This week's primary elections for head of Israel's opposition Labor
party, which will almost certainly be won by former army chief of staff
and former Foreign Minister Ehud Barak, mark the first time asephardi Jew
(meaning of Middle Eastern or North African ancestry as opposed to ashkanazi, meaning of European ancestry)
is being taken seriously as a
candidate for the party's leadership. Expected to finish third, behind
General Barak and Oslo peace agreement architect Yosi Beilin, is Tangier-born Professor and Knesset member Shlomo Ben Ami, whose electoral
platform emphasizes greater Labor party sensitivity to the religious
traditions and economic needs of Israel's sephardi population, which now
constitutes approximately 50% of the Jewish total. Ben Ami
contends that only by jettisoning its traditional elite oriented
economic and social message can Labor eventually win back power from the
rival Likud.
Other Fronts
Professor Ben Ami's run for the Labor party leadership is not the
only front on which Israel's sephardi political profile is becoming
considerably more conspicuous. Following Attorney General Elyakim
Rubenstein's mid-April decision to issue an indictment against Shas
party leader Arieh De'eri in connection with the long running Bar-On political corruption scandal, sephardi anger erupted openly, with
many sephardi leaders accusing the ashkanazi-dominated
Israeli judiciary of having acted unfairly in choosing to indict the
only full blooded sephardi among the four senior Israeli politicians
alleged by police to have been involved in the affair. According to
De'eri, the attorney general's decision was a clear-cut signal to Israeli
sephardis of all social backgrounds and classes that Zionism was
no longer appropriate to their political needs, and that they would now
be much better served by thinking in terms of a distinctly sephardi
agenda.
The newly formed and still extra-parliamentary Sephardi Democratic
Forum (SDF) is another example of sephardi political awakening, though
in direct contrast to the Shas position, it emphasizes continuing fealty
to traditional Zionist values. Recently unveiling its platform, it
called on the Israeli Knesset to emulate concessionary legislation which
turns over ownership of state lands to ashknazi-dominated kibbutzim,
by permitting the sale of state-owned apartments to their
long-standing sephardi occupants at bargain-basement prices. Initial
Knesset reaction to the proposal has been favorable, though given its
budget busting implications, the government will probably oppose it.
Part of a Pattern
The recent growth in sephardi political consciousness is part and
parcel of an overall pattern in which Israeli society is becoming more
and more fractious. Once split largely along traditional ideological lines, mostly between pro peace process doves and anti-Arab hawks, other
issues have now come to dominate the Israeli political process. In
addition to the sephardi-generated ethnic political question, a renewed
debate over the role of religion in Israeli life has also surfaced, with
secular Jews becoming more and more concerned over what they regard as
widespread religious success in institutionalizing ultra-orthodox Jewish
values and practices.
Significantly, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
seems more than happy to let the fractiousness develop.
Anti-establishment to the core, both Netanyahu and his closest
advisors know the maintenance of a hawkish/sephardi /religious coalition
is necessary for the government's survival, and therefore provide it
with succor.
Risk Report Quarterly.