"The day after Netanyahu in the Likud, they will need a mental calculation. It is time for an Mizrahi prime minister," Miri Regev declared in the weekend newspapers, causing a stir.
"Look at senior Likud figures," the journalist asked, "they are all Ashkenazi men there: Bibi, Barkat, Galant, Katz. Shall we continue?"
Regev should have known that interviewees are sometimes, unknowingly, victims of journalists who put the interviewee in a corner that should not have been entered in the first place. But Regev went into the corner, and fell into the trap. First, in order to fulfill the role of prime minister, there is no need for an "ethnic dowry." It is imperative to acquire skills, a willingness to fight activists and lobbyists, manners and country manners. The facts also disappeared from Regev's eyes. "Shall we continue?" Asked the interviewer. Yes, why not: Gila Gamliel, Galit Distel-Atbrian, Eli Cohen, Tzachi Hanegbi, Dudi Amsalem, Amir Ohana, Ofir Katz, Etty Atiya, David Bitan, Keren Barak, Shlomo Krei, Miki Zohar, Orly Levy-Abaxis, Katie Sheetrit And May Golan - all Oriental (on both sides or on one side). But it's really Abel.
The most serious problem with Regev's conduct is the lack of awareness of historical changes in the left's political culture. So go, Miri, here is a brief introduction to the course "Political Elites in Israel". Since the establishment of the state, the Israeli left, and with it quite a few journalists (it goes together), has undergone a total change in the ethnic issue: in the Mapai era until 1977, the Zionist left has denied the ethnic issue in a sweeping way. Simultaneously with the decline of the Zionist left, the non-Zionist left began to emphasize ethnicity in an obsessive and false way. Multiculturalism "and other vegetables.
The two extremes - disregard versus obsessive emphasis - are false and imaginative.
Both the interviewer and the interviewee Regev did not pay attention to the fact that the vast majority of Likud voters, as well as party supporters, do not tend to enter the ethnic field simply because they do not consider it a worthy field to play on, and rightly so.
Worse, this is a field whose rules of the game have been set by the Israeli agents of American identity politics.
What about them and us?
What do they have and truth ?!
It should be noted that there is no room for naivety, there is anti-Oriental sentiment and racist stereotypes in Israel.
But this is not the personal.
Likud supporters, like his constituents, define themselves, first and foremost, as traditional Jews.
There are parties in Israel whose publicists do eighths in the air to show off a diverse picture of attractive candidates: Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, center and periphery.
So in the Meretz list, Labor and There is a Future.
In these parties, the traditional Jewish dimension appears at a low intensity, so in any case various candidates must be engineered and reserved in order to produce a diverse and balanced gallery.
The Likud does not need this because the party is already attracted to traditional people, that is, Jews who visit the synagogue, celebrate Shabbat and holidays, and in other words, the idea of returning to Zion and merging postcards flows in their veins.
True, a large part of them live in a kind of ethnic enclaves (marginal neighborhoods and development cities) that make integration difficult.
But the tradition in them exerts a counter-force: it emphasizes the temporality and expiration date of that tribal / exile / ethnic group.
Each and every one of them will be happy if their son, or daughter, will give birth to grandchildren of a mixed race.
And it happens quite a bit.
This is the Likud in reality.
Here we come to the Likud in the vision: Regev longs for the day after Netanyahu?
A welcome change will be on the day when the Likud is headed by Mizrahi or Mizrahi, and no one will open champagne.
A routine event.
This will not be a victory for the Orientals, but a victory for the tradition and return of the Jewish spirit and history to the center of the stage.
And to you, our friends on the left, respect the right of self-determination of the "Mizrahis" to be non-Mizrahis but first and foremost Jewish-Israelis.