Yemeni Jews leaving to Aden. Photograph Zoltan Kluger
by Richard Steinhardt
If state-building anywhere is a process of political alchemy, that process is already forging a real society on the ground. Even at this late stage, stripped of Zionism, its ‘white’ identity and its servitude to American imperial interests, Israel can transform into a secular, inclusive state and include Palestinians as full equals under the law, moving away from a suicidal role as a foreign military base and toward its true identity. When accounting for Arab and Jewish Arab citizens of Israel, the population that is ethnically, culturally, and genetically rooted in the broader region constitutes the great majority. Only 20% of the total population of Israel are Ashkenazim and even many of these (the ones who have been there longer) have some Jewish-Arab forbears. Coincidentally, the percentage of Ashkenazim approaches the percentage (17%) that have dual citizenship with a western country and can leave when the going gets tough.
Israel is fundamentally a dysfunctional, deeply divided Middle Eastern society whose true identity has been subsumed, distorted, and placed in existential jeopardy by the Zionist ideology of its comprador class and by its operational role as an imperial forward base for U.S. hegemony. The dominant state institutions, industries, tech sectors, and defence complexes are constructed and managed by European/US/Russian Ashkenazi Zionists who rely directly on foreign capital flows. In this framework, the Ashkenazi ruling elite functions as a classic comprador layer: managing foreign imperial funds locally in exchange for executing Western strategic interests in the Middle East.
In the first place, we should all acknowledge the horror and oppression carried out over many decades by the Zionist state of Israel which culminated in a genocide in Gaza. We must absolutely condemn Israel and its actions, as well as Zionist ideology, and acknowledge that, in addition, it acts on behalf of corporate global capitalism centred in the USA. Moreover, currently, by allowing itself to function primarily as an aggressive proxy for the U.S. against Iran, Israel is now suffering strategic and existential risk that leaves it utterly isolated and acutely vulnerable in its own neighbourhood, despite the fact that it possesses 200 nuclear weapons.
But we also need to understand that the description of Israel as the forward base of New Yorkers and American corporate capitalism is not sufficient to understand it. Underneath the extreme Zionism and the actions of compradors for US capitalism, hidden in the rubble, is a small bubbling of hope that underpins even the most despairing political discourse of sophisticated Arabs and Israelis; the realisation that Israel/Palestine is, in essence, a dysfunctional and murderously divided Middle Eastern country and not exclusively a settler state.
This bubbling up of understanding was the source of the mutual respect and that existed between people like Uri Avnery and Yasser Arafat in the past. This overlapping of identity is cast out with the clashings of Zionism and Islamism. Though in the end Avnery supported the existence of a Zionist state.
Both the apartheid South African state and the state of Israel shared a problem of legitimacy. The apartheid state was regarded as illegitimate because of its exclusionary, oppressive ideology, and the economic exploitation of black and coloured South Africans and because of its cruelty. So is the Zionist state considered illegitimate in its current form by the majority of people.
However, on deeper reflection, these two situations are not directly comparable; rather, they are a matter of contrast. Beyond the general issues of colonialism, injustice, and oppression, the differences between the conjuncture in South Africa in the 90s and what is happening now in Israel/Palestine, when examined, are great.
From a Zionist perspective, there is no compromise or solution: “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If Israel puts down its weapons today, there would be no more Israel” (Golda Meir). Golda Meir’s political philosophy saw the necessity of continuous war to preserve the Zionist state, centred on the concept of Ein Breira (“No Alternative”).
But this was the viewpoint of the leading representative of an artificially imposed European state grafted onto the Levant. In fact, without Zionism, Israel becomes just another dysfunctional Middle Eastern state. Leaving Zionism to one side, the question of Mizrahi Jewish migration to Israel complicates the accusation that Israel is purely a settler-colonial state. An Arab-Jewish hybrid identity already existed in Palestine, as noted in Levy and Harif, “Whose Jewish History Is It Anyway?” (2025).
Although obviously there are New Yorkers, Russians, and so forth among Israelis, most Israelis do not actually look like New Yorkers or Russians. There were a million Russians who emigrated to Israel inspired by translations of Leon Uris, goaded into it by the very real antisemitism that existed in the USSR, and induced to move by a comprehensive range of benefits offered to new (Olim) settlers. However, most of the people in Israel look Arab or Mediterranean because 50% of Israelis originally came from places like Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Morocco, and Ethiopia. A further 20% of the population is of mixed of Mizrahi and Ashkenazi descent. That is roughly 70% of the population of Israel. The remaining 30% are Ashkenazim migrants from Europe and the USA, most of whom settled in Israel many decades ago. 28% of all marriages in Israel are between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim. Scholars, like Ella Shohat even argue that Arab Jews were “lured, tempted, and manipulated” by European Zionists who usurped their identity.
