Labor Vows To Become A More Diverse Group Of Ashkenazim

“We have any number of non-Ashkenazi members, and as as soon as I can think of more than eight, I’ll list them for you.”

Tel Aviv, November 3 – Labor Party leaders gathered yesterday to debate the future of the organization and its moves in the immediate term, including the pursuit of an effort to make the largely Ashkenazi party more diverse by appealing to a greater variety of Ashkenazim.

Public perception of Labor has long been colored by the assumption that the party exclusively consists of, and primarily reflects the concerns of, Jews of European ancestry. Even the organization’s socialist ideology is seen as condescending treatment of the less economically and ethnically fortunate, instead of as a unifying force to help all Israelis share in national prosperity. The image is exacerbated by genuine anti-Mizrahi prejudice expressed by allies of, if not members of, the party, such as prominent celebrities who dismiss Labor’s opponents’ voters as backward, ignorant, and superstitious.

Such accusations have dogged Labor at least since the 1997 elections, when Labor candidate Ehud Barak was present at a performance of comedian Ori Orr, who called Likud’s traditional electoral base “riffraff.” While footage purporting to show Barak laughing at the characterization was later proven to be spliced, the remark nevertheless led to a backlash among Mizrahim. Similar rhetoric emanated from entertainers and other cultural figures in the March 2015 campaign, but some trace the antipathy to policies of the Labor governments in the 1950’s and 60’s responsible for discriminatory housing policies that adversely affected the many Mizrahi immigrants arriving at the time.

To combat that reputation, moves are afoot within Labor to expand the party’s rolls to include a more diverse cohort of middle-class Ashkenazi voters. Former party chairwoman Shelly Yechimovich acknowledged at a party meeting that Labor has taken insufficient steps to convince Mizrahi voters it has their interests at heart in a non-supercilious fashion, and suffered at the polls for that reason. Yechimovich said she hoped current chairman Isaac Herzog would seize the moment to set Labor on a course to demonstrate just that. “This is a grand opportunity to show that, unlike Netanyahu and his irresponsible policies that disproportionately affect the middle class, we can implement a vision that makes it worse for absolutely everyone, regardless of ethnicity.”

Not everyone in Labor accepts that the party’s Ashkenazi-centric reputation has been justly earned. “The media makes us out as some monoethnic entity, but that’s simply not the case,” insisted MK Merav Michaeli in an interview this morning on Kol Yisrael radio. “We have any number of non-Ashkenazi members, and as as soon as I can think of more than eight, I’ll list them for you.”

Michaeli noted that the party once chose Amir Peretz, a bona fide Mizrahi, as its chief. “We did that once already, and that proves we’re not racist,” she said. “In fact it was a disaster in the long run, because Labor hasn’t regained power since. We don’t need any more Mizrahim ruining things for the rest of us.”