"I know that First Israel will not buy my book," says Avishai Ben-Haim in his crowded, modest and semi-mysterious study.
"The goal is to build an ethos and strengthen the second Israel."
He takes a new copy and quotes from the back cover: "Welcome to the journey, you are welcome to join. The mezuzah on the right, you can give her a little kiss, but only if it's for your fun. Have fun and eat, drink something hot, have something sweet, you can also taste "From the booth of the spicy ... Smoking is allowed, you will feel comfortable. This is an invitation to the first Israel."
But will Israel first read this book?
"I summon them as in Kuzari. I wrote an apologetic book."
But Avishai, who read the Khazari?
"Who is not? All the Jews read and became stronger from it. At a time when there was a struggle against Christian and Islamic views, people clung to it. The first Israel is invited to read the book, but it is not the goal. Therefore, the gate with the album look."
***
has not yet hit the shelves, and the book is already starring on social media.
Paperback as Ben-Haim sees the personalities of all those who were not born Ashkenazi;
The flag of Israel, the portraits of Netanyahu, Begin and Rabbi Ovadia;
And it will be called "The Second Israel: The Sweet Gospel, the Bitter Oppression" (Yedioth Books).
Cultural agent.
Begin, Photo: E.P.
Dr. Avishai Ben-Haim's new book, News 13 commentator on ultra-Orthodox affairs, leads a line that is bubbling in the public discourse even before readers, Ashkenazis and Sephardim, sweet and bitter, have tanned its 400-page pages. It is doubtful if anyone who uses them understands the intention of the satisfied author: "I created it so that it would become a currency of language.
That was the idea.
Both the unconscious hegemony, both 'legal violence' and 'alliance between the parties'.
There is a series of phrases I created to put into the discourse. "
The book is divided into two.
First came the bitter oppression, which describes how the first Israel directed its hegemony toward the oppression of the second Israel and did not allow the Mizrahis to participate in the democratic process.
In this section, Ben-Haim presents mainly political chapters, from Herzl Derech Begin to Netanyahu, when the 1977 revolution receives a focus on the failure of Mount Sinai;
In the second part of the book, The Sweet Gospel, Ben-Haim details what Second Israel has to offer.
Reconciliation, moderation, tradition, unity.
Or if you will: Ashkenazi?
Iraqi?
Siblings!
The book is written in an academic-accessible genre, from the blood of the writer's heart that is hard not to like.
In one of the pages, he explains where the phrase "Second Israel" comes from.
It turns out that this is not just the title of the 12th episode of the "Revival" documentary series, it is a reward for the way the media defined the Eastern community: in 1952, Azriel Carlebach, editor of the Maariv newspaper, following a visit to the transit camp, said that "Second Israel is adapting."
On the eve of Independence Day 1954, he said that Second Israel was still "poor and destitute and limited and desperate for development," and in 1955 Ben-Gurion warned of the abyss that existed between the "European Yishuv" and "Second Israel," and on the other hand that Menachem Begin's Herut Party had developed "considerable action. In the "Second Israel" battle. "
Begin is the revered star of the book, thanks to the upheaval. But shortly after he won the election, he made a bigger change - implementing an ultra-leftist policy, setting a precedent of handing over territories and bypassing the leftists on the left, more than what was recommended that year at the Labor Party conference.
"I think, first of all, in the perception of Begin Sinai, the Land of Israel was not considered."
It is illegitimate to demonstrate.
Netanyahu, Photo: Arik Sultan
He also gave the Palestinians autonomy, for the first time.
"The public supported him because the Orientals are state-run. If the security experts said it was good, and came for the big one and said 'listen it's worthwhile, make peace and pay a price' - then people said okay. I put in the book the clash between absolute Western ideologies, which are collapsing, and The complex Eastern school, which is not absolute.
"There are four elites who led Israeli society over the years, while Eastern society was on the sidelines. The elite on the left started with socialist Zionism, absolute ideology and equality, kibbutz - charming, but it did not work. They moved to another absolute ideology, charming and beautiful - peace now. It did not work. The second elite in the crisis is the ultra-Orthodox elite, a society of learners in which everyone studies Torah all their lives; a society that eliminates the differences between the elite and the masses. It is from Plato's and politics, but it did not work
"The religious Zionist elite is also in a great crisis, even there it does not work. To return after the Six Day War to the cradle of our homeland beyond the Green Line - our Nablus, our Bethlehem - there is also a great ideological crisis. You no longer hear anyone say 'Eretz Israel Completion ', because it does not work. It's over. The Temple Mount - the people are at the Western Wall, and you are fleeing to the Temple Mount? Some went to the least national acts possible. To exclude the second Israel is an amazing story of what happens to the absolute ideologies.