Many of the Mizrahim who came to Israel were deeply hurt by the rejection they faced in their own societies, where they had lived for millennia, and so migrated to Israel. In part, the rejection came because of the aggressive actions of Israel; in part, it came from exclusionary national and Muslim identities in places like Egypt. For Mizrahi Jews from Iraq, Egypt, Yemen and Syria, the connection to their countries of origin did not disappear when they left. It persisted as a living nostalgia as deep as the Ashkenazi longing for a shtetl. Iraqi Jews in the transit camps of the 1950s spoke Iraqi Arabic, celebrated Iraqi music and treasured memories of family life in Iraq. Egyptian Jews in Israel still speak openly of their deep love for Egyptian culture: the smells, spices and colours of Alexandria, for example. One Yemeni Jewish woman described Yemen as the origin, like the roots of a giant tree deep in the earth, saying Yemeni Jews prioritise belonging to the Yemeni-Jewish diaspora over belonging to religion. Syrian Jews recall a lost communal world, as Henry Hamra put it, the whole community was like one family. As one Mizrahi writer summed up, I left Morocco, but it never left me.
This nostalgia also takes literary and institutional form. Andre Aciman’s memoir Out of Egypt reconstructs his family’s Alexandrian world until their expulsion in 1964, describing the exile’s urge to touch and breathe the past again. The Nebi Daniel Association, founded in 2003, works to preserve Egyptian Jewish heritage, with one founder noting that what they left behind belongs to Egypt now. What makes this nostalgia distinctive is its doubleness. Aciman describes the exiles’ obsession with return: “To those who asked, I said I went back to touch and breathe the past again, to walk in shoes I hadn’t worn in years”. Aciman describes exiles as people who see double, feel double, are double. Al-Yahūd al-ʿArab: اليهود العرب.
Gathered into Israel from North Africa, the Middle East, and the Horn of Africa are people from the region to whom falafel, tagine, injera, kibda, foul, and tahdig are far more familiar than gefilte fish, matzos, and cold beetroot borscht with smetana. Moreover, the Hebrew language itself (arguably) only became a real language when it took root in Palestine, where it was reconstituted in the living waters of Mizrahi varieties of Arabic. In a sense, Arabic is the lifeblood of a reconstituted Hebrew; but the use of Arabic words in Hebrew is not appropriation. Rather it is lexicalisation. Hebrew was a liturgical and literary language lacking thousands of everyday terms. In Eliezer Ben-Yehuda’s 1914 proposal to the Hebrew Language Committee, he argued that all Arabic roots should be considered Hebrew roots, and that Arabic should serve as the “first-order source” for coining words missing from Hebrew. The immigrants from Arab lands who arrived in the 1950s brought a living Judeo-Arabic lexicon with them. Their spoken Arabic became an indispensable resource for everyday expressions that no academic committee could invent fast enough.
Oddly, the horrors being perpetrated in Israel/Palestine are, in large part, being perpetrated by people with deep roots in the region, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa. Mizrahi and mixed Mizrahi–Ashkenazi Israelis tend to be more working-class and poorer, and there are more of them in the military. At least 80% of the Border Police as well as infantry brigades like Golani, Givati, and Kfir are soldiers from working-class, Mizrahi backgrounds, from “development towns”. In other words, they are soldiers from Druze, Ethiopian, and Bedouin backgrounds, among others. The officer class, tech, and intelligence units have significantly lower Mizrahi representation and greater numbers of imported/naturalised Ashkenazim.
The Alchemy of State-Building
Map signed by Sykes and Picot, enclosed in Cambon’s 9 May 1916 letter to Grey. Public Domain courtesy of the Royal Geographical Society.
Just as artificial colonial lines elsewhere gradually solidified into authentic national realities through interior circulation and shared institutions, and transport and state infrastructure, Israel too has undergone its own nation-building alchemy. However, by remaining chained to Zionism and the geopolitical objectives of the U.S. empire, Israel subverts its own regional existence and courts existential ruin.
European nation-states are themselves modern, artificial constructions. Prior to 1871, the unified states of Germany and Italy did not exist; European unification was driven by internal political and economic developments (industrialisation, shared language and movements like the Risorgimento).
Sykes-Picot was a tragi-comedy. Middle Eastern borders were drawn externally by British and French diplomats (Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot) in 1916. These borders prioritised imperial interests, specifically pipeline routes, ports, and oil concessions rather than local tribal, ethnic, or religious realities.
Despite these artificial beginnings, time, mobility, shared governance, and infrastructure created authentic national identities. Whether in Namibia, Iraq, or Saudi Arabia, several generations of living within the same legal, educational, and political system transformed artificial borders into real wholes; into societies and nations. The alchemy of nation-building was set into motion.
