... For starters, some 20 percent of the Israeli population is Arab; most of the rest is "Jewish," although there are a lot of problems of definition here. Of the Jewish portion, barely half are "Ashkenazim:" the ones who pretty much structured the new nation and fashioned its narrative. You knew that, or you should have: you've been on notice since they elected Menachem Begin--himself from Belarus, but in politics the voice of the voiceless.
Way more important, I think--and still pretty much misunderstood in the west--would be the immigration of something like a million Jews from the old Soviet Union, mostly with the enthusiastic support of the United States foreign policy establishment. And what a mixed bag they are: something like a third aren't even "Jewish" by theological standards and an unknown portion really don't have any tie to Judaism at all, except that it provided a ticket out. The cohort surely includes a large number of people who have made Israel second to (almost) none in skilled labor and high-tech entrepreneurship; also a who's who of Russian gangsters who get to call Israel home as long as they practice their trade elsewhere (recall how Cyprus ceded over its banks to the Russians on more or less the same principle). The cohort also includes quite a large component of the most bellicose nationalists--but a nationalism not so much rooted in Biblical tradition, nor even the memory of the Holocaust, as in the notion of "we're here, stay out."
'via Blog this'
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