# ISRAEL VOTES: How the Mizrahi-Ashkenazi divide still shapes Israeli politics - with Mijal Bitton

An episode of [Call Me Back - with Dan Senor](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1539292794), 24 Aug 2026, 50 min.

Audio: https://podcasts.beehiiv.com/d9ee47aa-cc91-4ad0-b1e2-000191888049/01a0599f-c7dc-725e-a326-2afd78c94e7e/01a0599f-f4dd-7584-b55c-1ece15ad5788/01a0599f-f5fb-7292-b096-d122deb0b95f.mp3

How will current issues or past discrimination against Mizrahi Israelis influence this election? Dan and sociologist Mijal Bitton discuss the history, identity, and political narratives of Mizrahi Jews—whose families came to Israel from across the Middle East and North Africa—and how those narratives continue to shape Israeli politics. They unpack the factors of historical discrimination by an Ashkenazi elite, questions of economic opportunity, dignity and belonging of the Mizrahi community, and the Mizrahi devotion to maintaining the Jewish character of the state of Israel. —- Get your tickets to a live taping of Call me Back at the Streicker Center in NYC on October 22. —- Call Me Back is made possible by our subscribers. If these conversations are where you turn to understand Israel and the Jewish world, consider joining them. It's what keeps this show going. Become a Subscriber - Inside Call me Back This episode is sponsored by The Shalom Hartman Institute. Register for The Road to the Israeli Elections webinar with the Shalom Hartman Institute's Tani Frank and Masua Sagiv. ___ In this episode: -Historical roots of the Mizrahi and Ashkenazi divide -Cultural and religious differences in their countries of origin -Do Mizrahis still resent how they were treated by Ashkenazis during immigration? -Israelis political realignment in 1977 and Mizrahi powerful support for Likud -The rise of Mizrahi political movements like Shas -How Mizrahi voters think about the “deep state” in Israel -Contemporary Mizrahi identity and integration into Israeli society and politics ___ More Ark Media: • Want to join Ark Media? Check out our careers page for new openings. • Explore Israel Votes • Listen to Ark News Daily • Listen to For Heaven's Sake • Listen to What’s Your Number? • Newsletters | Ark Media | Amit Segal | Nadav Eyal • Instagram | Ark Media | Dan • X | Dan • Dan Senor & Saul Singer’s book, The Genius of Israel • Get in touch Credits: Ilan Benatar, Beth Pearlman, Brittany Cohen, Ava Weiner, Martin Huergo, Mariangeles Burgos, and Yuval Semo

## Transcript

[0:00] Our subscribers fund Arc Media. They help allow us to cover Israel and the Jewish world honestly and without compromise. Join us at arcmedia.org. And to our subscribers, thank you.
[0:13] \[Instrumental music\] You are listening to an Arc Media podcast. There is this grievance, and for many people it's a Mizrahi grievance, right? That comes and say, "We have the will of the people.
[0:31] We represent the will of the people, and there is this elite that is trying to use what they think of as non-democratic means," which means institutions that have not been democratically elected, let's say like the judiciary, and they're trying to basically weaponize the deep state in order to continue to keep Mizrahim outside of the picture or outside of the halls of power.
[0:53] \[Instrumental music\] It's 8:00 AM on Sunday, August 23rd in New York City. It's 3:00 PM on Sunday, August 23rd in Israel.
[1:11] Before today's episode, a quick housekeeping note.
[1:14] On Thursday, October 22nd, just five days ahead of the Israeli elections, Call Me Back will hold a live taping at the Striker Center in New York City, where I'll sit down with Dan Shapiro, Dahlia Sheindlin, and Bret Stephens to discuss what's at stake in Israel's 2026 election and what its results will mean for the US-Israel relationship.
[1:34] Tickets have just gone on sale, so if you want to join us, please follow the link in the episode description. Now on to today's episode.
[1:42] One of the many strange things about Israeli politics is that some of its deepest political divisions are rooted in social battles that Israel appears, on the surface, to have largely moved beyond, that have been settled.
[1:56] Take the divide between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews, who are basically split about 50/50 among the Jewish population. In Israel today, Mizrahi food and music are mainstream.
[2:07] Families are increasingly mixed as a product of mixed marriages between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews, and younger Israelis may have grandparents from Poland, Morocco, Iraq, and Romania all sitting around the same Shabbat dinner table.
[2:22] And yet politically, the history of this divide remains remarkably powerful and, some may argue, enduring. To understand why, you have to go back to Israel's founding.
[2:33] The Jews who built the institutions of the new state were overwhelmingly European, Ashkenazi, in some cases often secular.
[2:42] Then hundreds of thousands of Jews arrived from places like Iraq, Yemen, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, and elsewhere across the Middle East and North Africa.
[2:52] They brought with them a different culture, generally more traditional, more communal, and shaped by centuries of life in Muslim societies. And when these two Jewish worlds met, they did not meet as equals.
[3:04] The Ashkenazi establishment controlled the government, schools, and cultural institutions.
[3:08] Many Mizrahi immigrants were sent to transit camps in shanty towns, in these peripheral development towns, in, in what were often called tent cities, while their traditions were often treated as something that modern Israel was supposed to leave behind.
[3:24] The resentment eventually became political. In 1977, Menachem Begin and the Likud Party ended nearly three decades of Labor Party rule, powered in significant part by Mizrahi voters.
[3:38] For many, that vote was not simply about left versus right. It was a rejection of the establishment that had governed Israel and, in their eyes, looked down on them since its founding.
[3:48] Nearly 50 years later, that realignment still shapes large aspects of Israeli politics. So how can an ethnic divide become less important in everyday Israeli life while remaining so powerful politically?
[4:03] Is this simply the legacy of discrimination, or did Mizrahi Jews also bring a different understanding of religion, of Jewish identity, and of Israeli nationalism?
[4:13] To help us understand that history and its political consequences today, I'm joined by Michal Biton.