The example of Saudi Arabia
Mecca unites all regions of Saudi Arabia. Photograph Fadi El Binni
To illustrate how state-building transforms disparate regions into a functional nation, look at Saudi Arabia (founded in its modern form in 1932):
Western dismissals of Arab states as illegitimate artificial constructs or “tribes with flags” insult and misconstrue the process of nation-building in the Middle East. Criticism of Arab nations, especially coming from commentators from or in former colonial or settler-colonial nations like the U.S.A., ignores the colonisers / European colonial entities’ own histories of violent state formation, including the role of genocide, slavery, and territorial expansion, while attacking the legitimacy of the Middle Eastern states that formed around the people who were to live in them.
Regardless of which pebble caused the landslide, Saudi Arabia and similar post-colonial states are now fully formed social and political entities that cannot be reduced to their colonial origins. While Middle Eastern state borders began as colonial abstractions, nearly a century of shared institutions, modernisation, and civic interaction has made these national identities real, functional, and legitimate.
| Region | Historical / Cultural Background | Nation-Building Mechanism |
| Asir / Abha (South) | Culturally close to Yemeni tribal structures | Major state investment in national road networks, centralised government, and public education |
| Tabuk (North) | Bordering the Levant and Transjordan | Integration into the national economy and military apparatus |
| Hejaz (West) | Historic urban centres of Mecca & Medina | Spiritual and symbolic anchor for unified national identity |
| Qatif (East) | Historically Shia-majority coastal oil region | Centralisation of oil infrastructure and state administration |
For example, despite their origins in violent displacement, land expropriation, and systemic oppression, countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia have, over generations, developed distinct political cultures, civic identities, and institutional solidity. Whether through arbitrary colonial lines (like post-WWI Middle Eastern borders) or through settler expansion, people begin to circulate and coexist, and what seemed artificial at first eventually consolidates through time into a real nation.
Of course, there is still a fundamental problem for countries like the USA, Canada and Australia: there is the ongoing questioning of legitimacy by indigenous peoples, like the Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians. All the same, the sociological reality of these nations is that they exist as fully functioning societies alongside groups of people with real and justified grievances.
In South Africa bitter co-dependency led to agreement
Premier Diamond Mine, Cullinan, Gauteng. Photograph NJR ZA Public Domain
Despite the fundamental injustice and oppression of apartheid, South Africans of different races engaged in daily, close-contact economic activities across mining, agriculture, and industry for generations. The master-servant, supervisor-miner, and farmer-worker relationships, though inherently unequal and exploitative, fostered a deep degree of familiarity, habituation, and practical trust over time. This long-standing economic, social, and personal co-dependency created a shared baseline of mutual understanding. Ultimately, this familiarity and existential, co-dependent necessity made a negotiated, single-state political compromise desirable and viable when apartheid ended.
South Africa vs. Israel/Palestine
The South African model of a negotiated settlement and reintegration succeeded (in part) because decades of mandatory, close psychological, social, and economic proximity created a shared, albeit painful, social reality. This mutual familiarity allowed bitter rivals to imagine a common future within the same state.
The Israel/Palestine reality lacks this same underlying foundation of co-dependency and a shared social fabric. Coupled with vast global and regional alliances on both sides, the incentive structures favor separation and prolonged conflict over a shared domestic compromise. The geopolitical landscape of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict differs at root from that of apartheid-era South Africa in several key ways:
| Factor | South African Context | Israeli / Palestinian Context |
| Regional & Global Support | Isolated at the southern tip of the continent; frontline African state allies were economically and militarily weak despite global moral solidarity. | Embedded in a broader regional and global network: approx. 400 million Arabs, 1.9 billion Muslims, and anti-colonial movements worldwide. |
| Economic Interaction | High labour integration and total economic reliance on the Black majority workforce. | Structural separation, displacement, and territorial isolation rather than daily labour integration. |
| Incentive to Compromise | Isolation and mutual economic reliance forced both sides to negotiate within a shared society. | Broad external backing and ideological framing reduce the immediate necessity for local economic or political compromise. |
A political settlement in South Africa was made possible by the underlying co-dependency and compulsory intimacy born of shared labour and geography. In contrast, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is characterised by separation, complete demographic detachment, and broader regional backing, rendering the South African transition template largely inapplicable.
Zionism and Israel’s Proxy Status are Twinned
US aircraft heads with armaments to supply to Israel from Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Photograph Edgar Grimaldo
Zionists linked closely to Zionists in the USA, executing the American agenda in operations across Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and against Iran, serve the broader, long-term geopolitical goals of the United States in maintaining hegemony over the region. In this sense, extreme Zionists are classic compradores.
