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>> 37 2 Unbalancing and Balancing the Rights This chapter presents the dynamics of rights matching in Israel. Until the 1980s, rights were balanced: in exchange for upholding the right to protect, which was convertible to political and social rights, the secular middle class advanced the community’s right to protection. The legitimation of sacrifice, however, declined after the 1980s, following a drop in the motivation of the secular middle class to engage in such sacrifice, a drop that was exacerbated by the First Lebanon War (1982). For Israeli secular middle-class groups, the right to protect lost much of its role as a way to gain access to other rights when their gains in the military during the 1970s and 1980s—in terms of prestige, social benefits in a market society, and the perceived value of protecting a country facing a declining level of external threat—were socially devalued relative to the level of sacrifice demanded. As a dominant group that had exhausted its ability to reap additional significant benefits from military service, it was natural that this social stratum would focus on the other side of the equation— reducing the military burden. Thus, a devalued right to protect impacted the group’s readiness to promote others’ right to protection. Declining motivation 38 > 39 cities, where they lived in overcrowded conditions and in substandard housing , employed as cheap labor and receiving a second-rate package of social services. For the most part, they replaced Ashkenazi workers, who steadily improved their lot by exploiting the Mizrahim as cheap labor (Bernstein and Swirski 1982). Gradually, however, the secular Ashkenazi middle class was joined and reinforced by the mobile, mostly secular Mizrahim, who enjoyed upward mobility into the middle class, mainly as a result of the economic growth created by the Six-Day War, in 1967. This social hierarchy was mirrored within the military. Ashkenazi, secular , middle-class male Jews formed the core of the military, as the group that founded the army, staffed its upper echelons and the prestigious combat units, and was identified with its achievements. Given its form as a modern Western army, the IDF valued the education, values, and skills that Ashkenazim brought with them, attributes that were less associated with the background of Mizrahi recruits. Unlike their Ashkenazi peers, Mizrahim were relegated to the margins of the army, holding the less prestigious combatant and blue-collar positions (Smooha 1984). Most important was the role that the IDF played in legitimizing social inequalities. Because of the republican ethos that defined Israeli society’s devotion to the military effort as a supreme social value under the guise of the statist ideology—mamlachtiyut (statism)—military service became a decisive standard by which rights were awarded to individuals and groups that were portrayed as acting in the service of the state (Shafir and Peled 2002). Accordingly, male Ashkenazi warriors, identified with the glorification of the military and associated with the symbol of the Israeli warrior that arose during Israel’s first years, succeeded in translating their dominance in the military into what was regarded as legitimate social dominance. They were thus granted preferential social status vis-à-vis the groups relegated to peripheral status in the military, primarily the Mizrahim (Levy 2003, 33–81). As part of this, warrior-based symbols wrapped in the republican ethos of mamlachtiyut and the military’s egalitarian ethos imbued the Mizrahim with the idea that their social position depended solely on their contribution to the state. Accordingly, they were expected to enter society through “contributory” social activity. However, until Mizrahim could affirm their contribution, they had to accept their inferiority vis-à-vis the Ashkenazim, whose contribution (certainly in historical terms) was portrayed as greater than that of Mizrahim. Thus, in general, the more a group is portrayed as shouldering the glamorous burden of national salvation, the less other groups are able to accuse it of having achieved social dominance, especially when the former group’s achievements become the criterion for determining 40 > 41 from the primary labor market in the state’s first years entrenched the group’s low social status in Israeli society. Exclusion from military service reinforced the marginalization of Israeli Palestinians because individuals classified as ex-soldiers were offered preferential access to various civilian jobs and state allowances. In sum, the rights were balanced. The right to protection was advanced because of the secular middle class’s ability to convert its right to protect, fulfilled through the ultimate sacrifice as warriors, into valuable rewards...

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