"The fourth is the Revisionists. They once conducted the public debate here, Jabotinsky's monism, an absolute ideology of the Land of Israel. Jabotinsky says there are no two ideologies - he quarrels with Ben-Gurion and sculpted socialist Zionism. He said there is only one miracle. Only one flag. The Likud princes left the alliance with the second Israel, they for years built their glory on the sweat and the notes of the second Israel, but when they realized that the second Israel also wants to participate in democracy - they abandoned them. And the alliance with the Greater Land of Israel. They leave".
And the solution to all these crises is Orientalism?
"When everything collided with the walls I say - there is the Eastern school."
Is Gush Katif also a product of too absolute an ideology for you?
"No, Gush Katif is a different fracture. It was just to educate. Begin and Rabin wanted to bring peace. The disengagement was a forceful act of hegemony, in which she says 'we are here and we will show you that we are the owners of the house.'"
But if Begin had not evacuated Sinai together with Sharon, Gush Katif would not have happened either. I think the problem with your theory is that there are a lot of exceptions.
"I do not understand the question about Sinai. You ask why Begin was not right enough?"
I ask if there is a correlation between the social upheaval of 1977 and the upheaval of Begin's loss of political path. He was elected for a particular ideology and applied a different ideology.
"But there is a state position. Why was Rabbi Ovadia in favor of Oslo? Because the heads of the security forces were in favor. Rabbi Ovadia also had a halakhic, security, and philosophical position, which says that human life is better than land. People say 'we love the Land of Israel, but there is nothing.' Do '. Look what happens to the people with the absolute ideologies, they eventually formed a government with a RAAM.
Who then supported the return of Sinai because the whole kingdom said it was okay?
The '77 upheaval is deeper than the question of the Land of Israel.
Second Israel chose Begin to be its cultural agent and bring God back into the Israeli story.
That's the reversal. "
To return from the cycle of terror
Avishai Ben-Haim was born in Jerusalem in 1968.
From the Kiryat Yuval neighborhood, his family moved to Dimona, but at the age of four, his parents "immigrated to the first Israel," as he puts it, the Beit Vagan neighborhood.
He currently lives on Mount Adar, in a house that feels like drowning in the amounts of content on its walls.
Central tier.
Oz, Photo: Eric Sultan
So what is the trauma that made you the second Israel?
"I'm not traumatic. I come strengthened. The friends who know me personally, for example Yossi Cedar, say, 'All your life you have prepared yourself for this moment of the Second Israel Theory.' I read cassettes. Oriental music suddenly came into the house even though we were such a stately Oriental family. If they asked me what you would like to be when you grow up - that's it. A journalist who brings a proud national oriental voice. "I did not adopt this flag two hours ago. It is the flag of my life."
So where does the urge to fight come from?
"Personally, I have everything. I am a paratrooper, I am a lieutenant colonel, I am a doctor and a certified historian, I broadcast on an important TV channel. I could have escaped the battle. Deri, and he made it more beautiful than me. "
You adore Deri. It is mentioned a lot in your book. Among other things you write that Shifa and Aryeh Deri are like Eliezer Ben Yehuda and his family, because the children paid a price for their ideology.
"Deri is one of the most important human rights activists in the history of Israel, a man with a commitment to the values of justice and equality at a level I did not know. "Whoever reads will understand who Deri is."
What about Safsufa, taxes, bribes, prison?
"It's part of the racism against him. He's just unusually talented. What is the house in Safsufa that people pull out against? What is Safsufa? It's after the periphery, left, at the end. A house worth a two and a half room apartment in Tel Aviv. What is this racist position, what is it? Does it matter if there is money? The hegemony is trying to say: watch out for them, they are growing too much. They are looking around, and they do not hate what the Arabs have built, they hate what the Orientals have built. "It drives them crazy. They despise the Mizrahi intellectual and the successful Mizrahi singer. It is an internal resistance."
Could the opposition be related to the fact that Deri was in prison, in addition to several other MKs from the same party?
