Given the way things are in Israel, it was unlikely that anyone would have taken for granted the decision on March 29 to award the Israel Prize for Literature and Poetry to Erez Biton, the first Mizrahi (Sephardic, of Middle Eastern or North African descent) to win the prestigious accolade. After all, the ethnic card doesn’t wait for someone to pull it out of the deck; it roams freely and pounces.
Israelis, both of Ashkenazi (of European descent) and Mizrahi descent, do not need a special reason for a confrontation over ethnicity. They simply find a way to a link in every event, whether remotely related or not, to generate tension and each use it for its own purpose. We encountered such farcical manipulation, for instance, in using the death of songwriter and poet Arik Einstein as an excuse to attack the Ashkenazi cultural hegemony, or the claims against the Mizrahim in the wake of the Likud Party’s recent election victory.
