See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/271769630

Rethinking Mizrahim: Examining Neo-Zionism and Mizrahi Studies

Article · April 2014

CITATIONS READS
0 96

1 author:

Zachary Smith
SOAS, University of London
7 PUBLICATIONS   0 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Zachary Smith on 03 February 2015.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Rethinking Mizraḥim: Examining Neo-Zionism and Mizraḥi Studies

Zachary Smith

22 April 2014
 Smith 2

Introduction

This paper seeks to examine and deconstruct two groups and the relationships between

them: the Israeli national-religious settler movement and the Israeli Jews of Middle Eastern and

North African descent, or mizraḥim. In academic, journalistic and popular literature, these groups

are rarely placed in the same discursive space. Rather, they frequently find themselves

implicated at divergent ends of the relationships of power that define the Israeli Jewish polity

and socioeconomic structures. How has the image of the settler as white, ashkenazi, middle-

class, religiously and ideologically driven been produced? Conversely, how has the critical

scholarship on mizraḥim in Israel, which locates mizraḥim both spatially and economically at the

periphery of Israeli Jewish society, constructed an imagined mizraḥi subject with no relationship

to the image of the settler above? This essay will seek to understand the real overlap between

these two contrasting pictures and discuss the participation of mizraḥim in the neo-Zionist

project. While these questions demand a much fuller theoretical discussion than this short piece

will be able to detail, I seek to propose in this paper a new way of ‘thinking’ mizraḥim and neo-

Zionists, and, by extension, mizraḥi participation in and reproduction of ashkenazi hegemony.

In exploring these topics, this essay will begin by briefly outlining two fields of inquiry.

The first is critical scholarship on mizraḥim and the socio-spatial periphery of Israel, especially

highlighting areas in which theoretical and practical gaps exist that contribute to the production

of the mizraḥi individual as disconnected from the settlement enterprise. The second is a

discussion of neo-Zionism, bringing to the fore the image of the ideologically motivated settler

as ashkenazi and middle-class, from the geographic and economic ‘core’ of Israel. In doing so, it

will consider the national-religious group Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) and its successors

juxtaposed with the practical reasons behind settlers’ presence in the occupied territories. Finally,
 Smith 3

this paper will conclude with a larger attempt at outlining the potential participation of mizraḥim

in the neo-Zionist movement and as a part of neo-Zionist ideological frameworks.

Mizrahim and Critical Mizrahi Studies

Critical studies of mizraḥim have centred on the lasting effects of the absorption-

modernisation policy on the new immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Scholars have documented these groups as the ‘Jewish victims’ of Zionism,1 deconstructed the

societal dichotomy of Arab and Jew through the figure of the mizraḥi,2 critiqued the stereotype

of mizraḥim as traditional,3 and situated them on the socio-spatial periphery of the Jewish state.4

Academics have struggled to define this group, situated in the ‘third space’ between the affluent

Ashkenazi elite and the dispossessed indigenous Palestinians,5 as they are alternately referred to

as Sephardim, Arab-Jews, mizraḥim and Jews of MENA descent. This paper will settle on the

term mizraḥim, which resists opposing tendencies to divide this group and links to their struggle

against marginalisation and discrimination.6 The mizraḥi struggle against forced settlement in

development towns and assimilation into a quasi-European ‘Hebrew culture’ while demanding

equality with ashkenazi elites is real, from the 1959 Wadi Salib riots, to the 1970s Black Panther

movement, to current efforts for integrated schooling and political rights led by the Mizrahi

Democratic Rainbow.7 What is missing from this narrative is any sense of mizraḥi agency

outside of the struggle against ashkenazi oppression, any understanding of active mizraḥi

participation in the Zionist project. While this paper will not engage with the history of

1
Shohat (1988).
2
Shenhav (2006).
3
Shafir and Peled (2002).
4
Yiftachel (2000); Shohat (1999).
5
Bhabha (1994).
6
Chetrit (2009); Goldberg and Bram (2007).
7
Chetrit (2009).
 Smith 4

discrimination against mizraḥim, this section will explore how this history has constructed an

image of the mizraḥi with no relation to the Zionist settlement project.

