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Kahanoff wrote this essay as part of a series of reports she did on the conditions of Mizrahi immigrants in the transit camps and the cities of Israel. The essay also included some lengthy interviews. We present here the first part of the essay, without the interviews. [. . .] they need an attentive ear The most striking feature in the life of the immigrants from the Orient is their physical and cultural isolation. People mingle with each other in the streets, in clubs, kibbutzim, factories, and this daily interaction [and] this intense negotiation are decisive factors in creating the sense that all belong to one country and all share an interest in its fate and proper conduct. It is easy to overcome the divide between those of Polish and South African descent, between the New World of European origin and the Older World of this country. This is not the case with the immigrants from the countries of the Orient. When it comes to them there is hardly any interaction. Rosh Ha‘Ayin is populated almost entirely with Yemenies; Patish, Maslul, and Mivtachim1 are settlements of Persians and Kurds; one finds North Africans in Lachish and other settlements, and in the transit camp near Be’er Sheva. Interaction between these groups and the “European race” in Israel is rare, formal, limited to the teachers, social workers, agricultural experts, and the like. Moreover, the Oriental groups do not have much interaction among themselves; each group adheres to its language and customs or is isolated because of transportation difficulties. Even when people from two different ethnic groups [Ashkenazim and Mizrahim ] live near each other, and their economic level is more or less the same, there is a boundary between them. I know an Iraqi who used to be a high-ranking 31 | Bridge to the Oriental Immigrants Excerpt from Jacqueline Kahanoff, “Gesher el ‘Ole Ha-Mizrah,” Al Ha-Mishmar, May 11, 1956. 1. [These three locations were all moshavim (cooperative agricultural communities).] Bridge to the Oriental Immigrants | 207 official in the government in Baghdad. He told me that when he moved with his wife and seven children to their new home, their Polish neighbors wanted to move after hearing the news that a “tribe of Cushites”2 was about to move in next to them. When the Iraqi family arrived, the Poles were standing outside, staring cantankerously at the new residents. They did not care to exchange a word with their neighbors for two years. But one day the Polish family heard one of the Iraqis, a high-school student, uttering a Yiddish proverb. Since then the situation has changed dramatically. The Poles now call the Iraqi boy “Motel’e” and greet his parents with “Shalom.” My Iraqi acquaintance related this tale to me in order to show that two groups can merge. But his wife, after describing her Polish neighbors as “ignoramuses who have to move up,” narrated her own pedigree, so as to teach me how old and respected her heritage is. Some of the kids in this family have a “Mizrahi complex” that brings to mind the “Jewish complex.” Much of this complex is based on a sense of systematic discrimination. When one of them fails in school, he either thinks that this is because the Ashkenazi teacher does not love him, or that “they” do not want the “Sephardim” to acquire education and develop. Note with what kind of “graciousness” the “white” lady moves aside in order to make room for the Kurd coming to sit next to her; and when he gets out of the car and politely says “goodbye,” no one even nods back silently. As if the Kurd is not eligible even for this measure of equality—the exchange of greetings—and the only way to relate to him is to ignore his very presence.3 Of course, we cannot compare these instances of social discrimination with the persecutions of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe. But it is this statement that Oriental immigrants find irritating. They naively thought that “people who suffered so much from prejudice in Europe will not cultivate similar attitudes.” The tragedy of the Oriental immigrants is that when they came to Israel they expected their brethren to welcome them entirely differently. But the gap between the ideals of Zionism and Israeli reality, between what they imagined and what actually happened, caused traumatic shock. The thought that they are “second2 . [Kahanoff uses the term “Chushyyim,” which is borrowed from the biblical reference to...

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