The ethnic demon seems to have revived in recent months. It appears on bank notes, on television, in political reports, and in interminable media discussions. Judging by all this discourse, Israel's important problem is the "hegemony of the white man" and the weakness of the "Sephardic tribe". But the problem with all this debate, and of those participating in it, is that the famous demon, who summoned the debate, suffers from a terminal illness and is dying, albeit slowly, but the end is coming.
Here is a characteristic recent example. A financial newspaper published stunning data about the distribution of votes across various demographic and social segments, and it is possible to provide a glance at Israel's social-political structure. The data allegedly shows that there is a tribal vote. It is a fact that in the "Sephardic periphery", right-wing parties dominate, whereas on the "White tribe's streets" most votes went to Yesh Atid, the Labor Party, and Meretz.
But the study failed to ask, for example, what were the voting rates at different voting stations, and it made no comparison with previous elections. Had this question been asked, the answer would actually have been that in safe right-wing districts, there has been steady and sharp slide in voting rates. The correlation of "discriminated Sephardim" and right-wing voting has been weakening over time.
The second question that was not asked was exactly what determines voting rates in swing districts - the mixed urban areas of salary-earners with two children, a large overdraft, mortgage, an eight-year car parked outside a 20-unit apartment building. These are Israel's fastest growing physical, economic, and social spaces, and in these places there is no way of correlating political behavior with tribalism.
These are Israel's hybrid spaces of mixed ethnicity, of "half Polish, quarter Bulgarian, and quarter Yemenite". In these places live the victims of privatization: contract workers in education and healthcare; salaried employees with no job security; people whose parents came from Dimona in the Negev or Shlomi in the Galilee to metropolitan Tel Aviv or Haifa. For this group, the main significance of a social or economic struggle does not run through tribalism, which is irrelevant to their condition. Far more important are questions about workers' rights, job security, pensions, and salaries.
It is no wonder, therefore that the "tribal" debate does not mention the most important social phenomenon since the outbreak of the social protest: the surge in struggles to unionize. It is no wonder that every workers committee, every struggle against contract labor, every demand for better working conditions, indicates the death of the ethnic demon.
From this perspective, it may be no coincidence that the debate over the ethnic demon has found a warm home at Hebrew daily "Haaretz", which still debates and deliberates whether unions are desirable. When the debate is diverted to "tribalism", it saves the need to deal with questions about workers' rights. But in this case, too, much more principled questions repeatedly crops up, such as the right of workers to strike, job security, and the importance of equality and solidarity in Israeli society.
The victims of privatization and harmful jobs exists in all ethnic groups, regardless of where their grandparents lived. In the workers contemporary reality, the issue of tribe is meaningless, but their chances in the labor market, for better services, the distribution of income in society between capital and labor, are important. Already during the social protest in the summer of 2011, the question was raised about the problems feeding the Israeli workers' nightmares, which posed a difficult dilemma for supporters of the concept of tribal hegemony.
Nothing has changed since then. That is why the ethnic demon should be allowed to die quietly. It loyally served generations of columnists, filmmakers, politicians, religious figures, poets, and sociologists. It deserves a moment of silence, a wreath, and the right to rest in peace.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 7, 2013
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