On Blindness:

The Ashkenazi Left’s disintegration over nostalgia for a time that never was
Tom Mehager, August 1st 2017

In Tom Mehager’s view, the Israeli Left, which primarily consists of ​Ashkenazim
descended from the elites of 1948 society​​, emphasizes 1967 in order to avoid talking about
the Left’s earlier participation in (and profit from) the conflict. Tom claims that the
separation of ‘48 from ‘67 is artificial, arbitrary, and responsible for the Left’s failure to
expand its ranks ​vis-à-vis​​ the conflict.

I grew up in the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem, an area known as an “economic settlement.”

The neighborhood lies just a few hundred meters beyond the Green Line on a hill between Beit
Safafa and nearby Beit Jala and Bethlehem. Similar to Pisgat Zeev, Ma’aleh Adumim, Givat
Ze’ev, and other settlements around Jerusalem that “strengthened the city” (read: Judaize), Gilo
was intended to respond to the social issues raised by the Black Panthers movement in
Jerusalem a few years earlier. The Jerusalem settlements, which provided affordable housing and
adequate education, employment and public transportation services, generated the Mizrahi
middle class

They never told us about the reality of military rule over neighboring Bethlehem, just a few
hundred meters from my house. At school we learned civics, but they never told us about those
deprived of citizenship, living almost close enough to touch. We saw Palestinian teens, our age,
working in the neighborhood: at the same time that I was finishing high school with high grades,
good enough to grant me entrance to university, there was a Palestinian teenager working in my
house. Apartheid? I think so. In every respect, we were granted rights that our Palestinian
neighbors were denied, all on the basis of national identity.

As noted above, the situation of Mizrahi Jews living in the occupied territories also has a
backstory, and one cannot talk about Israel’s Mizrahi public without talking about the Ashkenazi
one. Gilo did not come from thin air, and just as we need to speak about Gilo in relationship to
Bethlehem, we need to speak about Gilo in relationship to the “classic” Jerusalem
neighborhoods, the ones where Ashkenazim lived: Talbiyah, Abu Tor, Old Katamon and Ein
Kerem. And if we are discussing the level of education that I received, then we must discuss the
fact that in the school from which I graduated, Gilo’s public high school, most of my friends and
classmates did not matriculate with full marks. Instead, they were sent to “professional training.”

But, if you ask the Israeli Left, ​we ​are the only ones who need to be discussed. Only the
settlements, the Beitar fans, Miri Regev - that’s what bears discussion. There is no Ashkenazi
group whatsoever that has any role in the story, and, if there is, then that role is positive. Below
are some examples from notable public figures that come to mind. Recently, during a left-wing
demonstration, Talia Sasson, the CEO of the New Israel Fund, identified herself as part of the
founding generation of the country. An interview with her, on “The Hottest Place in Hell”, states
that:

Sasson was born on Kibbutz Kiryat Anavim. Her grandfather and grandmother, who are
buried today in the kibbutz cemetery, emigrated from Russia as pioneers during the Third
Aliyah, in 1920. They were idealistic and educated 22 year olds who dreamed of
establishing a kibbutz in the land of Israel and of building a democratic home for the
Jewish people. By their own hands, they built the first houses of Kibbutz Kiryat Anavim.

Michael Sfard, ​attorney for the NGOs Peace Now and Yesh Din​, wrote in Haaretz about Israel’s
liberal character at the time of its inception:

Despite claims of certain radical groups, Israeli society and the Israeli state have deep and
authentic liberal foundations [...] Alongside legislation that articulates a respect for basic
rights and the primacy of the principle of human dignity and alongside political, artistic
and academic pluralism, we have created a bureaucracy and public policy that protect
hegemony and entrench dispossession and discrimination, and mainly, we have created
the monster that is the decades-long occupation [that is, the occupation of 1967].

Tomer Persico also whines in Haaretz about the democracy that was and is no longer:

The people are revolting against the State. The tremendous achievements of the Zionist
movement, that unified dispersed and diverse groups into one political body, that built a
democratic state of law with a vibrant civil society, are rejected for ethnic tribalism.

I find it hard to believe that Talia Sasson is unfamiliar with the world of concepts that the kibbutz
movement created: “the conquest of the land,” “making the desert bloom,” and “a land without a
people for a people without a land.” I find it hard to believe that she has not read the “Ka’adan”
case, in which it is explicitly written that kibbutzim were created for the settlement exclusively
of Jews. And I find it hard to believe that Attorney Michael Sfard does not know that “the first
Israel” is responsible for the Palestinian refugees, that Israel razed hundreds of Palestinian
villages to the ground and ruled over the remaining Palestinians in the State using military law, a
situation that is antithetical to basic liberal principles. I find it hard to believe, lastly, that Tomer
Persico is unaware of a speech given by Mordechai Gur (fmr. Labor politician and Chief of
Staff) in Beit Shemesh, during which he threatened Mizrahi protestors that “the Ma’arach
(political party) will screw you” - his words - just as it screwed the Arabs. So who invented this
ethnic tribalism? And was it really a democratic state of law that was founded here?

Sasson’s, Sfard’s and Persico’s words are not coincidental. The Israeli Left, which consists
primarily of descendants of the Ashkenazi elite, aspires to reach an agreement that will
eventually re-establish the special privileges of Ashkenazim within the 1948 borders. Except for
a small, and relatively new, number of voices, the 1967 occupation has become the sole point of
activity of the Israeli Left. The 1948 Palestinian Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) and critical
events that define the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi relationship -- child abductions; educational tracking1;
corrupt distribution of resources to regional councils versus development towns -- they all vanish
at once. Israeli history receives a nostalgic aura of “liberal democracy,” just as Sfard summons in
his article, or of “vibrant civil society,” as expressed by Persico. All of Israel’s goodness, gone,
because of “the occupation.” There is nothing beyond it.

The political effect of such behavior is extremely dire. While we have a moral obligation to
tirelessly resist the continuation of military rule in the occupied territories, we cannot ignore the
ethno-nationally segregated food chain that has existed since, and even prior to, the
establishment of the State. But the Left continues to ignore the latter, as though it had no hand in
the matter. And if they continue to bury their heads in the sand regarding their own experiences,
what is stopping anyone else from doing the same? If Talia Sasson was allowed to live behind
the walls established by Kibbutz Kiryat Anavim’s admissions committee, why should residents
of Afula be forbidden from demanding only Jewish neighbors? If the Ashkenazi elite ignores its
history of Judaizing the Galilee and expropriating land within 1948 borders, then why should
policies of Judaization and land expropriation in the West Bank be stopped? And if the Israeli
Left will not say a word about the fact that Ashkenazi Jews are living in the central Jerusalem
homes of Palestinian refugees from 1948, then why do I need to talk about the Jerusalem
settlement in which I grew up?

1
Translator’s note: Educational tracking refers to the practice of the Israeli education system wherein
schools that primarily serve Mizrahi populations track their students towards professional training and
vocational schools instead of universities. Such tracking entrenches and upholds socio-economic gaps
between communities in the periphery and in the center of Israel and between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi
Israelis.