Finland), Rivka Gilad (Iran, Iraq, India), Oshrat Rotem (Morocco),
Naava Mashiah (Iraq), Zamira Ron David (Iraq) Omer Avital (Morocco, Yemen), Vered
Madar (Yemen), Ziva Atar (Morocco), Yossi Alfi (born in Iraq), Amira Hess (born in
Iraq), Navit Barel (Libya), Almog Behar (Iraq, Turkey, Germany)

12