The location and history of mizraḥi communities has considerable implications for

consideration of Israel as a democracy, liberal or otherwise. Sociologist Sammy Smooha has

argued that Israel fits the ‘ethnic democracy’ model, in particular emphasising the state

preference for the Jewish ethnie and lack of full rights for the Arab minority.8 Smooha’s model,

however, generally ignores the systemic stratification between ashkenazi and mizraḥi

communities, to say nothing of former Soviet Union and Ethiopian immigrants. ‘Differentiations

within Jewish society between various ethnic groups…have a great impact on the character of

Israeli regime and especially on democracy’.9 In contrast, Oren Yiftachel’s ‘ethnocracy’ model

draws on a broader range of case studies in developing ethnocratic theory and applying it to the

Israeli case. Ethnocracies are regimes ‘premised on a main project of ethnonational expansion

and control and on a parallel self-representation of the system as democratic’ and are stratified

not only by ethnonational group (Jewish-Arab) but by ethnoclasses (ashkenazi-mizrahi).10

Ethnocracies are both non-authoritarian because of the granting of significant civil-political

rights to ethnonational minorities and non-democratic because of the ‘rupturing of the demos’—

the ‘seizure of the state by one ethnonational group’.11 I do not take issue with Yiftachel’s

characterisation of the Israeli polity and state; indeed, I very much agree with his critique of

Smooha.12 Rather, I am struck by his lack of engagement with the other half of the data he

presents on mizraḥim.

8
Smooha (2002).
9
Jamal (2002), 414.
10
Yiftachel (2006), 5.
11
ibid., 32.
12
Ganim, Rouhana and Yiftachel (1998).
 Smith 5

Yiftachel situates mizraḥim, both in Ethnocracy and in scholarly articles, both on the

spatial and political periphery of the Israeli state and as a ‘trapped’ ethnoclass between ashkenazi

elites and the Palestinian ethnonational minority. This builds on Bhaba’s conception of ‘third

space’ in that an ethnoclass in ‘entrapment’ also faces significant obstacles in their mobilisation

against endemic marginalisation.13 Mizraḥim are trapped by Zionism in that even as European-

led Zionism marginalises mizraḥi communities, the communities themselves have come ‘to

terms with, and even sustained, the Zionist settlement project that marginalized them in Israeli

society’.14 In recognising this, Yiftachel seems to approach a dual understanding of mizraḥim as

both victimised by and continuously reifying Zionist ideology. Yet, in mapping the location of

mizraḥi-dominated ‘development towns’ on Israel’s frontiers, development towns situated in the

occupied West Bank are characterised as ‘towns’, not ‘settlements’.15 This is deeply confusing:

why are mizraḥim ‘allowed’ to be settled in towns but not actively settle the frontier themselves?

The confusion extends further when considering Yiftachel’s documentation of mizraḥi social

distance/closeness with regard to other groups in Israeli society. Mizraḥim of both the first and

second generation feel neither particularly close nor distant towards settlers in the West Bank,

but feel very distant towards both Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians in the occupied

territories.16 Ninety-five percent of mizraḥim identify as Zionists. The internalisation of

ethnocratic logic among mizraḥim, in short, seems very strong. In this sense, even as the

marginalisation of mizraḥim continues, it is not surprising that mizaḥim can also be found in

13
Bhabha (1994).
14
Yiftachel (2006), 211.
15
Dalsheim (2008).
16
See Figure 9.3 in Yiftachel (2006), 222.
 Smith 6

significant numbers in settlements like Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim, active agents in the neo-

Zionist settlement project.17

Before discussing neo-Zionism and the settlement of the occupied territories more

directly, I want to offer a few questions that could help frame an understanding of how the image

of the mizraḥi is produced. First, given the mizraḥi presence in development towns, and these

towns’ location in Israel’s periphery, we ought to consider whether the frontier itself has become

an integral part of being mizraḥi. In this regard, Eyal’s view is instructive: ‘it was not that the

new immigrants were sent to the border (internal or external) because they were mizrahi Jews, or

Arab-Jews, they became mizrahi, in the sense this term is used today, because they were sent to

the no-man's-land along the external and internal boundaries and because, unlike stronger

groups, they remained stuck there’.18 An understanding of mizraḥim in this manner allows us to

conceive of the border and the periphery as components of ‘Arab-Jew’ hybridity imposed,

internalised and reproduced by mizrahim today. More practically, we can also examine to what

degree the agency-deprived participation of mizraḥim in the settlement of development towns

shapes the image of mizraḥim as set apart from the similarly peripheral but agency-charged neo-

Zionist settlement in the occupied territories. Finally, we should examine the characteristics of

development towns as they compare to West Bank settlements. How is the mizraḥi-dominated

town markedly different than a mizrahi-populated settlement?