"Oppression does not let any Mizrahi raise his head. For decades, everyone is made fun of or ridiculed. No one is allowed to grow. The classic move is criminalization. I show in the book how almost every Mizrahi struggle has been criminalized, and in fact in this way has been silenced and ended. So with Wadi "Salib, so with the Panthers and so with the tents. It all ended as a criminal incident."
A simple language of depth.
Peretz, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
And in practice they were not violent?
"No more than incidents of bishops being treated differently."
Shas was portrayed as a criminal incident for no reason?
"Over the years, Shas has been portrayed as the most corrupt party.
In recent years, other parties have also begun to investigate, and we see that Shas was investigated for stealing half a square from the grocery store while others stole the grocery store and the land around the grocery store. "
"I draw strength from the condemnation"
Netanyahu's trial is being emptied of content, is this something that is being hidden?
"The struggle for Netanyahu is also portrayed as a criminal event. Take articles that cover the protest for Netanyahu, take Mizrahi figures to the margins, turn them into the center of the article. This is how repression makes profit for profit. There is no right to demonstrate in second Israel. "It will be used against you instead of in your favor. It is already better to do revelry and obscurity. Demonstrating is not helpful anyway. And this image has been built over the years."
But you do the same thing - just the opposite: revelry, haplessness, you characterize the Orientals with sweetness, with a date dried in coconut. It turns sweetness into folklore, does it not diminish?
"I use Orientalism as a practice of defense. I am condemned by something, so I draw strength from it."
Is this not a tattoo of the stereotype?
"This is my way of dealing with oppression. Listen to Miriam Peretz, she says 'simple lips,' as I say 'sweet lips,' and this woman is all literature and bible and depth."
You write in a book that Herzl liked the Orientals, and as proof of this you note that in "Altneuland" there is first an ethos that does not allow the common people to be humiliated. Why do you tattoo the notion that Oriental is to be simple with? Herzl builds a narrative of the arrogant elite in front of the son of the poor peddler. Do not know how many Orientals he met in Vienna, Budapest and Basel. Maybe he was Ashkenazi with guilt? Below you quote Begin who said "the poor boy from the Eastern community." Why when it's coming from them is it okay, why do not you say "guys, they were not in Marrakech, they have no idea what they are talking about"?
"I see Herzl's alliance as Begin's. I go with the common people and the Jewish tradition and harness it. In a sense, Netanyahu's too. But there is another move, I am making a counter-hegemonic move to return the emotion. I am not ready to despise the emotion. In the 21st century, we are smart and humble enough to understand that emotion is part of the range of experiences and feelings and is legitimate.Begin and Herzl understood that this Jewish emotion is an enormous force.
Easterners adore him, right-wingers have a hard time choosing sides.
Ben Haim, Photo: Arik Sultan
"So on the one hand the elites who mock the Zionist idea, and in front of them the boy the peddler. The boy says 'I will return to the Land of Israel', and his character says: 'Our old God is alive and well.' .
Want an example of the benefit of emotion?
"Another person would not have moved the official residence from Jerusalem to Raanana."
Did you hear Bennett's brothers' speech on Memorial Day?
"This is Dudu Topaz's 'speech speech' training speech. Topaz said, I want to exclude the other Israelis, that they will not be part of it. Bennett formed such a government."
But the content of the speech conveys the opposite message. Bennett calls for unity. He mentioned his friend who fell and said: "For me, Danoch was not a Yemeni or a second Israelite. He was a warrior." This is a reference to your settings.
"This is Bennett's manipulation. He says, I will suppress Avishai's protest attempt by saying I was with them in the army. But it does not help me that you make me the gesture that those killed with you in the army are as nice as me. Because what's going on? Bennett has formed a government that says "We will make every effort and overcome all the difficulties and sit down with the Islamic movement, and no effort will be made to lift the boycott of Netanyahu."
In this sense, he is worse than his uncle Topaz, because Topaz did not succeed and Bennett succeeded in dismantling the 1977 revolution and returned the second Israel to a place where it is not a partner. "
"Take our places"
As a testament to the exclusion of Mizrahis, the book presents a broadcast schedule of the GLC from a decade ago. You claim that thanks to the Mizrahis, the national-religious broadcasters were promoted.
"There was a move in the media that says there was an atmosphere of a huge camp of the unrepresented right. The Mizrahis went and voted en masse and did not get representation. The one who received representation was religious Zionism."
who will? Give me names.
"does not say".
Avishai, GLC full of Mizrahis and empty of settlers.
