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few European Jews in Israel view it in a context of a complex and
long reckoning between the Jews and Iraqi nationalism which has
ousted 100,000 Jews from Iraq and sequestered their property: for
many 'Oriental' Jews this is precisely the context in which such an
Israeli act should be viewed. No wonder that the bombing of the
Iraqi reactor was immensely popular among non-European voters
much more than among European ones; nor should it come as a sur–
prise that the 'Peace Now' movement has yet to show any significant
support among the Sephardi population: it is almost exclusively
made up of 'Europeans.'
Public opinion polls suggest that on all issues related to the
Arab-Israeli conflict, 'Oriental' Jews tend to hold much more
hawkish attitudes than 'European' ones. With the spread of
secondary and higher education among the 'Oriental' population,
such hawkish views tend to diminish somehow, yet they remain still
more hawkish than the views of 'Europeans' with comparable educa–
tion. Even within the Labor Party, most 'Oriental' members of
Knesseth belong to the more hawkish wing of the Party.
All these elements combined together to bring about the
situation in which Labor tended to be much weaker in recent elec–
tions among 'Oriental' voters than among 'European' ones, and
Likud tended to draw most of its support from the 'Oriental' vote . In
the 1981 elections, 70% of the Labor vote came from the 'European'
electorate, and only 30 % from 'Oriental' voters. In the Likud, the
obverse picture obtains: 68
%
of the Likud voters were 'Oriental' and
only 32% were 'European.' These trends have been visible for more
than a decade, but with the growth of the 'Oriental' vote, as well as
with their growing emancipation from the Labor-dominated bureau–
cracy, which to a large extent influenced and directed their vote in
their first years of immigration, when they were still newcomers and
not always familiar with the mechanics of election, the decisive
impact of this shift has only now come to be felt as perhaps the
dominant feature of the Israeli political scene.
The paradox of this is, of course, that Menachem Begin, the
idol of the 'Oriental' electorate, could not be less of an 'Oriental'
himself. With his conservative suits, his proper ties and cuff-links,
his frequent Latin quotations (,status quo ante,' 'pacta sunt ser–
vanda,' 'habemus pacem'), nobody cou ld be further removed from
the ambience of the 'Oriental' masses than this scion of the Russo–
Polish Jewish Pale of Settlement. The nationalist, ethno-centric, tra–
dition-oriented, and hierarchical style of leadership projected by
Begin is nonetheless admirably suited to the emotional and cu ltural