Settlers and Neo-Zionism

Shifting to a discussion of the settler movements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza

Strip post-1967, this section will engage with the production of the image of the settler as white,

national-religious, ideological and middle-class. This image has persisted despite the lived reality

17
Central Bureau of Statistics (2008).
18
Eyal (2006), 140.
 Smith 7

of settlement in the West Bank and Gaza being overwhelmingly based on the economics of

cheap housing, not a land-centric vision of modern Zionism.19 Nevertheless, neo-Zionism—a

movement that regards the biblical eretz Israel as more important than the political entity, that is

messianic and holds allegiance to the Jewish people—is intrinsically bound up with the settlers

who are there ‘for ideological reasons’.20

The group Gush Emunim is widely known for its role in pioneering the national-religious

right-wing discourse. The group was founded in 1974, but its roots predate this and stem from

the conquest of the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 war.21 For Gush Emunim, this was a

seminal event that erased the need for the pragmatism of political Zionism, the willingness to

accept partition of eretz Israel to gain a Jewish state.22 Gush Emunim’s non-state-sanctioned

settlements in Sebastia and Ophra, in part because of the religious fervour that endowed their

foundation, soon guided the state—under a Labour government—to support the settlement of the

West Bank and Gaza.23 Likud, under Begin, would both radically expand this project and curtail

it with the withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula. Gush Emunim also monopolised the national-

religious discourse that had previously been moderate and part of Israeli governing coalitions,

shifting it to a radical land-based Zionism. For Labour Zionists, this religious politics threatened

the very foundations of the state.24 But Gush Emunim’s manipulation of the image of the Labour

Zionist pioneer was also a threat to Labour Zionism itself. Gush Emunim members were young,

19
Dalsheim, Harel and Sivan (2009).
20
Ram (1999).
21
Zertal and Eldar (2007).
22
Newman (2005).
23
Ibid.
24
Taub (2010).
 Smith 8

middle-class and ashkenazi.25 This image has persisted since Gush Emunim faded from

organised politics, replaced by national-religious parties and settler organisations.

Gush Emunim’s role, and that played by current ideologically motivated settlers, extends

beyond a rethinking of Zionism. Their monopolising of settler discourse has resulted in ‘a

particular stereotypical image of “the settler”” as a radical, right-wing, religious fundamentalist,

of Ashkenazi…descent and often Anglophone origin’.26 As I alluded to above, this image is

bound together with Labour Zionists' similarly ashkenazi conception of self.27 Representations of

settlers as morally bankrupt, destabilising and motivated by literalist readings of ancient religious

texts, especially by liberal ashkenazi Zionists, serve to inscribe the ‘moral high ground’ within

the borders of ‘Israel proper’—the Green Line—and distinguish Zionist settlement within the

internationally recognised borders from the irrational settlement in the occupied territories.28

Works like Taub’s and Zertal’s, which view the settlement project as dangerous for their

conception of the broader legitimacy of the Israeli state, reify these sharp differences between

‘Israel proper’ and the occupied territories.29 The ethno-racial conception of Israelis on both

sides of the Green Line, the ashkenazi left virulently opposed to settlement to preserve the

legitimacy of Israel and the ashkenazi national-religious right concerned with redemption of the

land and deeply opposed to secularity, serves to obscure the ways in which both movements are

similar.30

The lived reality of West Bank settlers, of course, is quite different. Leaving aside the

question of mizraḥi participation in the neo-Zionist project, it is quite clear that the vast majority

25
Weisburd (1989); Don-Yehiya (1987).
26
Dalsheim (2008), 535.
27
Ibid.
28
Dalsheim, Harel and Sivan (2009).
29
Taub (2010); Zertal and Eldar (2007).
30
Dalsheim (2005).
 Smith 9

of settlers are those there ‘not for ideological reasons’.31 For settlers in the territories, the claim

to be there ‘not for ideological reasons’ is both an explicit self-differentiation from the

ideological settlers of Gush Emunim and its successors, and an affinity with those inside the

Green Line, an implicit declaration that we are not the settlers with whom liberal Zionists have a

problem.32 Rather, being a settler ‘not for ideological reasons’ suggests that economics and

cheap housing are the primary drivers of settlement growth. These economic reasons are more

easily understood, even sympathised with, by a liberal Zionist framework opposed to continued

settlement.33 Indeed, Taub’s work reflects this outlook, in problematising religiously motivated

settlers as particularly dangerous for the liberal Zionist project. Settlers ‘not for ideological

reasons’ scarcely appear in the pages of his book.34 In reality, though, ideologically motivated

settlers are a minority of the West Bank settlement population, with the rest being non-

ideological or ultra-Orthodox.35 Mizraḥi settlers are probably included in the group considered to

be there ‘not for ideological reasons’. This both obscures the genuine attachment to the land that

some mizraḥi settlers might have—an actual commitment to neo-Zionism—and confines

mizraḥim to agency-deprived settlement activity.