[4:19] Michal is a sociologist, a scholar, and a Jewish communal leader who directs the National Study of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews in the United States. My conversation with Michal right after this short message.
[4:34] \[Instrumental music\] As Israel heads towards the October 27th election, Call Me Back listeners know that the stakes could not be higher.
[4:42] Shifting political alliances, debates over religion and state, and competing visions for Israel's future are reshaping the national conversation.
[4:50] Join the Shalom Hartman Institute, home of the For Heaven's Sake podcast, on Tuesday, September 8th at 1:00 PM Eastern for "The Road to the Israeli Elections: Understanding the Political Landscape."
[5:03] It's a virtual session. Hear from Tali Frank, director of the Judaism and State Policy Center, in conversation with senior faculty member Masua Sagiv.
[5:12] They'll unpack the key issues, parties, and political forces driving this pivotal election.
[5:18] Register today for this timely virtual briefing and gain essential insight into one of the most consequential moments in Israeli politics at shalomhartman.org.
[5:31] \[Instrumental music\] Michal Biton, welcome to Call Me Back. Thank you so much for having me.
[5:39] I feel like you've been part of Call Me Back episodes without ever having been on Call Me Back before because I quote you a lot, and so you've been part of some of our conversations, but I'm thrilled to have you here for your maiden voyage.
[5:53] Very excited, and I've heard from people when you've quoted me, Dan, and really good to actually be here and have a conversation. Right, \[laughs\] not just be referred to in third person.
[6:01] All right, Michal, before we dive into the history of what happened between Ashkenazi Jews and Mizrahi Jews- In the, what was then the new state of Israel. How would you define this term, Mizrahi or Sephardi?
[6:13] 'Cause that often those two terms are used interchangeably. Yeah, so those are slightly different terms.
[6:18] Sephardic is a very old term that was used for Jews who came from the Iberian Peninsula, and also for a certain form of Jewish law and custom. So you might follow Sephardic Jewish law as opposed to Ashkenazi Jewish law.
[6:33] Mizrahi Jews are Jews who came from the Middle East and North Africa to Israel. Most Mizrahim follow Sephardic Jewish law. It's two different categories.
[6:42] One is much more about religiosity, being Sephardic, and one is much more an ethnic status that especially coalesced once Jews moved to Israel after the establishment of the State of Israel.
[6:52] So when we think of Mizrahi Jews, we are thinking Jews that come from what countries? Iraq, Morocco, Yemen. Those are the category of countries, right?
[7:02] Countries across the Middle East and North Africa, most of them Muslim majority societies. Okay. And Sephardi refers to Jews that came from Spain and Portugal.
[7:13] Yeah, so when we speak about Sephardic Jews, we often speak about Jews who were expelled from Spain or escaped the Inquisition, and they descend from the community in the Iberian Peninsula, and we're also talking about a certain approach to Jewish law, to Jewish civilization, that basically migrates and becomes massively influential in the Middle East and North Africa.
[7:33] So you've got a lot of people who perhaps didn't come directly from Spain.
[7:38] They build Jewish communities, say, in Syria or Morocco, but they will speak of themselves as following Sephardic law and custom because that was the civilizational approach that was most popular and important in their communities.
[7:51] Okay, so I wanna walk through the biggest cultural differences between Ashkenazi Jews and Mizrahi Jews before they made ali- aliyah, before they made their migration to Israel, before Israel is in the picture in a very practical sense.
[8:05] I wanna focus on our listeners being able to understand three key differences, but I wanna start with the role religion played in the identity of these two societies, of Ashkenazi Jews and Mizrahi Jews.
[8:16] Yeah, so we are speaking here roughly about Jews under Islam and Jews under Christianity when speaking about Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews before they moved to Israel.
[8:25] So if we speak about how Judaism and religion plays out, let's say, Dan, that we go back four hundred, five hundred years, okay? To compare Jews under Christianity and under Islam.
[8:36] We wouldn't actually find so much of a difference. We would find traditional Jewish communities where religion is the default that everybody follows. You don't have religious versus secular.
[8:46] You don't have different denominations. You kind of belong to Jewish religiosity in the same way that you belong to your family. What happens under Christianity in Europe is that you have massive ruptures.
[8:58] You have emancipation, in which Jews become part of the body politic. You have enlightenment, in which you have questions about the individual and rationality.
[9:05] You have disappointment of emancipation, in which antisemitism persists. And so Ashkenazi Jews actually develop a lot of diversity in the way they approach being a Jew. Some of them become Reform Jews.
[9:17] Some of them become Orthodox Jews. Some of them become secular Jews. Some of them become Zionist Jews.
[9:24] Zionist Jews especially often had a certain way of looking at Jewish religiosity and actually feeling shame, thinking this was the thing that held us back in the diaspora, and to be the new Zionist Jew, we have to become secular and not to be stuck with this primitive religiosity.
[9:40] When you look at Jews under Islam in the Middle East and North Africa, you do not have these ruptures, so you have what we might call traditional religious life. Judaism is the default.
[9:51] In the same way that you're born to a family, you also are born to the Jewish community. In the same way that you treasure your grandparents, you treasure your Jewish traditions.
[10:00] You don't necessarily observe everything, but religiosity in Judaism is part and parcel of your identity and your family. You do not have the binary of religious and secular, and you do not have denominations.
[10:13] So that is, like, a broad way of describing the different ways that Ashkenazim and Mizrahim related to Judaism when they went to Israel. Okay. So we know a fair deal about how antisemitism affected Jewish life in Europe.
[10:28] The history of Jewish life in Europe looms so large in the way we're raised, in our education. It's so dominant, and we don't spend much time educating, at least in the West, educating Jews on the non-Ashkenazi story.
[10:43] So how did the Muslim societies treat the Jews among them, and how did it shape their culture? Yeah, and I would say, Dan, that what you're saying is true not only here in America, but in Israel as well.
[10:53] We don't tell enough the story of Jews from the Arab world, of Jews under Islam.