"There are quotas, after all, soldiers who are accepted into IDF waves receive them according to the quotas of the second Israel, of the religious and the Mizrahis and the periphery.
It is a representation of a population.
We gave them our seats, and when the moment of crisis came instead of representing us they turned their backs on us.
The national religious have entered the GLC for our places.
This sounds like the argument that the money went to the settlements at the expense of the development towns.
"Absolutely not," he dismisses my allusion with a wave of his hand and a disgusted face.
Say, is this discrimination still valid?
"Yes. We are at our peak."
I grew up in Tel Aviv between Rabin Square and State Square, second out of six children. My school had integration. My classmates, who lived twenty minutes south of me, in three-story houses, three children in the family, then received discounts on classes and tuition and excise and property taxes, and parents had luxury cars and in their neighborhood built a country when we took a bus to the pool in Ramat Aviv. Do you not ignore the Middle-Eastern middle class that today lives in duplexes in Rishon West and built your house in Yavne and jumps abroad when there is no choice? The representation on television is no longer Salah Shabti either.
"The Eastern Left is talking about a struggle to get rights - and that's it. I say we also have to fight for identities. It's not just money and bridging the gaps, it's a desire to take an equal part in running the country. The liberal left tells us: 'We are willing to give you equality. ', And we say to them: we want equality but we want to be like us. They want us to go through a process of culture. And we say: we want to be like us and like our father and grandmother and Rambam and Rabbi Akiva ".
Do you hang out? Most people do not look like Gideon Saar but like Margie. The Ben Yehuda Strasse event is over.
"No, there is a decrease in Mizrahi representation. In almost no role of symbols of government and designers of consciousness and image is there anyone Mizrahi! The head of the Mossad, the head of the Shin Bet, the state attorney, has no Mizrahi.
And at the head of any party from the coalition parties. "
So why are the Likud not promoting Mizrahi? Are they forcibly returning to Netanyahu, instead of promoting Regev or Amsalem? In the Labor Party, they managed to put two Mizrahis in the lead.
Avishai is going to tell again.
"Second Israel is not racist. So its favorite leaders are not necessarily Orientals. Look at the cover. What is internalizing oppression? Oppression makes you believe that whoever needs to lead looks different, so you choose someone who looks like them anyway."
Why do you insist on creating a separation between East and Right? Ability to argue equally for lack of right-wing representation.
"Because the second Israel, for example, has under to zero representation in the judicial system."
Book cover,
But also to the right and to women.
"Not true! Religious Zionism has. And second Israel has less."
Avishai, do you watch Keshet broadcasts?
"I'm talking about the news system."
Get out of the collective
On Ben Haim's Twitter, joy and rejoicing.
Easterners adore him, right-wingers have a hard time choosing sides.
Ben-Haim is careful to express his views boldly, and to reconcile if anyone is hurt.
Kobi Oz wrote this week: "We did not oppose the Israeli melting pot in order to enter the IDF's internal melting pot."
I read Oz's words to the author and he assumes that Oz, one of his cultural heroes who is revered in the book, did not understand his words correctly.
Even other tweets, which kill or irritate about the new book and the identity it creates between the Mizrahi and the specific political right-wing, maximize Ben Haim, who brings out the sweetness that reinforces curiosity, making it a natural and effortless practice.
"All the Mizrahi achievements are related to the Mizrahi struggles. All the Mizrahis who have progressed should know that in the end there was some crusader whose back was injured or Ben Haim, who stood in the way and struggled. Then the hegemony must do something. And the Mizrahi will attack us on the fight and say 'Walla, I did not feel there was a problem.' "Orientals today are reaping the rewards."
Why are you forcing us to be supporters of Likud or Shas? We must not be supporters of the left? Why exclude us from the Mizrahi collective?
"I have never said that in my life. I also write in a book that part of the magic I present lies in the two tracks: the sweet oriental tradition and the moderate Spanish ultra-Orthodox, but the other oriental tracks are also cool and legitimate. "They do not come to the aid of their brothers. Then instead of doing something they say I say they are illegitimate. But whoever has read the book knows that I say that when there is pluralism, all the different paths of Orientalism are cool."
You said at the beginning of our conversation that the goal is to strengthen the second Israel, the one that groans under hegemonic oppression. How do you win a fight when your weapon is in a sweet line?
"Who wants to win?"
The general of the second Israel is surprised by a left-wing statement.
"I want a draw. Then reconciliation and partnership."
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