Mizrahim and Neo-Zionism

This section will attempt to find the common ground between the previous two, to square

the circle of mizraḥim confined to the marginalised periphery and settlers actively building the

Israeli state’s expanding borders. In doing so, it will explore the existence of mizraḥi settlers and

their relevance to the neo-Zionist project and discuss the ideological positioning of mizraḥim in

31
Dalsheim (2008), 540.
32
Ibid.
33
ibid.
34
Taub (2010).
35
Don-Yehiya (1987).
 Smith 10

Israeli politics. It will conclude with reflections on the ways in which current scholarship has

dealt with the potential of neo-Zionist mizraḥim.

Do the mizraḥi settlers exist? The answer, from the data provided in the previous section,

appears to be yes. Ethnographic research confirms this claim.36 It also appears that some mizraḥi

settlers in the former Gaza Strip community of Gush Katif were ‘religious settlers who believe

deeply in the importance of Jewish presence in the Land of Israel’.37 What does mizraḥi

participation in the neo-Zionist project imply for the study of mizraḥim as a discipline?

Certainly, if settlers like these can be found in communities in the West Bank, then mizraḥim

may need to be studied in the neo-Zionist context. Mizraḥi participation in neo-Zionism should

not come as a surprise. Even in the pre-state era, mizraḥim could be found among maximalist

right-wing groups; witness former Prime Minister Menaḥem Begin’s speech referencing a pair of

mizraḥi and ashkenazi nationalists who committed suicide rather than face the death penalty

under the British.38 The political inclinations of mizraḥim from the 1970s to the present are also

correlated with the right-wing.

Stereotypes of mizraḥim as traditional and conservative reinforce the perception that

mizraḥim are likely to support right-wing politics. In fact, mizraḥim only began to vote for the

right-wing in high numbers in the 1970s, leading to Likud’s rise to power in 1977 under

Menaḥem Begin. They voted for Labour and associated parties in previous years, but, associating

Labour with the experience of marginalisation, switched their allegiance to the Likud when it

emerged as a credible opposition party.39 Their votes for the Likud in subsequent years have

been cast by post-Zionist scholars as part of a continued attempt to ‘attain the favored Israeli

36
Dalsheim (2008).
37
ibid., 538.
38
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGDlq0DouJo
39
Peled (1998); Chetrit (2009).
 Smith 11

identity, that of the Ashkenazi hegemony’.40 There is certainly some merit to this analysis; the

right-wing offered a politics more willing to recognise the mizraḥi struggle to achieve equality,

although it subordinated this under an all-encompassing Jewish identity. But I do not think we

can dismiss mizraḥi votes for right-wing parties so easily after nearly forty years since the ‘ballot

movement’ of 1977. Where once, the marginalisation of mizraḥim under Labour governments

explained the mizraḥi ‘ballot movement’, now, with the movement of many mizraḥim into the

Israeli ‘core’, such claims become more difficult.41

First, such an approach—like much post-Zionist scholarship on mizraḥim—deprives

mizraḥim of agency. A variety of factors influence voting decisions of mizraḥim, rather than the

simplistic explanation of leftist oppression. Second, voting for the right-wing for decades may

have fostered the internalisation of right-wing politics among mizraḥi communities. Post-Zionist

scholars tend to look past this, but even Chetrit notes that ‘the Palestinian has learned to

recognise the Mizrahi as the extremist Israeli’.42 Third, even ‘ethnic’ parties like SHAS, which

represents the mizraḥim through an exclusively ultra-Orthodox lens and reifies the perceived

‘traditionalism’ of mizraḥi communities, are associated with support for right-wing

governments.43 With the entry of large numbers of ultra-Orthodox into settlements in the West

Bank, ‘not for ideological reasons’ seems insufficient to exclude one from participation in the

neo-Zionist project. Similarly, the view of mizraḥim as ‘front-line soldiers of Jewish nationalism’

would suggest a rethinking of mizraḥim, moving the frontier-settling, peripheral mizraḥi to the

new periphery of the settlements.44 The post-Zionist view of mizraḥim as subconsciously trying

40
ibid., xi.
41
Cohen and Leon (2008).
42
Chetrit (2009), 144.
43
Peled (1998).
44
Chetrit (2009), 143.
 Smith 12

to attain ‘ashkenazi-ness’ is not inconsistent with this; what better way to ‘become ashkenazi’

than to actively participate in the settlement project?