[10:58] But in terms of contrasting the treatment of Jews, so we can say that Jews under Christianity, Ashkenazi Jews, were the ultimate metaphysical other in their culture, right?
[11:07] Under Islam, it was very different for Jews because Muslim doctrine had a category called dhimmi, which basically means a protected and tolerated minority that is, let's say, second-class citizens, subservient to the Muslim majority.
[11:23] So Jews and Christians, who are, uh, seen as people of the book, they were treated as dhimmi, which means that in most Muslim countries, they were tolerated.
[11:34] They didn't have the same level of expulsions and persecutions that you have in Christian Europe, so long as they were willing to stay in their lane, pay the tax they were supposed to pay as dhimmi, and generally have certain things like special clothing or build buildings that were lower than those of their Muslim society that showed that they were subservient.
[11:53] If you're comparing to Christian Europe, you don't have the same level of antisemitism. Of course, it's different not only in intensity, but in kind. Of course, you have a lot of this depends on specific rulers.
[12:04] So you might have rulers who had, uh, forced conversions, who had pogroms, who had violence. You have all these different kinds of things across about thirteen centuries that Jews live under Islam.
[12:15] Now, this really shapes their culture in quite a few ways. One of the ways in which this shapes the culture of Mizrahi Jews is that they come to Israel with a very strong Arab-Jewish culture.
[12:27] They experienced the kind of tolerance that allowed them to create a cultural symbiosis, that allowed them to have music, cuisines, a very strong local identity, feeling very connected to their cities of origins.
[12:39] That's one way in which the dhimmi experience shaped them.
[12:42] Another way in which the dhimmi experience shaped the Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, and this is the way that I see it, is that they did not shape their psychology around trying to figure out the answer to the Jewish question.
[12:57] A lot of Ashkenazi Jews, right, so you're spending centuries basically as like this ultimate metaphysical other persecuted, so, so much of your communal and political efforts are to try to figure out, "Okay, what are solutions?"
[13:10] And many of the solutions are universal. It could be socialism, it could be nationalism, it could be liberal democracy.
[13:16] You do not have that same psychological burden for Jews under Islam, so they do not actually conceive of all of these solutions to the Jewish question.
[13:26] And the way that I see it is a part of how it shapes them is that they're less inclined to look at the liberal West and to think that that's going to bring the big answers to the Jewish question. Okay.
[13:38] So Jews in Europe were living in largely industrial societies, in nations whose cultures are not fundamentally different from the societies that most Jews live in today in terms of structurally how they're organized, how their economy's organized.
[13:52] Muslim countries, though, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, were places where tribalism, as opposed to what we think of as universalism in Europe, played a big role in shaping those Muslim societies.
[14:07] So can you talk a little bit about that and then explain how that distinction affects the Jewish culture in those countries where the Mizrahi Jews are from?
[14:16] Yeah, Dan, although I wouldn't say that this was unique to a couple of centuries ago, I would argue it's still the case today. Let's put Jews aside for a second, all right?
[14:25] So cultural anthropologists will look at, let's say, Europe and America, and they would look at countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Asia, and they will say, "If you go to different societies, you're going to have different moralities that are the most important ones."
[14:39] So in the liberal West, broadly, individualism, following your heart, right, doing whatever you want as long as you don't harm other people, universalism, believing that we're all equal, that less boundaries is better, that is like the key moral way to approach the world.
[14:54] And Jews who are raised in these societies have internalized to a great degree individualism and universalism.
[15:01] In the Middle East and North Africa, not only then but even today, you have much more collectivism, which we might call, uh, tribalism.
[15:09] You can call it, you know, group morality, but it's a way of thinking about the world that you're not just asking, "What is good for me?" You're actually saying, "What is good for me has to be good for the group."
[15:19] And it's a way that thinks of boundaries not as bad because they exclude people, but actually thinks of boundaries as natural and as healthy and helpful in a society.
[15:30] So Jews in the Middle East and North Africa, same as Muslims and Christians in the Middle East and North Africa, have an approach that is much, much more concerned with the collective, that is much less inclined to say, "We're gonna get rid of boundaries."
[15:44] And even today, I would say Mizrachim, when you ask them about their identity, for them, belonging to their family, belonging to the Jewish people, which is, uh, the national family, that is incredibly important and plays a greater role than, let's say, liberal, individual, and universalist values compared to Ashkenazi Jews.
[16:03] Okay, so now fast-forward to Israel post-1948. In 1948, Israel's Jewish population of about 600,000 was roughly 80% Ashkenazi and 20% Mizrahi or slash Sephardi.
[16:18] And by the end of 1952, mass immigration of over 700,000 people more than doubled the Jewish population to roughly 1.48 million, so almost one and a half million, shifting the balance significantly as hundreds of thousands of Mizrahi Jews arrived from Arab and Muslim countries.
[16:36] How are they received and treated by the predominantly Ashkenazi society? Great. So before we answer that, Dan, if it's okay, I just want to mention why is it that they come to Israel.
[16:47] Because within, you just focused on a couple of years, but we can say more broadly, let's say within two decades, three decades, you have something close to one million Jews who had their homes across the Middle East and North Africa for centuries, and basically all of them flee, leave, or are expelled from their communities.
[17:05] So it's a massive, massive, massive exodus. The majority of them come to Israel, but some of them go to the Americas, to Europe.
[17:12] So the reason they leave is that across the 20th century, life for Jews becomes increasingly untenable because you have the rise of Arab nationalism in which Jews are treated as a fifth column, and they're treated as foreigners and with a lot of suspicion about them.
[17:26] And then when the state of Israel is established, you basically have street violence in all kinds of communities, you know, from Iraq to Syria. Pogroms. They were pogroms. Pogroms.
[17:35] Synagogues burned, people murdered, and that is also followed by state persecution in most of these countries.
[17:42] And again, we can go into the differences between Morocco and Iraq and Syria and Egypt, but in all of these countries, you have governments that essentially begin to act against their Jews.
