If Sephardic Jews want to end their discrimination, they must become proud Arabs
Ashkenazi
Zionism, which established the country in an ongoing confrontation with
the Arab world, created a serious emotional crisis for Jews from Arab
countries.
By Salman Masalha | Apr. 1, 2015 | 6:00 AM | 
8 Haaretz.
8 Haaretz. 
Aryeh
Deri (L), party leader of Shas, speaks with Ayman Odeh, head of the
Joint Arab List, during the swearing-in ceremony of the 20th Knesset, in
Jerusalem March 31, 2015. Photo by Reuters
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There
was an uproar over remarks made by Prof. Amir Hetsroni against those
who voted for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, including
Hetsroni’s suggestion that it would not have been so awful if Moroccan
Jews had been “left to rot” in North Africa rather than coming to
Israel. But if we translate his
statement into the more nuanced official language of the Prime
Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem, it sounds very familiar.
“We
are Europeans. We are refined [and] don’t eat as much as you Moroccans
do.” This comment was reportedly directed by First Lady Sara Netanyahu
at one particular Moroccan, Meni Naftali, former chief caretaker of the
Prime Minister’s Residence, who is suing the Netanyahus.
Nevertheless, a lot of Meni Naftalis showed their support for the First
Family by going to the polls on Election Day to fill the ballot boxes
with Likud ballots.
Another
anecdote in the news: During last summer’s war in Gaza, following
remarks by former Sderot mayor Eli Moyal that were seen as criticism of
the prime minister, Mrs. Netanyahu allegedly took pains to call Moyal’s
wife late at night to take her to task: “Your man doesn’t come up to my
husband’s ankles. … [My husband] reads book after book. He understands
economics. He understands defense. He has university degrees. He
understands literature. … Who is your Eli Moyal? Has he ever done
anything?”
And
what followed? A decisive turnout of 43 percent of the Eli Moyals in
Sderot who cast their ballots for Likud. Netanyahu’s major competition,
the Zionist Union, got just 8 percent of the vote in town.
How
does it happen that despite the blows delivered by Netanyahu’s
voracious capitalism upon these population groups, and despite the
arrogant and dismissive attitude of the denizens of the Prime Minister’s
Residence towards the various Meni Nafalis and Eli Moyals, they
continue to cast their votes for Likud?
Israeli
elections are a subject for the psychologists. It’s not an Ashkenazi
vs. Sephardi demon, but rather a demon that is both religious and
ethnic. It’s the Arab demon that Netanyahu has always known how to trot
out when he’s under pressure. This demon was used against late Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the argument that “he has no Jewish majority”
in the Knesset for concessions in peace negotiations, ultimately leading
to his murder over “tribal honor.”
One
should remember that Zionism is a white European national movement.
This Ashkenazi Zionism, which established the country in an ongoing
confrontation with the Arab world, created a serious emotional crisis
for Jews from Arab countries. The more the Arab-Israeli conflict
intensified, so did the complexity of the situation faced by Jews from
Arab lands.
The
people with the political, economic, social and cultural clout have no
problem declaring proudly, “We are Europeans. We are refined, not like
you Moroccans.” On the other hand, what are Jews whose entire existence
is Arab supposed to do? In the intensifying national confrontation
between European Zionism and the Arab world, Jews from Arab countries
were pushed aside. They therefore
began referring to themselves as Mizrahim (literally “Easterners”)
among other things. Anything to escape the term “Arab,” which connotes
national enmity. A few years ago such emotional pressures pushed a
Jewish Likud Knesset member at the time, Carmel Shama, to ask the
Interior Ministry to add “Hacohen” to the end of his name because he was
sick of people always thinking that he was Druze, in other words, Arab.
The
flight from Arabism, even the wearing of Eastern European shtetl
clothing (as one sees in Shas) will not lead Mizrahim, meaning Arabs of
the Jewish faith, anywhere. Netanyahu and the white right wing in
general will continue to fan hatred towards Arabs. This hate will ensure
the continued flight of Arab Jews from their Arabness and the right’s
continued manipulation of Jews who are estranged from it.
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