When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to reform the nation’s judiciary in January, hundreds of thousands of Israelis – mostly secular Ashkenazi Jews – protested in the streets. Netanyahu’s reforms were straightforward: allow the Knesset to override Supreme Court rulings with a simple majority, prevent the Supreme Court from reviewing the legality of Israel’s Basic Laws, and give the legislative and executive branches more power in the appointment of justices.
Critics of the reforms characterized them as an assault on democracy – ironic, given that these changes would have empowered elected officials at the expense of unelected Supreme Court justices. I don’t have a dog in this fight, so I’m not interested in taking sides or passing judgment. Instead, what I find interesting about Netanyahu’s reforms is the extent to which they exposed the fault lines in Israel's decades-long culture war.
Make no mistake, Netanyahu’s reforms were about more than mere governmental procedure. The Supreme Court, unaccountable to the electorate, is a holdout of secular Ashkenazi power. Netanyahu’s Likud Party, on the other hand, is the favorite of traditionally religious and Mizrahi Jews, and it is these Jews who have the most children. As such, it should be clear which faction would benefit from Netanyahu’s reforms.
But this was not the first time the interests of Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews clashed. Indeed, these two groups have been at odds since Israel’s earliest days.
The Two Israels
Most Americans are surely aware of the hostility that exists between Jews and Muslims in the region. But a less visible though equally significant divide exists within Israel between Jews of different ethnic and religious backgrounds. Understanding the divide between what some have referred to as the First Israel and the Second Israel is critical not only to understanding the Jewish state, but also the American political landscape.
The First Israel is what remains of the Jews who founded Israel. They were overwhelmingly Ashkenazi, secular, and socialist. Today their descendants constitute somewhat of an old guard in Israeli society; they remain wealthy and influential, but that influence has been on the decline for decades, largely due to demographic trends. Simply put, they are being outbred by religious – particularly the ultraorthodox – and Mizrahi Jews.
The Mizrahim arrived later. Many were expelled from Arab countries following the creation of Israel and the wars that followed. Others chose to leave voluntarily. Although Mizrahi Jews, who are far more traditionally religious than their Ashkenazi counterparts, played virtually no role in the founding of the Jewish state, they now make up around half of the Jews in Israel.
Mass Mizrahi immigration permanently altered Israel’s trajectory. As with any demographic transformation, the influx of Mizrahi Jews has had profound effects on the country's political, cultural, religious, and even economic dimensions. What was intended to be a secular, modern state is now increasingly defined by a growing body of religious Middle Eastern Jews. Needless to say, the Ashkenazi old guard have not been keen on this development.
Early Mizrahi immigrants felt mistreated and demeaned by Israel’s Ashkenazi elite. Israeli-American political scientist Meyrav Wurmser lists their grievances as follows:
…the squalid tent cities into which Mizrahim were placed upon arrival in Israel; the humiliation of Moroccan and other Mizrahi Jews when Israeli immigration authorities shaved their heads and sprayed their bodies with the pesticide DDT; the socialist elite's enforced secularization; the destruction of traditional family structure, and the reduced status of the patriarch by years of poverty and sporadic unemployment.”
Moreover, Wurmser writes that Mizrahi Jews feel that the “the Zionist narrative denied, erased, and excluded their historical identity.”
Many Mizrahi Jews still view things this way. Regardless of whether they are actually victims of discrimination, there’s no denying that they make up the lower rungs of Israeli society. There has never been a Mizrahi prime minister, and most senior academics in Israel come from an Ashkenazi background. On average, Mizrahi Jews earn less money and are less likely to obtain a college education. But despite the fact that these gaps appear to be narrowing, the resentment persists – not only as a source of social strife, but also political power.
Mizrahi Politics
Mizrahi Jews viewed entered politics to rectify their perceived marginalization in Israeli society. In 1971, young Mizrahi Jews in Jerusalem founded the Israeli Black Panthers, a left-wing protest movement inspired by America’s Black Panther Party. The organization was overwhelmingly Mizrahi in nature, but it managed to attract the support of some Ashkenazi leftists.
The Israeli Black Panthers staged a number of demonstrations. The most noteworthy of these occurred on May 18, 1971 and was dubbed “The Night of the Panthers.” Over 5,000 people protested against racial discrimination for seven hours, which led to clashes with the police. Prime Minister Golda denounced the protests.
Although the Israeli Black Panthers made a name for themselves by staging street demonstrations, they were unable to channel this energy into electoral success. Their movement fell apart, but Mizrahi resentment soon became a staple of Israeli politics.