[17:52] Sometimes it might even be something as, "We are limiting your immigration. You cannot leave the country because you then might join, you know, Zionists in Israel and become our enemies."
[18:02] So if Jews are in these societies and they're experiencing street violence, and they're also told they cannot leave, and you begin to have all these kinds of state propaganda talking about Jews and Zionists and things like that, it creates a lot of uncertainty, a lot of fear.
[18:17] Sometimes they are expelled, sometimes they flee, and sometimes they leave because they hear of this new country called Israel and they want to be part of the Zionist project.
[18:25] But that's a really important thing to just note here about the push and pull factors. I just wanna say, so I lived, I worked in Iraq in 2003 and 2004.
[18:34] I was there doing official US government work, but there were a number of local Iraqi officials when I was there who would point out to me just how pervasive even the remnants of Jewish life in Baghdad were.
[18:47] Even in 2003, 2004, you could go see, and I hadn't appreciated, about a third of Baghdad's population was Jewish in those early years before the pogroms and the state-sanctioned violence and harassment and discrimination against Jews drove so many of them out.
[19:02] But a third of Baghdad. So we, again, this is the Ashkenazi slant on our upbringing. We think the center of Jewish life as places like Poland, right?
[19:11] But then you think of a country like Iraq and one of the largest and most important cities in the Arab world, the Arab Muslim world, a third of the population was Jewish. Yeah, and it wasn't only a third that was Jewish.
[19:22] They were not only integrated, they were part of the elite, the intelligentsia. Right. So you have that all across the Middle East and North Africa. You have very strong local Jewish cultures and very strong attachment.
[19:33] It is not a simple thing for you to leave your home unless you're nervous and scared about what's happening around you.
[19:39] So Dan, now that we understand a little bit the push and pull factors of why we have this massive migration, you know, by the '70s, we can talk about nearly 700,000 Jews from the Middle East and North Africa who come specifically to Israel, then we can explore a little bit the heart of your question, which is how were they treated in Israel by the Ashkenazi majority?
[19:58] And I will say one thing here, Dan, which is that even the term Mizrahi is one that is born in Israel.
[20:04] What I mean by that is that you have all these Jews who think of themselves as Moroccan Jews, Jews from Tangier, Jews from Tetouan, Jews from Aleppo, Jews from Alexandria, Jews from Iraq, and they are very different and diverse.
[20:16] Some are very educated and wealthy, and some are poor, and they come to Israel with all of their diversity, and the Ashkenazi Jews who had established the institutions of the state and were really absorbing all of these immigrants and helping in their Aliyah, they look at them and they have a lot of biases that all Europeans had at that time for people who had darker skin and people who spoke Arabic, and they look at them, and they do not see any difference between someone from Morocco or Iraq, and they say, "Oh, you know what?
[20:46] All of these are Edot Mizrach, communities of the East," which eventually becomes Mizrahi. Now, that is not a geographical term.
[20:53] That is actually a term that has to do with hierarchy, of saying, "We are the West," right, "and you are the East." Right.
[20:59] So when Jews come to Israel, I do wanna remind our listeners there is a time in which we have so many Jews who are coming to Israel, Mizrahi, Ashkenazi.
[21:08] This very young state is dealing with tremendous challenges, you know, trying to absorb so many people very, very quickly. But Jews from the Middle East and North Africa basically encounter two things.
[21:19] Number one is they encounter what I would call structural discrimination. They are sent in disproportionate number to be in tent cities.
[21:29] They're sent to towns in the periphery where they have very, very few economic opportunities. And just as a reminder, everything, the economy, everything is really controlled by the Jewish Agency, by the government.
[21:39] You really cannot escape the cycle of poverty if you face this kind of structural discrimination. The second thing that they encounter is they encounter a real sense of bias and stereotyping.
[21:51] You can have somebody, let's say again from Iraq, we spoke about Iraq before, who speaks French and very high-class Arabic and Hebrew, but because they don't speak Yiddish, they're going to be seen as uneducated and primitive.
[22:04] And you have somebody who comes with religious traditions, and they're going to be seen by secular Kibbutznikim as backwards and as having to be somehow reformed from their religiosity.
[22:15] So they encounter structural discrimination in a very significant way, let's say in the '50s, '60s, and going into the '70s, although things of course improve afterwards.
[22:23] And they also encounter just, like, this sense of being, you know, not as good as Ashkenazim, and many people from that time speak about a sense of humiliation, lack of dignity, of believing that you're coming home, having this dream, wanting to fulfill the dream of your ancestors to come to Israel, and then coming and that dream is ruptured in many ways.
[22:43] Okay, so one very obvious dissonance for the Ashkenazi Jews in Israel was that on the one hand, their enemies were Arab. They declare independence, and they're invaded by all these Arab countries.
[22:56] So on the one hand, those are their, quote-unquote, "enemies", and yet their newly discovered brothers and sisters inside Israel were from the Arab world. They were speaking Arabic.
[23:06] They were basically Jews of Arab culture and were pressured to prove otherwise, I guess. What impact did that social pressure have on them?
[23:14] Yeah, and let's tease out that dissonance even more, Dan, because if you think about Mizrachim, it's really complex.
[23:20] Many of them fled the violence from their Arab neighbors back at home, and then they come to Israel when they're not treated the way they should be by Ashkenazi Jews, but where the national enemy is, quote-unquote, "the Arabs".
[23:32] So it's a very, very complicated picture in which Mizrahi Jews are treasuring their Arab-Jewish culture.
[23:39] They understand that they are fighting battles against Arab countries that do not want Israel to exist, and at the same time, they are treated badly by Ashkenazim.
[23:48] I would say a couple of implications that come out of here, but let me just first clarify one thing.
[23:54] Even though there was discrimination and even though there were all of these complicated dynamics, as a whole, Mizrahi Jews, when they had to think about who they shared, you know, their fate with, their destiny, their covenant of fate and destiny, as, you know, Rabbi Soloveitchik would say, they would think about their fellow Jews.