In reality, there is a severe divergence of interests between the existence of Israel as a fundamentally Middle Eastern state and Israel as an extreme Zionist proxy armed and working exclusively for U.S.-based global corporate capitalism. What serves Washington’s imperial strategy in the short-to-medium term, executed through the agency of an extremist, almost suicidal Zionism, does not serve Israel’s long-term security interests.
The problem of polarisation increases when pro-Palestinian movements are influenced strongly by sectarian Muslim groups. While the moral outrage triggered by Israeli military operations and atrocities in Gaza and the wider region is understandable, deep emotional responses can obscure a clear analytical understanding of strategic reality, especially when resistance to Israel’s actions comes through the lens of an equally polarised Muslim diaspora, such as the sectarian Muslim forces (mainly part of the Bangladeshi and Pakistani diaspora) that focus on issues like the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The slogan “from the river to the sea” is often framed in Islamist terms. Yet, for all the crimes of Israel and the Zionists, the Mizrahim and the majority of people living in Israel cannot go back to Europe, New York, Russia, or Ukraine. The Mizrahim do not come from there. In Shohat’s “The Invention of the Mizrahim” (1999) the Zionist idea that Arabness and Jewishness are mutually exclusive was gradually adopted by Arab nationalist discourse
| Dimension | U.S. Foreign Policy | Israel’s Reality |
| Geopolitical Distance | Insulated by geography; manages regional affairs from afar through military economic and diplomatic means. Sometimes quite extreme. | Geographically surrounded by hostile powers, non-state actors, and regional adversaries. |
| Strategic Isolation | Maintains through economic, military, covert and propaganda power its global influence despite regional the instability that it creates | Absorbs the immediate rage, isolation, and military counteractions of the entire region and global public opinion. Its Zionism closely aligned with US interests. |
| Existential Risk | Minimal direct risk to its own homeland status. | Faces acute existential threats as its strategic depth collapses under prolonged, multi-front confrontation. |
It is vital for Israel to reject permanent Zionist war and embrace an inclusive Middle Eastern identity, which, at root, is the reality of Israel as a nation situated within the Arab world. This means creating a new identity that allows the state to look after its real interests in the region by rejecting Zionism, which serves imperialism and not the people of Israel. This is the quandary Israel is in.
The question arises: How can a community like the Mizrahim; deeply hurt in many cases by their rejection from the Arab countries they originated from, but also deeply nostalgic and connected to them, people who have who have also politically embraced anti-Arab, right-wing nationalism as a response to their own marginalisation, become the driver of a secular, inclusive Middle Eastern identity? At the moment, the Mizrahim, more representative of the working class, are both the key to a different future for Israel / Palestine and the obstacle to it.
References
Aciman, André. Out of Egypt: A Memoir. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995.
Avnery, Uri. Accounts of meetings with Yasser Arafat, beginning with the 1982 Beirut encounter. Various writings and interviews, including later reflections in Haaretz.
Aytürk, İlker. “Revisiting the Language Factor in Zionism: The Hebrew Language Council from 1904 to 1914.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 2010.
Ben-Yehuda, Eliezer. Proposal to the Hebrew Language Committee advocating the use of Arabic roots as a primary source for modern Hebrew vocabulary, circa 1914.
Ducker, Clare Louise. “Jews, Arabs and Arab Jews: The Politics of Identity and Reproduction in Israel.” ISS Working Papers, no. 421, Institute of Social Studies, Feb. 2006.
Hamra, Henry. Oral and public recollections regarding Syrian Jewish communal life. Contemporary statements and interviews.
Klein, Menachem. “Arab Jew in Palestine.” Israel Studies, vol. 19, no. 3, Fall 2014, pp. 134–53.
Levy, Amit, and Hanan Harif. “Whose Jewish History Is It Anyway? Ideology and Practice in the Study of the Jewish Communities from the Islamic World in Nascent Israel.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, vol. 24, no. 2, 2025, pp. 368–92.
Meir, Golda. Widely attributed statement: “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If Israel puts down its weapons today, there would be no more Israel.”
Meron, Ya’akov. “Why Jews Fled the Arab Countries.” Middle East Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 3, Sept. 1995, pp. 47–55.
Nebi Daniel Association. Association Internationale Nebi Daniel. Founded 2003
Rubinstein, Amnon. “Israeli Arabs and Jews: Dispelling the Myths, Narrowing the Gaps.” Jewish Political Studies Review / American Jewish Committee, 2003.
Shohat, Ella. “The Invention of the Mizrahim.” Journal of Palestine Studies, vol. 29, no. 1, Autumn 1999, pp. 5–20.
Richard Steinhardt is a committed socialist and a radical humanist and has published in the Morning Star and a variety of other communist and socialist publications. He believes that human conscience and understanding should always precede dogma and deterministic formulas posturing as ‘social science’.
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