Israel Studies Review

In the 1950s, hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Muslim countries arrived in Israel. These Mizrahi immigrants were resented by the Ashkenazi ‘veteran public’, whose desire for normalcy outweighed the state’s call for sacrifice. A geographical separation between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim was created, and more recent processes of integration between the two have only partially succeeded, as is attested by much socio-economic data. The failure to integrate the Mizrahim has had an effect on the basis of support for liberalism in Israel. Israeli liberalism is backed mainly by the veteran public, while lower-class Mizrahim appear to offer little support for it.

This article poses a simple question: why do marginalized Mizrahim, a group most likely to benefit from liberal justice and human rights, so vehemently and repeatedly reject the liberal message? To address this question, we shift the direction of inquiry from problems in the message’s transmission or reception to the message itself. By doing so, we seek to go beyond the ‘liberal grammar’ shared by most social activists and critical sociologists. The insight emerging from this theoretical turn is that the politics of universalism, rooted in the liberal grammar of human rights and viewed from the liberal standpoint as a key to social emancipation, is experienced by the target population as a heartless betrayal and a grave identity threat. This article offers the initial outline for a new interpretive space and seeks to surpass both the limits of the Israeli case and those of the liberal grammar of contemporary critical sociology.

While acknowledging the decisive contribution of conflict sociology to our understanding of the (Jewish) ethnic issue in Israel, this article focuses on the actual political behavior of the Mizrahi population. Instead of developing radical social protest movements as might be expected, the Mizrahim have largely supported right-wing parties and policies. The article argues that in response to their exclusion from full membership in the Jewish-Israeli collective that the veteran Ashkenazim constructed, and from the material and symbolic goods that such membership entails, the Mizrahim have built a counter-collectivity. Using the cultural tool kit that they acquired in their experience of modernization in North Africa and the Middle East, the Mizrahim have created a (semi-)traditional ethno-religious Jewish collectivity from which they have excluded veteran left-wing Ashkenazim, accusing them of disloyalty and delegitimizing their Jewish identity.

Focusing on the 2012 Israeli film Ha-Mashgihim (God’s Neighbors), this article explores the construction of a Jewish and religious Mizrahi identity and analyzes the various ways in which the film presents a world of meaning that contests the secular liberal grammar. The analysis sheds light on the cultural motivation for introducing Judaism and Judaic identity into the cinematic narrative and demonstrates it through two themes: the formation of a peripheral religious Mizrahi territory and the journey toward redemption and meaning.

Can liberal legal tools appeal to non-liberal communities in settling their internal disputes? Are different legal routes for pursuing human rights instrumental in facilitating such usage? This article seeks to answer these questions by using the Israeli test case of the ‘Immanuel affair’. In this case, a segment of the ultra-Orthodox populace resorted to the secular legal system, seeking relief for the discrimination in education it had suffered at the hands of its own community members. As part of a non-liberal community, the plaintiffs were destined to face the classic ideological clash ignited by imposing liberal values on a non-liberal group, even when serving the group’s best interests. This article analyzes the plaintiffs’ choice to bring their grievances to court through the civil justice system. It concludes that the ethical ‘cosmology’ of non-liberal groups is perceived as less abridged when a case is adjudged as a civil tort claim, as opposed to being adjudged within the context of constitutional law.