[24:12] That was never ambiguous. That was never a question.
[24:15] They saw themselves, even with the discrimination, as being part of the body politic of the Jewish people, and they understood themselves as having to fight for their survival.
[24:24] Now, some other implications that come out of this were that for a long time there was a lot of stigma attached to Arab Jewish culture, so you have a lot of internalized inferiority.
[24:33] You have people who try to hide their Arabic accents. They try to not have Arabic Jewish names, um, things like that. They create their own spaces where they can celebrate, you know, Mizrahi Arab Jewish culture.
[24:45] So you have all of these dynamics that come out of this, and you have even in some cases, which people are confused by, but Mizrahim aren't necessarily less nationalistic than Ashkenazim.
[24:55] They actually develop an even more nationalistic orientation towards the conflict with their Arab neighbors. They came from the Arab world, these Mizrahi Jews. They were part of the Arab culture.
[25:04] They obviously, in many cases, in most cases, left in distress, in some kind of distress as in terms of how they were treated in the Arab countries they left or were driven out of, and now they're in this new environment where there are Arabs living in the modern state of Israel, and they're at war with Arab countries.
[25:21] So from the Mizrahi Jews' perspective, it has its own dissonance.
[25:24] Yeah, I think from the outside, it might feel like there was a dissonance, but I would say just in terms of the way the Mizrahim speak about themselves now and even in the past, there wasn't a dissonance in the sense that they saw themselves first and foremost as part of the Jewish people.
[25:38] So you might experience discrimination from Ashkenazim, but you're still fighting shoulder to shoulder, and you have existential enemies, and you have Arab armies that declare they want to come to war against the Jews, and they don't discriminate between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim.
[25:53] So there is a little bit of internal dissonance in how you deal with the discrimination and how you understand yourself as part of this Zionist Jewish return home.
[26:03] But I wouldn't say that you have a dissonance that emerges vis-a-vis Arabs and later on Palestinians. I will add something, though, Dan, here.
[26:11] A lot of people note that even though you had a lot of tension and discrimination in the early decades of the state, it never really comes out in the open in a very real way.
[26:22] A lot of it gets buried or is not really addressed in public in Israeli society.
[26:27] Some of it might be precisely because of what you are noting, because it was just so complicated, exactly, you know, the, the liminal line between Arab, between Jew, between Ashkenazim, Mizrahim, Arabs, and some of it was that the geopolitical dynamics just made it very hard to raise those kind of internal tensions because they do offer some dissonance vis-a-vis the bigger existential challenges that Israel is facing.
[26:52] Michal, one of the defining tensions in Israeli society, even today, stems from its founding as a Jewish and a democratic state. There can be tension between those two, especially among Mizrahi Jews.
[27:06] So can you explain why? Yeah, and some of it will depend, Dan, on how you approach Jewish and how you approach democratic.
[27:12] Well, I will quote here the work of Nissim Mizrahi, who's a very careful scholar looking at Mizrahim and politics.
[27:20] And one of the things that he describes is that when Mizrahim came to Israel and the project they were trying to build, the foremost thing they were trying to do is build a home for the Jewish people, is be part of this massive project for the Jewish people.
[27:35] They were less concerned about building a democracy. Now, this doesn't mean that they are anti-democratic or that they want to have a theocracy or, or anything like that.
[27:43] But it does mean that Mizrahi Jews, especially those who are traditional, who identify as traditional, really, really care about the Jewish character of the state of Israel, and we're gonna get into politics soon.
[27:55] I know when they hear politicians or political parties that they think are a threat to the Jewish character, and I'm not just talking here about the population, I'm talking here about Jewish symbols, a Jewish public square, right, a sense of Jewish collectivity, for them, that is incredibly, incredibly important in a way that sometimes in the more secular liberal settings might not be so obvious.
[28:20] And this, by the way, Dan, I'm not talking here about Haredi or very observant Mizrahi Jews.
[28:25] I'm talking broadly about traditional Jews, but for them, the Jewish character of the state of Israel is paramount in their mind. We'll be right back. \[soft music\] Hi, it's Dan Senor.
[28:37] Israel is heading into one of its most consequential election, and this time, the whole world is watching closely. Hot takes and daily noise are pretty much guaranteed to populate your media diet.
[28:49] But as with any election, there's a deeper story about identity, religion, democracy, and what kind of country Israelis want to live in.
[28:58] That's why Arc Media launched Israel Votes, a special initiative across Call Me Back, For Heaven's Sake, and Arc News Daily.
[29:07] You'll hear from the leading candidates shaping the race, along with analysis and reporting from two of Israel's leading political analysts, Arc Media contributors Nadav Eyal and Amit Segal.
[29:18] Join us for Israel Votes, your front row seat to the election that could define Israel's future. Go to arcmedia.org/votes to watch and listen. See you there. And we're back with Michal Biton.
[29:36] So Michal, there was this central grievance of the Mizrahi Jews that, as the storytelling or the history-telling goes, peaked in the late 1970s in Israel and as it manifested itself politically in the elections of 1977 when Menachem Begin, the Likud party, get elected, largely powered by this electoral juggernaut that became the Mizrahi vote.
[29:59] So what was the significance of the Likud party winning that election for the Mizrahi Jews in Israel? Like, why was this considered such an earthquake in Israeli politics? Right.
[30:09] Let's first take a step back then and just say like this. We described this discrimination, right, the Mizrahi Jews faced, and it's very important to say this was the early decades of the state.
[30:18] If you go today to Israel, there's still some socioeconomic gaps, especially in elite spaces, but overall, it's not the same at all.
[30:26] So we want to try to understand how and why did things change, and one way to understand it is through different political revolutions in which Mizrahim are able to, in some ways, enter the halls of political power.
[30:38] The most important moment, which you're noting right now, is 1977, which is when Menachem Begin and the Likud basically come to power.
[30:48] Now, it's important to note that part of the way in which they come to power is that they are supported by Mizrahi Jews living all over Israel, but especially in periphery towns back then, and they have their support.