Some leftist scholars have attempted to include mizraḥim as part of neo-Zionism. But, by

and large, these attempts form little more than a brief mention loosely connected to the mizraḥi

experience. For instance, Ram’s mapping of political space in Israel, on globalisation-

modernisation axes, places both the upper-class national-religious party Mafdal and the lower-

class mizraḥi Meir Kahane gang in the neo-Zionist space.45 But Ram’s work then promptly

ignores mizraḥ_im in exploring neo-Zionism, aside from a brief mention of the mizraḥi vote

under Likud. Similarly, Ilan Pappe proposes mizraḥim as non-neo-Zionists, but allies of the neo-

Zionist movement.46 This moves mizraḥim out of the marginalised space of the periphery but

still does not attempt to examine mizraḥim as integral parts of the neo-Zionist story. Even

Dalsheim’s examination of mizraḥi settlers in Gush Katif does not deeply engage with the

broader framework of neo-Zionism and mizraḥim.47

There might well be reasons to dismiss mizraḥi participation in neo-Zionist activity, but

these reasons are far stronger from the perspective of the national-religous settlers themselves. If

Gush Emunim and its successors are primarily concerned with a homogenising ‘one people’

ideology, then discussions of ethnicity are irrelevant to the neo-Zionist project.48 This ideology is

more religious than Labour Zionism, less pragmatic than political Zionism and more irredentist

than Revisionist Zionism; it may be racist, but it proposes to include all Jews without regard to

ethnic origin.49 From this point of view, mizraḥim who identify with a neo-Zionist ideology are

not critical to understanding neo-Zionism, as Jewish ethnicity and allegiance to the land of Israel

45
Figure 3, Ram (1999), 328.
46
Pappe (2000).
47
Dalsheim (2008).
48
Newman (2005).
 Smith 13

supersedes ethnic origin. This does not, however, solve the conundrums of what mizraḥi

national-religious settlers—or even mizraḥi ‘not for ideological reasons’ settlers—pose to critical

mizraḥi studies and to examination of mizraḥi marginalisation. The reproduction of Jewish

nationalism by mizraḥim, who have, after all, been described as Zionism’s ‘Jewish victims’,50

complicates the leftist narrative of mizraḥi peripheriality.

49
Ibid.
50
Shohat (1988).
 Smith 14

Conclusion

This paper has explored the relationships between the neo-Zionist movement and the

mizraḥim, especially the possible areas of overlap between them. It proposed considering the

production of the images of these groups and the mutual exclusion seemingly present in how

people ‘think’ settlers and mizraḥim. What seems clear from an exploration of these images is

the need to ‘rethink’ both what it means to be mizraḥi and what it means to be a settler. The

assumptions that mizraḥim are agency-deprived, forcibly settled, peripheral, marginalised and

thus excluded from discussions of neo-Zionist settlement are not immutable. Post-Zionist

research on mizraḥim ignores, or simply does not care to notice, the presence of mizraḥim in the

occupied territories. Mizraḥi settlers, then, are not perceived as integral to broader mizraḥi

politics. Mizraḥim are thus rarely studied as constituting an integral reifying part of ashkenazi

hegemony. Similarly, research on settlers generally focuses on ideologically motivated groups

and national-religious discourse. Studies of the ultra-Orthodox and the ‘not for ideological

reasons’ settlers are becoming more frequent, but absent from many of these are discussions of

ethnicity. To be a settler, it would seem, is to transcend ethnic politics; mizraḥi settlers are thus

not perceived as integral to discussing neo-Zionism. The discursive absence of mizraḥi settlers

from these discussions is integral to the production of the dialectical and mutually reinforcing

images of the surging mizraḥi left, angered by decades of marginality, and the ashkenazi settler

right, reactionary and messianic. Mizraḥi settlers, then, are both the recipients of Jewish-Arab

hybridity51 and straddle the boundary between ethnic mizraḥi politics and religious settler

Zionism. Further probing of the liminal space embodied by this group is thus integral to a more

complete understanding of both neo-Zionism and mizraḥim.

