The news that the Arab Joint List has for the first time endorsed Benny Gantz, the leader of the Blue and White party as a potential Prime Minister, brings Arabs closer to power than ever. Perhaps it comes as a surprise to learn that its leader, Ayman Odeh, has also made overtures to Mizrahi Jews in Israel.
Ayman Odeh (centre) celebrates the Arab Joint List’s performance in the 17 September 2019 elections.
According to Wikipedia, Odeh has ‘expressed strong support for increasing recognition of Mizrahi culture and Arab Jewish history in official Israeli and Palestinian discourses; in a widely cited speech to the Knesset plenum in July 2015, MK Odeh argued that the State of Israel has systematically discriminated against and suppressed the culture of Jews who immigrated to Israel from Arab and Muslim lands in order to feed the idea of a natural separation between Jews and Arabs. He also argued that the large role played by Jews in forming historical and modern Arab culture (including famous Jews such as Rabbi David Buzaglo, who wrote Jewish religious poetry primarily in Arabic, and famous Jews who were popular in the Arab world in the mid-20th Century, such as Leila Murad), has been forgotten by Jews and Arabs alike due to the ideological elements of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the desire by Israel’s elite to portray a Western image of Jews and of the country.’
Odeh called upon Jewish and Arab members of the Knesset alike to support a new Knesset committee (which he had joined as a member) lobbying for the re-emphasizing of the culture of Jews from Arab and Muslim lands. In that speech, Odeh summarized his position thus: “The culture of the Jews of Arab and Islamic countries is a shared Jewish and Arab culture. Because of this, the state has fought [against] it, and yet because of this [same reason], we must fight to strengthen it.”
In a 2015 TV elections campaign debate,Odeh approached the leader of the Mizrahi religious party Shas, Aryeh Der‘i, in a call to form an alliance to fight poverty, given that their constituencies are similarly marginalized in society. But Der‘i declined to accept the offer.
Nevertheless, Odeh has been quoted as saying: “We represent those who are invisible in this country, and we give them a voice. We also bring a message of hope to all people, not just to the Arabs, but to the Jews, too”.
What lies behind Odeh’s pro-Mizrahi strategy? It seems that as a socialist he has absorbed the far left’s ‘narrative’ that Mizrahim are ‘Arab Jews’ divided from their Arab ‘brothers’ by Zionism and the Ashkenazi establishment. But nostalgia for Leila Murad is not enough to bring Jews and Arabs together. An enormous political gulf separates Mizrahi Jews, who customarily vote for Rightwing parties, from Arabs in Israel. Few Jews, except for a minority of (Ashkenazi) farleft academics, would support the Joint List’s anti-Zionist agenda, and to believe that a majority of Israeli Jews of Mizrahi background are ‘marginalised’ is not a view widely shared by mainstream opinion.
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