The Likud Party, formed in September 1973, was founded along secular, nationalistic lines by Menachem Begin, a key figure in early Zionism. He was the leader of the Irgun, a paramilitary organization responsible for the King David Hotel bombing and the Deir Yassin massacre. Begin would later become the sixth prime minister of Israel, in part due to his willingness to tap into Mizrahi discontent.
Aron Heller writes in The Times of Israel:
They [the Mizrahim] found their political savior in Likud’s Menachem Begin — even though he was himself of Polish Jewish descent. With consummate skill the longtime opposition leader cultivated an outsiders’ alliance that appealed to their sense of deprivation — and with massive Mizrahi backing he swept to power in 1977 to break nearly 30 years of Labor rule.
By appealing to Mizrahi Jews, Begin was able to shatter 30 years of Labor Party dominance. He was the first non-Labor prime minister in Israel’s history, and the alliance he built between secular right-wing Zionists and Orthodox Jews (many of whom are Mizrahi) lives on in the modern Likud Party. After all, with 16 years of service under his belt, Benjamin Netanyahu is Israel’s longest serving prime minister – an achievement made possible by Begin’s realignment.
Bibi, like Begin, comes from a secular, Ashkenazi background, and has similarly styled himself as a defender of Orthodox and Mizrahi Jews. In 1997 – only a year into this first term as prime minister – Netanyahu told Rabbi Yizhak Kaduri that left-wing Jews “have forgotten what it means to be Jewish.” Unfortunately for Bibi, an open microphone captured his comments. Many Israelis were outraged. Netanyahu apologized, but he was only expressing a sentiment common to the Second Israel.
Netanyahu’s pandering works. According to a 2022 study from the Israel Democracy Institute, only 28.1% of Likud voters define themselves as secular, and 36.9% said they were either haredi, religious, or traditional-religious. In terms of ethnicity – often but not always a proxy for religion in Israel – 58.1% of Likud voters define themselves as Sephardic (Mizrahi).
But Netanyahu isn’t of their ethnic or religious background. He certainly has far more in common with the Jews of the First Israel. One wonders whether he truly buys into the Mizrahi victimization narrative.
A few anecdotes may shed light on this.
Historian Max Hastings was recruited by the Netanyahu family to write a biography of Bibi’s brother, Yoni. In his memoirs, Hastings had the following to say about Israel’s longest-serving prime minister:
At Bibi Netanyahu’s dinner table in Jerusalem, I listened with crawling dismay to Bibi talking about the future of his country. ‘In the next war, if we do it right we’ll have a chance to get all the Arabs out,’ he said. ‘We can clear the West Bank, sort out Jerusalem.’ He joked about the Golani Brigade, the Israeli infantry force in which so many men were North African or Yemenite Jews. ‘They’re okay so long as they’re led by white officers.’ He grinned.
Amusing stuff.
Further revealing is testimony from the Netanyahus’ former caretaker, Meni Naftali. A Middle Eastern Jew, he sued the office of Israel’s Prime Minister over a hostile work environment in 2014. He won that lawsuit, in addition to a separate libel suit against a number of Netanyahu’s associates.
Among Naftali’s litany of complaints was that he was derided for his Mizrahi background. He claimed that Sara Netanyahu, Bibi’s wife, once told him, “We are Europeans. We are refined, we don’t eat as much as you Moroccans…You are fattening us and then when we are photographed abroad, we look fat.”
In March 2020, a top aide to Netanyahu, Natan Eshel, found himself in hot water after a recording surfaced in which he spoke a bit too candidly about Likud’s strategy. While talking to an unnamed person, Eshel said, “Now, in this public, I’ll call it… non-Ashkenazi…What gets them worked up? Why do they hate the press?… They hate everything and we’ve succeeded in whipping up that hatred. Hatred is what unites our camp.”
Eshel, himself Ashkenazi, claimed that the recording was taken out of context. But regardless of its context, he was only expressing the unspoken truth about Likud: it’s a machine powered by Mizrahi resentment. But it’s a machine driven by Ashkenazis, who simply do not share the same ethnic grievances as their base.
Netanyahu’s aide issued a statement after the recording was leaked in which he doubled down, albeit more optically:
I’m a proud grandfather to Moroccan grandchildren. I am ashamed of the many years of white tribal behavior and its damage to the wonderful heritage of the people of Mizrahi communities. [They] are justified in their anger, and the first to recognize this and admit the mistake [of the discrimination against them] was [former Likud prime minister] Menachem Begin.
He’s a proud grandfather to Moroccan grandchildren. Of course he isn’t racist!
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