United Church of Canada in bed with the CJC

Lapsed membership al?

Not many racist states I know of that would have rescued and taken in over 100,000 Ethiopian Jews

Gus Williams wrote:

Not many racist states I know of that would have rescued and taken in over 100,000 Ethiopian Jews

Good point.

Quote:

But Israel is far from being the land of milk and honey the Falashas had dreamed of. They discover that in Israel, not all Jews are equal. The Falashas, along with other Mizrahim (North African/Arabic Jews) and Sephardim ("Spanish" Jews culturally influenced by Islam) are forced by the politically, socially and economically dominant Ashkenazi (white European Jews) to shed their "Arabness" in order to be accepted as "real" Jews.

A major difference, however, is that Askenazim and Misrahim had had very little contact before 1948. 

And Ben-Gurion was on record making amazingly insulting comments about not wanting "the culture of Morocco" in Israel, as if the objective was to create an Ashkenazi state, rather than a Jewish state.

This is partly a reflection of the fact that Zionism was pretty much, as far as I've been able to determine, an "Ashkenazi-only" movement prior to 1948.

To the best of my knowledge, there were few if any Mizrahi Zionists prior to their expulsion from the Arab and Islamic countries. If these expulsions were deliberately incited by the leaders of those countries, doing so was the biggest bonehead move they could possibly have made.  The expulsions turned a huge and largely non-Zionist Jewish community into committed Zionists(due to the fact that they had nowhere else to go, and due to the fact that, unlike the Ashkenazim, they actually HAD legitimate grievances against the Arab and Muslim world)and gifted the State of Israel with a large population that, unlike the recent Ashkenazi arrivals, was used to living in the climate and conditions of the region.

One of the best things those countries could do to help the Palestinian cause would be to apologize for the expulsions, admit they were unjustified and offer the Mizrahi compensation and a right-of-return.  Fair's fair on that, especially since the Mizrahi bore no responsibility for the Nakba.