[31:01] The reason they have their support compared to, let's say, uh, Labor Zionism, uh, those who followed Ben-Gurion after him, there's a lot of reasons why they have their support, but I'll mention some of them.
[31:10] Number one, Menachem Begin and the Likud are seen as part of the founding fathers of Israel, but they were not part of the original scene, let's say, against the Mizrahim because they did not control anything about their absorption in their country.
[31:23] They are capitalist as opposed to socialist, and they wanna have ways in which Mizrahim can integrate into the economy that is much easier than if you have centralized committees that decide, you know what I mean, who gets what position in the labor market.
[31:37] Menachem Begin also has much more respect for Jewish tradition and religiosity, right? There's a reverence there for Jewish symbols. W- after he becomes prime minister, he goes to the Kotel very famously.
[31:47] It's important to establish, though, that Menachem Begin, 'cause it's confusing, I think, for people, he himself was not Mizrahi. He came from the same Ashkenazi world- Hmm...
[31:55] that was viewed as this demographic that was discriminating against Mizrahi Jews, yet he became the leader of a party and the leader of a movement that Mizrahi Jews gravitated to.
[32:06] It's confusing, but it's a really important point because eventually we're gonna talk about the Likud of today, which is led by Netanyahu, who is also an Ashkenazi Jew, but it is the base of Mizrahim.
[32:15] So that is, you're pointing out a pattern that remains. By the way, every leader of Likud has been Ashkenazi. Begin, Shamir, Sharon, Netanyahu, Omer.
[32:25] I mean, actually the movement that has been the political home for Mizrahi Jews has always been led by, I think, Ashkenazi Jews, if I have that right. That is a good observation. We should keep that open question.
[32:35] Let's make sure we come back to it. Why is it that Mizrahim still gravitate to political parties that are led by Ashkenazim? Okay.
[32:40] The reason it's important, Dan, by the way, is because it's a different form of identity politics and dynamics than what we often see in America. Let's make sure that we come back to it.
[32:49] But going back to what you were saying, yes, Begin is Ashkenazi, but Begin is part of this group of Zionists who were also marginalized by Ben-Gurion and Mapai, right? They were pushed to the side. That's interesting.
[33:02] And even before the creation of the State of Israel, if you think about the underground, right, that Begin led, which was the Etzel, the Etzel and the Lehi, right, which were the smaller, more extremist, let's say, like underground groups compared to the Haganah- The big distinction of this underground is that they had a more aggressive posture towards the British and the Arabs there than the labor Zionists did.
[33:24] Yes. They were also known to be much more welcoming to Jews from the Middle East and North Africa in their ranks. Okay.
[33:29] So already then, before the creation of the State of Israel, you have greater dignity given to Jews from the Middle East and North Africa than, let's say, the classic labor Zionist groups.
[33:40] So Begin and the Likud really represent a much more favorable alternative, a Zionist alternative than Labor Zionism.
[33:48] Now, I wanna just give you insight into one episode that happens in 1981 that to me really represents why Mizrahim supported Begin and why many of them still have a lot of loyalty towards the Likud.
[34:00] So in 1977, Begin wins. It's called the, the Meapach, the upheaval. It's like an earthquake in Israeli politics.
[34:07] But the question that remained in political analysis was, is this just a blip in the map, or is this actually going to be a revolution that's going to reshape Israeli politics?
[34:18] They have to go to early elections in 1981, and Begin is basically fighting against Shimon Peres, who's like the heir of Ben-Gurion's legacy.
[34:27] And a lot of the political discourse between these two parties really revolve around Mizrahim and Ashkenazim.
[34:34] There's a lot of naked racism between, you know, the Ashkenazim talking about the Mizrahim as a supporter of the Likud, and something happens that ends up being quite monumental.
[34:43] You have a large rally in what is today Rabin Square in 1981, a few days before the election, and this is in support of Shimon Peres's party, back then called the Alignment.
[34:52] And Begin at this point is running for re-election. Correct. He's gotten elected in 1977, and then he's running for a second term. Correct, yes. And he, by the way, has Mizrahim in his, as part of, um- His cabinet...
[35:02] of the Likud. So you have this huge rally in support of Shimon Peres and the Meapach, and you have this, uh, comedian called Dudu Topaz.
[35:08] He's in his 40s, born in Haifa, socialist, one of those like, you know, secular, Sabra, you know, native-born Israelis. Yeah.
[35:16] And he's talking to this huge, huge, huge crowd, dozens of thousands of people against Begin, and at one point he starts talking about the Kachachim. Okay?
[35:25] Kachachim is a slang word for the punks, the rabble, the riffraff. Yeah. And it has very strong ethnic connotations.
[35:31] He's talking about the Mizrahim, and he's saying this, like, "Kachachim who are in ˈMitdzad Ze'ev", which was the headquarters of the Likud, and he describes them as like the border guards, and he says, "Here, instead in this square, we have the fighters, we have the commanders."
[35:47] He's basically saying the beautiful Israel is here. The Ashkenazi secular Israel is here, and the Likud has the riffraff. That's what he's saying.
[35:55] Now, Begin somehow gets a hold of what happened here, and he has a rally himself in that same place a couple of days later, and he's this brilliant, brilliant orator. Mm-hmm.
[36:05] And Begin takes full advantage of this, and when it's time for his rally, he stands up, and you can find parts of this speech in YouTube. I recommend watching it. It's very, it's very, very powerful.
[36:13] You can see his strength. And Begin, he makes fun of Dudu Topaz, all of these things, and then he's like, "Who... I never heard of this term Kachachim."
[36:21] And he says, "Let me tell you about who are these Edot HaMizrach, these communities of the East."
[36:26] And he starts talking about the underground, the days before the state, and he brings this very emotional story in which two underground fighters from Etzel and Lehi were basically caught by the British, and they were condemned to be hanged, and they decide to go out on their own terms and to hold a grenade between them and to kind of die in that way, and one was Ashkenazi and one was Iraqi.
