Did the Israeli State Engineer Segregation? On the Placement of Jewish Immigrants in Development Towns in the 1950s

Another History: Family, Nation and the Remembrance of the Egyptian Jewish Past in Contemporary Israeli Literature

“…Yet, as opposed to the usual depictions of the harsh living conditions in the transit camps (see : Bernstein 1981;Khazoom 2005;Kozlovsky 2008), for instance in the 1960s novels Hama'abara and Mul hahomah (In front of the wall) by Shimon Ballas, Gormezano Goren remember it with affection and nostalgia. For the child Roby/ Yitzhak, Shfaram was and is remembered as a magical place surrounded by trees, as opposed to the crowded and noisy streets of Alexandria to which he was accustomed.…”

Twice removed: Mizrahi settlers in Gush Katif

“…There were families who moved out of the development towns and cooperative communities of the Negev and elsewhere, including places known for high rates of unemployment and other attending social and economic problems; peripheral places that did not offer many opportunities to their residents. Comparable in many ways to US inner cities, Khazoom has dubbed development towns 'outer cities', and has documented the founding racism that resulted in the over-representation of Mizrahim in these towns (Khazzoom, 2005).…”

“…Like so many other Israeli Jews of Middle Eastern origin, Moshe's parents had been settled in a town in a peripheral region of the country during the 1950s (Shafir, 1989a;Khazzoom, 2005). The Yemenites, as previously mentioned, were first brought to the state to provide Jewish rather than Arab labor to build the state (Shafir, 1989a).…”

Demographic behaviour of adults of mixed ethnic ancestry: Jews in Israel

“…In general, Jewish immigrants from Muslim countries in North Africa and the Middle East were characterized by lower levels of socioeconomic status, as well as higher levels of fertility and mortality. For a variety of reasons, including differential placement of newly arrived immigrants in geographically and economically peripheral regions, as well as differential veteranship in Israel, Jews of North African and Middle Eastern ancestry Á known as Mizrahim Á have generally been disadvantaged socioeconomically (Cohen and Haberfeld 1998;Friedlander et al 2002;Khazzoom 2005). The split between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim has become a dominant one in contemporary Israeli Jewish society, especially because it is understood largely in terms of class inequality and historical discrimination (Ben-Rafael 1982;Smooha 1993).…”