Opinion | End of "The Sting": Another Nail in the Eastern Left Closet | Israel today

We were recently informed that the "sting" has closed.

The Sting was an online newspaper designed to stage the positions of the Eastern Left, edited by Prof. Yossi Dahan and Dr. Yitzhak Sporta, and has operated since 2003 with financial support from the New Israel Fund and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. There are various explanations as to why the Likud movement and its leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, are unworthy of power, and to what extent the rise of the left will benefit the Mizrahis, who are irrational in choosing the right-wing camp.

The disappearance of the newspaper from our cultural-political arena is one of the important signs in relation to the irrelevance of the Eastern Left, whose influence is weakening. In fact, the closure of the "sting" gives expression to the success of the Brotherhood between the left-wing parties operating under the assumption that there is no such phenomenon called "Orientalism." It must be admitted that in their districts they have had much success.

The alienation of the "sting" and the eastern left is a result of the fact that its members in the mainstream and dominant current on the left, which is mainly Ashkenazi, see it as a foreign plant wading into it without their permission in their private pools. The left has always seen Mizrahi as a phenomenon that obscures their water, a phenomenon that has spoiled and damaged their utopia that they dreamed of. Orientalism, according to the left-wing beds, carries a sense of eternal guilt as they are the ones that led to the flaws on the way to the Middle Eastern utopia they wanted to fulfill. What allegations did not arise from the left against the Mizrahis? The Mizrahis changed their proper demographic composition, the Mizrahis imposed an unbearable burden on the "veterans", the Mizrahis owed financial investments that canceled their plans, and in addition, the Mizrahis blame them for disappearing their children. They complain mainly that the Orientals did not conform to the vision that the left sees before its eyes.And what heavy guilt can the Mizrahis bear more than that they spoiled the Ashkenazi cultural dream? Hence the short path to the perception in which the Ashkenazi left attests to itself that its people are "beautiful and just" in the face of the Mizrahi who in their eyes represent the "ugly and the sinful."

The attitude that the Ashkenazi left has always adopted towards the Mizrahis is that a lordly partnership, a class block and a movement trap have been created.

Each of these forms of conduct is intended to narrow and harm their integration within Israeli society.

They once did it in the open air, and today they have managed to eliminate the phenomenon as a measurable and quantifiable possibility, hence the argument that Orientalism does not exist at all.

It will not be long before we are informed that replacements have been found for Prof. Dahan and Dr. Sporta, who will say that they will be able to present the Mizrahis between the left-wing ranks. The left will adopt the right jargon and tell us that they have learned in depth the thinking patterns of their partners from the Ashkenazi left, and they will succeed in what their predecessors failed: partnership.

Opposite the approach of the Ashkenazi left, which is working to erase the existence of Mizrahi, we will find the renewal and strengthening of Mizrahi in the Likud.

It turned out that on the one hand there are the eastern representatives of the Likud, who emphasize their worldview without fear and in recognition that they are a central group in the public discourse - Amsalem and Ohana, Regev, Distal-Atbrian, Gamliel and Zohar.

Despite the existence of disagreements and tensions within the Likud over Mizrahiism, it remains at the heart of the debate.

This, along with the Likud's most significant contribution in the last 40 years, is the construction and establishment of the Eastern middle class.

This is a significant achievement of a breakthrough in social solidarity in that it has succeeded in reshaping a society with a partnership framework that does not fall apart into its parts.

The left continues to see us, the Mizrahis, as a factor that creates tension and undermines stability in society, so the participation of the Mizrahis led by the Likud was made despite the stubborn opposition of the left parties, who saw each time a "significant other" superior to the Mizrahi.