[36:47] And Begin doesn't have to tell the full story. The audience clearly knows it, and he says, "Are these Iraqi? Are these Ashkenazim?" And he answers rhetorically. He's like, "Yehudim, Jews. These are Jews.
[36:58] Achim, brothers, fighters, warriors."
[37:01] And you hear the crowd roaring, and Begin standing in front of them, and he's reminding them that on the other side are people who look at them as rubble, and that he is standing there and saying, "We are a family, and you are as much part of this story as any of us."
[37:18] And he's giving them a very, very strong sense of dignity that they were missing for so long, and he wins, of course. Of course, yeah. Even that little window gives you... When I watch the video, I get chills.
[37:27] Like, you get a little bit of a glimpse- Right... of why is it the Mizrachim were so loyal to Menachem Begin and the Likud.
[37:33] It reminds me of when President Trump was running against Secretary Clinton in 2016, and there was this leaked audio of her referring to the people supporting President Trump as, like, deplorables. Basket of deplorables.
[37:47] Basket of de- Yeah, yeah, basket of deplorables, and then Trump leaned into it. Yes. They owned the "We are the deplorable". That's exactly...
[37:53] You know, like, they turned it as almost like a rallying cry against the elitism of the Democrats and Clinton. It's a similar kind of thing. Yeah.
[38:01] And I'll just say here, Dan, that it's not only about, like, socioeconomic conditions and structural discrimination. It's about identity and dignity. Right. It's like, "Am I going to feel like I'm your brother?" Right.
[38:11] Right? Let me add one more thing here before we get to today. 1977 is really important because the Likud comes to power partially with Mizrachi support.
[38:19] 1984 is also really important because 1984 is when the political party Shas, which continues to play a major role in Israeli politics, is created.
[38:29] Shas is created by Haredi Sephardic Jews who feel totally marginalized from the Ashkenazi, let's say, Haredi establishment, and they are led by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, whose motto is, "To return the crown to its former glory."
[38:44] Mm. That's literally his motto. So the whole ideology of Shas is almost like turning to Mizrachi Jews and saying, "We are gonna return the reverence, the dignity of your grandparents.
[38:55] We are going to bring this traditionalism that others make fun of you for, and we're going to insist not only on a place at the table, but on its glory."
[39:03] And Shas, until today, Shas is supported not only by Haredi Sephardic Jews, and they use Sephardic more than Mizrachi.
[39:10] They're supported not only by Haredi Sephardic Jews, they're also supported by just traditional Mizrachi Jews who look at Shas and they say, "You know, we like that.
[39:18] We like the glory and the honor of our grandparents and our rabbis. That speaks to us." Okay. So I wanna now talk about today.
[39:26] So Likud has been in power for most of the past 40 years, give or take some very brief periods where they weren't, but they've largely dominated Israeli politics. Mizrachi culture is mainstream in Israel.
[39:38] For most Israelis, it really is a non-issue.
[39:41] Like, this whole big distinction, this whole big divide just, it's not visible in day-to-day Israeli life, and obviously, that's reflected in many ways, but not the least of which is in marriages. You have...
[39:51] It's just so common for families of Ashkenazi roots and Mizrachi roots to be merged and blended together and it's, like I said, it's a non-issue.
[40:00] And yet, listening to this conversation, you would think this grievance from 70-plus years ago is still alive. So how is it manifesting itself in this election season we're in right now, if it is at all? Yeah.
[40:15] And I would add, Dan, to your question, when you ask Mizrachim if they are victims, they reject that completely. They do not like to speak of themselves as oppressed or as victims in some way.
[40:24] So I'm just adding to the strength of your question of whether there is still a Mizrachi-Ashkenazi division and whether it acts in some important way in Israeli politics. Mm-hmm.
[40:33] I would say the following: I would be careful to not overstate. We shouldn't think that people are going to vote and they're like, "Oh, how should I vote as a, as a Mizrachi Jew?"
[40:41] Instead, maybe what I'll put on the table is some Mizrachi stories and narratives that are really important and that end up shaping the way that Mizrachi Jews think about the political choices in front of them. Mm-hmm.
[40:53] So one Mizrachi story, and it's not just Mizrachim, but I'm gonna take the Mizrachi angle. One Mizrachi story is the following.
[41:00] There is a sense that some Mizrachim have had for a long time, which is grievance, not necessarily about the discrimination of the '50s and '60s, but it's a grievance that says the following.
[41:12] It says, "In 1977, we won, and we won a lot partially because we are really an important demographic component of Jews in Israel. We have the numbers.
[41:23] But since 1977, even though we have the numbers, there have been this secular Ashkenazi elite that keeps trying to subvert the will of the people." So if you think, for example, Dan, about the judicial reform. Mm-hmm.
[41:37] So for some of us here in America, this Mizrachi story might not be apparent.
[41:42] But if you watch, let's say, Channel 14, which is a channel that has a strong Mizrachi base and plays an important role in Mizrachi politics- Channel 14, for our listeners, is like the Fox News of Israel. Right.
[41:53] So if you watch Channel 14, part of the reason why they care so much about the judicial reform is that there is this grievance, and for many people, it's a Mizrachi grievance, right?
[42:02] That comes and say, "We have the will of the people.
[42:06] We represent the will of the people, and there is this elite that is trying to use what they think of as non-democratic means," which means institutions that have not been democratically elected, let's say, like the judiciary, "And they're trying to basically weaponize the deep state in order to continue to keep Mizrachim outside of the picture or outside of the halls of power."
[42:27] So Dan, to be clear, I don't agree with this understanding of the deep state attempt to continue to keep Mizrachim out of the picture.
[42:36] I think that there is something unfalsifiable and even conspiratorial in some of the discourse around this, and I have been concerned, both in Israel and in America, when you have identity politics that can weaponize old grievances and that can take shame that is very honest and very real, so it can be taken to places that are not constructive because they can have a zero-sum game mentality, and they can create this, like, binary of, like, oppressor and oppressed and in a way that is unfalsifiable and not always leading to what I think is just a constructive approach to governance and to building a coalition that ends up rectifying previous wrongs and creating a better society for all.