51
Eyal (2006).
 Smith 15

Works Cited

Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London - New York: Routledge.

Central Bureau of Statistics. Ma'ale Adumimm. 2008.

http://www1.cbs.gov.il/www/mifkad/mifkad_2008/profiles/rep_e_3616000000000.pdf

(accessed April 14, 2014).

Chetrit, Sami Shalom. 2009. Intra-Jewish Conflict in Israel: White Jews, Black Jews. New York:

Routledge.

Cohen, Uri and Nissim Leon. 2008. The new Mizrahi middle class: Ethnic mobility and class

integration in Israel. Journal of Israeli History 27 (1): 51-64.

Dalsheim, Joyce. 2005. Ant/agonizing Settlers in the colonial present of Israel-Palestine. Social

Analysis 49 (2): 122-143.

———. 2008. Twice removed: Mizrahi settlers in Gush Katif. Social Identities 14 (5): 535-551.

Dalsheim, Joyce, Assaf Harel, and Emmanuel Sivan. 2009. Representing settlers. Review of

Middle East Studies 43 (2): 219-238.

Don-Yehiya, Eliezer. 1987. Jewish Messianism, religious Zionism and Israeli politics: the impact

and origins of Gush Emunim. Middle Eastern Studies 23 (2): 215-234.

Eyal, Gil. 2006. The Disenchantment of the Orient: Expertise in Arab Affairs and the Israeli

State. Stanford University Press.

Ganim, As'ad, Nadim N Rouhana, and Oren Yiftachel. 1998. Questioning "ethnic democracy": A

response to Sammy Smooha. Israel Studies 3 (2): 253-267.

 Smith 16

Goldberg, Harvey E and Chen Bram. 2007. Sephardic/Mizrahi/Arab-Jews: Reflections on critical

sociology and the study of Middle Eastern Jewries within the context of Israeli society.

Studies in Contemporary Jewry 22:227-256.

Jamal, Amal. 2002. Beyond "ethnic democracy": State structure, multicultural conflict and

differentiated citizenship in Israel. New Political Science 24 (3): 411-431.

Menaḥem Begin magiv li-na'om ha'tzaḥtzaḥim shel dodo ṭopaz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGDlq0DouJo (accessed April 22, 2014).

Newman, David. 2005. From Hitnachalut to Hitnatkut: The impact of Gush Emunim and the

settlement movement on Israeli politics and society. Israel Studies 10 (3): 192-224.

Pappe, Ilan. 2000. Israel at a crossroads between civic democracy and Jewish zealotocracy.

Journal of Palestine Studies 29 (3): 33-44. Web.

Peled, Yoav. 1998. Towards a redefinition of Jewish nationalism in Israel? The enigma of Shas.

Ethnic and Racial Studies 21 (4): 703-727.

Ram, Uri. 1999. The state of the nation: contemporary challenges to Zionism in Israel.

Constellations 6 (5): 325-338.

Shafir, Gershon and Yoav Peled. 2002. Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Shenhav, Yehouda. 2006. The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and

Ethnicity. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Shohat, Ella. 1988. Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the standpoint of its Jewish victims.

Social Text, no. 19/20:1-35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/466176.

 Smith 17

———. 1999. The invention of the Mizrahim. Journal of Palestine Studies 29 (1): 5-20.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2676427.

Smooha, Sammy. 2002. The model of ethnic democracy: Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

Nations and Nationalism 8 (4): 475-503.

Taub, Gadi. 2010. The Settlers : And the Struggle Over the Meaning of Zionism. New Haven:

Yale University Press.

Weisburd, David. 1989. Jewish Settler Violence : Deviance As Social Reaction. University Park:

Pennsylvania State University Press.

Yiftachel, Oren. 2000. Social Control, Urban Planning and Ethno-class Relations: Mizrahi Jews

in Israel's ‘Development Towns’. International Journal of Urban and Regional

Research 24 (2): 418-438.

———. 2006. Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine. Philadelphia:

University of Pennsylvania Press.

Zertal, Idith and Akiva Eldar. 2007. Lords of the Land : The War Over Israel's Settlements in the

Occupied Territories : 1967-2007. Trans. Vivian Eden. New York: Nation Books.

View publication stats