Newsletter Special: The Biton Committee
David Shasha
Friends,
In September 2015 I first became aware of an ongoing movement to bring Arab Jewish culture to official Israel, but in a very troubling way that spoke to an intimate connection between the new activists and the Right Wing political establishment.
I wrote an article on Roy Hasan who is a member of the Ars Poetica group. His famous Hebrew poem “If There’ll Be Peace, all the ‘Arsim’ will Come” presents us with a very important entry into this new activist culture among Mizrahi Jews which is resolutely connected to the Israeli political Right.
Then there was an article in Haaretz by Shay Hazkani on Mizrahim and the IDF which provided even further confirmation of the receptivity of official Israel to dealing with the Mizrahi Question in a way that sought to condemn the Labor Party and its Left Wing hegemony over many decades of Israeli life.
Hasan and Hazkani presented the first subtle – and perhaps not-so-subtle – hints that things were changing in Israel.
These hints were confirmed when we learned about a new committee named for the poet Erez Biton which was formed under the political wing of PM Netanyahu and led by the extremist Naftali Bennett. In my article on this new Mizrahi “Revolution” I expose the many internal connections between the players in this process.
And then finally we received word that the Biton Committee had finished its work and produced a very lengthy report with specific recommendations.
In my article “Jewish Fascist Naftali Bennett: The Mizrahi Savior!” I look more closely at this new union and its deleterious implications for classical Sephardic culture and the way it has impacted Israeli politics.
In a follow-up article I look at how the Left Wing Israeli establishment condemned the report and has continued to make a big stink over the situation.
Important examples of this process are prominent articles in Haaretz by Gabriel Moked and Oded Lifshitz, one arguing that we are not European, the other arguing that we are too European!
The Moked rant was only published in the Hebrew edition of the paper, but represents one of the most vicious assaults of Sephardic culture in recent memory. Moked espouses a crass Eurocentrism and reminds us just how disconnected Zionism has been from both the Jewish tradition as well as the classical Sephardic heritage.
Lifshitz takes a somewhat different tack, asserting that Arab Jews were not really Arab, but French! His article completely distorts Modern Arab Jewish culture and attempts to negate the study of our history because we are not really what we claim to be.
The whole process has led to continued political friction in Israel, but more importantly it shows us clearly how the Sephardic heritage has been suppressed by the Ashkenazim.
Now that the issue has been returned to the center of Israeli discourse we see that the authentic ethos of Sephardic Jewish Humanism has been undermined, as the current views of Mizrahi Israelis and their neo-Fascist tendencies have come to the fore.
One thing that we should always remember when looking at what is happening today is the fact that PM Netanyahu’s father was a scholar of Sephardic Jewish history, and one of its most vehement antagonists.
Ben-Zion Netanyahu was of the opinion that Sephardic Jews, led by Maimonides, were not “authentic” in the sense that they adopted the values of Religious Humanism and did not remain “true” to parochial Jewish values as represented by the “authentic” Ashkenazi Jews.
In the end, it is highly unlikely that the results of the Biton Committee will do anything to prevent this toxic view of the Sephardim, or to stem the tide of Ashkenazifiaction and self-hatred among Sephardim in Israel and the Diaspora. It is a sad fact that we are currently witnessing the compete disintegration of our heritage at the hands of Ashkenazi racists.
David Shasha
Roy Hasan: Right Wing Mizrahi “Radical” Crusader in The Forward’s “Year of the Arab Jew”
By: David Shasha
The Success of the Mizrahi Radical Critique Has Now Become its Undoing
By: David Shasha
The Silenced History of the IDF’s ‘Mizrahi Problem’
By: Shay Hazkani
A New Mizrahi “Revolution” in Israel? Sigal Samuel, Ayelet Tsabari, Ars Poetica, Naftali Bennett, and the Self-Hating Sephardim Wreak Havoc on Israeli Culture
By: David Shasha
Jewish Fascist Naftali Bennett: The Mizrahi Savior!
By: David Shasha
Right Wing Zionist Consensus on Mizrahi Jews: The Aftermath of the Biton Report
By: David Shasha
The Brutal Anatomy of Anti-Sephardi Racism: Gabriel Moked and Seymour Epstein Teach Us How Ashkenazim Really Feel About Us
By: David Shasha
Oded Lifshitz and the Tyranny of the Ashkenazi Majority
By: David Shasha
The Flawed Narrative of Mizrahi Deprivation Activists
By: Oded Lifshitz