martillo@ihuxt.UUCP (Yehoyaqim Shemtob Martillo) (04/29/84)
....many of these immigrants [Sefardim and oriental Jews] come to us without the most elementary knowledge, without a trace of Jewish or human [!] education. There are two reasons for this. First, they are the product of period of destruction, a period of world wars, a period of material and spiritual deterioration caused by a shake-up in all human institutions. Second, they come from dark, oppressed, and exploited countries. -- from D. Ben Gurion, Eternal Israel (Tel Aviv: Ayanot, 1964), p. 34 (Hebrew translation from Dissent, Winter 1984, p. 84. Goldah Meir used to make much worse statements. (Many Sefardim believe she insisted on using a Yiddish name to emphasize the difference between herself and oriental Jews.) Bialik is reputed to have said that he hated Arabs because they reminded him of Sefardim. Shimon Peres may have lost the last election because of a tendency to comdemn orientalization of Israeli society in his speeches. The meaning was clear to Sefardim. In the 19th and 20th century European Anti-Semites used to condemn the orientalization of European society caused by European Jews.