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Either Amir Peretz or Avi Gabbay will lead the ‘white tribe’ of Israel’s Labor Party.
Regardless of who will be elected to be the new head of Israel’s Labor Party in the second round – Amir Peretz or Avi Gabbay – one fact is already known: the person to replace Isaac Herzog is of Moroccan origin. “So what?” is the wrong reaction to this statement.
What should really be very irrelevant in Israel 2017– is actually very relevant. To begin with, in the 70 years of the State of Israel there has never been a Sephardi [descended from the Jews of the Iberian peninsula] prime minister, Moroccan or otherwise.
Now two contestants from Moroccan families and the social and geographical peripheries are competing for the leadership of the political party still strongly identified with the “white tribe,” an unsavory term gaining momentum as society matures. In fact, Labor has actually already had two Sephardi chairs: Benjamin Ben-Eliezer of Iraqi descent and Amir Peretz himself over ten years ago.
Nevertheless, the party is still perceived as the Bastille of the white Ashkenazi [Jews of Eastern European descent] hegemony, resented and rejected by masses of Sephardi voters.The roots of this phenomenon are deeply embedded into the history of Israel. They are the crime and the punishment for wrongdoings perpetrated by the then-ruling old Labor in the process of absorption of Jewish immigration from North Africa. Humiliation is the key word.
The wound refuses to heal despite the belated public “forgive us” act by Ehud Barak as a Labor prime minister in 1999; The gaps opened over decades between Ashkenazi and Sephardi have not closed despite the attempt to verbally bury what is called in Hebrew “the ethnic devil.”
This time, it feels different. The two – Peretz and Gabbay, of humble background, defeated two who best represent the old elite of Labor Party. One is the acting chair, Isaac Herzog, son of the late Gen. Haim Herzog, Labor politician and sixth president of Israel; the other is Omer Bar-Lev, son of the late Lt-Gen. Haim Bar Lev, one of the stars of the old Labor and a cabinet minister on multiple occasions. A world-renowned Israeli writer of Iraqi origin, Eli Amir, defined the victory of the two runner-uppers over the crown princes as the emergence of a “new aristocracy.”
He strongly believes that the outcome of this election marks a conceptual change.He might be right, although not necessarily. The recognition that no party in Israel can win the elections without Sephardi voters and the assumption that a Sephardi leader may attract those votes, might provide an alternative explanation.
It might be both. In any case, both candidates hate the reference to their ethnic background. They hardly mention it, if ever. They let others do for them what is still considered to be an unpleasant job in Israeli society.
Gabbay, by now a millionaire with an impressive record in the sphere of business and management, hardly mentions his roots, though he makes wise use of the hardships of his youth, growing up in a tiny house with eight siblings. Peretz’s biography is well known to Israelis, and so is his statement of wishful thinking ten years ago that the ethnic problem is non-existent.
Little did he know.Whatever the future holds, the two victories over the old elites are an event of historic importance. Unlike the two former short-lived episodes of Sephardi leadership of Labor party, this one grows of from fertile ground in a more comfortable climate.
Not yet golden, but changing
About two years ago, a new social movement emerged on the Israeli scene. Young intellectuals of Sephardi origin formed an organization under the name “Golden age – it is our turn now.” The name “Golden Age” refers to those days of Jewish cultural prosperity in Spain in the Middle Ages; “now is our turn” was their way of saying that the days of the exclusive Ashkenazi hegemony in Israel are over – now is the turn of Mizrachi Israel, to get control of all the strongholds in society that really matter.So far, the new movement has had limited success.
Nevertheless, the double victory of the two contestants in the Labor Party certainly has a lot to do with the changing social climate and audacious, unapologetic Sephardi discourse relentlessly spread by public opinion leaders and intellectuals of Sephardi origin.
It certainly was not like that just 11 years ago when Peretz was first elected to lead the party, many veteran Ashkenazi members left in angry protest. He just did not fit in. The most radical reaction was that of the then-new Russian speaking community in Israel. One of the major local newspapers in Russian called Peretz a “garbage alley-cat from Sderot,” in reference to the small town in the southern periphery where he chose to live. They hated his roots, his looks, and his accent.
Everything. Peretz himself admitted then that he expected some dissatisfaction, but this level of racism surprised him.Twelve years later, the same party has chosen not only him, but also another candidate of Moroccan origin to possibly lead the party. Ethnicity makes Israeli politics go round. The official reaction is that there is good reason to celebrate the success of two Moroccans, but that the revolution is far from over.”
In July 2017, the two emerge on apolitical scene in days of a vocal, self-assured Sephardi discourse. The one elected will be on a double-pronged mission: to rephrase the left and right discourse and fine-tuning adjustments based on both security and identity. The rest just might become history.
Lily Galili is a feature writer, analyst of Israeli society and expert on immigration from the former Soviet Union. She is the co-author of “The Million that Changed the Middle East.”