[43:18] Now, again, I'm not saying that I'm agreeing with this set of grievances, but this is, like, an important story, and it helps explain a lot of the support that right-wing coalitions continue to have from Mizrachim, from those Mizrachim who continue to suspect, and some of it is conspiratorial, not all of it, but they continue to suspect or accuse a certain secular Ashkenazi elite of wanting to keep them out of the picture.
[43:40] So that's one important Mizrachi story that plays a role here. Let's go to a different Mizrachi story.
[43:46] A different Mizrachi story, again, not just Mizrachi, but from Mizrachim, is basically a very, very strong commitment to Israel as a Jewish state.
[43:55] So for them, when you're seeing certain parties that are talking about making the public square less Jewish, or certain parties that in their imagination are aligned with disrupting Yom Kippur services, right, in public, which is, like, very sacred, right, as a Jewish symbol.
[44:13] So for them, it's like, "Oh, this is like threatening the Jewish character of the state that we were able to go through so much because we believe in this state," right?
[44:21] How can we support or be okay with this betrayal, let's say, of Jewish values? A similar related Mizrachi story is this deep suspicion of the other.
[44:31] So it's like, "Oh, you have these coalitions that are going to now, you know, work with Arab parties or things like that."
[44:36] And if you have a much more communal morality, a much more nationalistic morality, right, that's going to be an issue as well.
[44:43] Right now, all of the stories I gave, Dan, are Mizrachi stories that help explain the persistence of the Mizrachi support for the right-wing bloc, right, the ones that I gave.
[44:54] But it is important to note, and this is I think to me like an open question and one that we need to examine quite closely, currently according to the polls, the leader of the opposition to the right is a Moroccan Jew, Gadi Eisenkot, right?
[45:06] \[laughs\] He has this Mizrachi story, was born in Tiberia, a town that was depressed socioeconomically, grew up in Elad, the first Mizrachi chief of staff at the IDF, uh, speaks with pride about his Moroccan heritage, and he's right now leading, right, the opposition to Netanyahu's bloc to the right.
[45:24] So he also represents a Mizrachi story, and that Mizrachi story is one that is not tied to this sense of grievance, that maybe wants to have, uh, how do you say Memlahtiut in English?
[45:36] It's commitment to the community, not the, not the leader of the community.
[45:40] Yeah, and, and part of the reason, by the way, and I'm nervous about trusting too much any of some of the polls that are coming out right now, so I don't wanna lean too much on the data, but at least anecdotally, some Mizrachim that I have spoken to who are considering or have decided to shift their allegiance, let's say, from voting Likud to voting for Eisenkot, for them, the most important thing has to do with the issue around army enlistment.
[46:02] Mizrachim disproportionately go to the army.
[46:04] They go to combat units, and for them to hear, let's say, the Haredi parties say, some of them, right, "We, we will die before we enlist," that is itself the kind of thing that they cannot stand.
[46:15] So I think there is a really big question about whether there will be significant Mizrachim that will leave Likud, Shas, and those parties.
[46:23] Ben-Gvir is also Mizrachi, by the way, as a politician, whether they will leave those parties and instead vote for Eisenkot.
[46:30] So some of them are going to still be motivated by a sense of the secular elites wanting to keep them out or a sense of concern for whether Jewish values can be preserved under the opposition, but some of them might decide to switch allegiances.
[46:43] So Michal, we hear the term deep state. We hear it obviously here in the United States, and we hear it in Israel as well.
[46:49] That's like the deep state being the elite, entrenched leadership or outsized influence of the Ashkenazi founding elite.
[46:56] Is the deep state language an evolution of that, or is, do you think that this election's gonna test whether or not that core Mizrachi grievance is over? Yeah, well, what I would say is like this, Dan.
[47:05] First of all, this understanding of a deep state is not only held by Mizrachim, so there is something new in this, that there's almost like a coalition- Right...
[47:12] of different parts of the Israeli political system that is concerned about this, right? They collect the national religious Ashkenazi Jews, yeah. Right, yes.
[47:21] But whether it's a transformation or something new, I think it's a little bit of both.
[47:25] But what I wanna maybe emphasize is that it's very different than the way some would assume the Mizrachim have a grievance over, like, structural inequality in the '50s and '60s. Mm-hmm.
[47:36] There's something here that it's much more about identity, about dignity, about your place in the Jewish story, in the Zionist story.
[47:43] So, you know, is it a, a recycling of the grievance of being sent to, like, the tent cities and the periphery towns to a greater degree? I'm not sure, but it is tied to it.
[47:54] It is tied to this feeling of being pushed aside, and it is tied to conflict between worldviews, between worldviews around, like, what Israel should become and what should be the most important values of the Jewish people.
[48:06] Michal, you said earlier that you made this point about the Likud always being led by Ashkenazi political figures, even though it was the political home for the Mizrachim. What is that about?
[48:16] Yeah, well, I would say that, uh, in terms of Knesset members, it's much more diverse. I'm talking specifically about the top, uh, position, the, the prime minister.
[48:23] What I would say, Dan, that from my understanding, when Mizrachim are voting, they are not necessarily looking for a Mizrachi last name at the top of the ticket.
[48:32] That is not what will compel them to vote a specific direction. They are looking for someone who they believe is representing their interests and most importantly, representing their identity.
[48:42] So for many reasons, Netanyahu has been seen as somebody who represents Mizrachi interests, who has a more collectivist bent, who respects tradition, even though he himself is not observant.
[48:54] This is often a puzzle to outside observers, but for many Mizrachim, even though he's not Mizrachim, they view him as representing their interest and protecting their identity. Great. So this was a great primer.
[49:08] Michal, thanks for doing this. Thanks for having me.
[49:10] \[upbeat music\] \[pensive music\] I'm Deborah Pardes, the host of Arc News Daily.
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