Sascha Crasnow: Despite the fact that Mizrahi Jews make up half of the population in Israel, Ashkenazi identity, history, and claims to culture continue to dominate. From the start, the Zionist project was an Ashkenazi one, only utilizing Mizrahi labor and culture as best served it. As Middle Eastern studies scholar Joseph Massad has noted, “The Zionist movement’s European identity was asserted from the outset in its classic texts. Theodor Herzl declared that the Jewish state would serve as ‘the portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.’ When discussing Jewish immigration, he spoke only of European Jews.” Discrimination against Mizrahi Jews was also clear from the early stages of immigration to Mandate Palestine and later Israel. In addition to being relocated like the Kinneret Yemeni settlers, Mizrahi arrivals to Israel were placed in poor conditions upon arrival, many of them being directed to transit camps, a liminal site that often became a multi-year residence. At the same time, Ashkenazi immigrants were given former Palestinian homes. Meanwhile, Mizrahi immigrants were also subjected to humiliating and dangerous “cleansing” procedures—such as the use of DDT to “disinfect” immigrants, and the practice of “kidnapping . . . hundreds of Yemeni children from transit camps in Israel and giving them to childless Ashkenazi couples for adoption.” Mizrahi immigrants were given poorer land, fewer social services, and lower wages; gaps in salary, employment, and education between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Israelis persist to this day.
…It must also be noted that the racist discrimination against Palestinians in Israel is not limited to the Ashkenazi Jewish population. In fact, as anthropologist Smadar Lavie has shown, while the Ashkenazi population tends to vote for the “Left” in Israel, the Mizrahi majority population overwhelmingly votes for right-wing politicians. This tendency appears to be rooted in a desire to gain greater power within the Israeli context through affirming Jewish religious affiliations over racial Arab ones, something into which the right-wing parties feed. Right-wing government investment in the lower-class communities of the Mizrahi population, as well as support of its culture “as long as it [Mizrahi culture] avoided connecting its own Arabness with that of the Palestinians” has contributed to this support. Anecdotally, Mizrahi Israelis have noted that those who have been able to integrate themselves into Ashkenazi culture, in sacrifice of any Arab identification, have most been able to benefit from improved status within Israel. More here.