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Mizrahi feminism is a movement within Israeli feminism, which seeks to extricate Mizrahi women from the binary categories of Mizrahi-Ashkenazi and men-women. Mizrahi feminism is inspired by both Black feminism and Intersectional feminism, and seeks to bring about the liberation of women and social equality through recognition of the particular place Mizrahi women hold on the social map, and all the ways it affects Mizrahi women.
Some of the sociological research on ethnicity and gender in Israeli society describes and analyzes the ways in which Mizrahi Jews are excluded and marginalized by the Ashkenazi hegemony, as well as the ways in which women are excluded and marginalized by the patriarchal social structure, the labor market, and the state.
While Marxist feminism had previously linked the gender factor of oppression to that of class, it was Mizrahi feminism that pointed to the close relationship that exists in Israel between the class factor and the ethnic factor, and thus sought to connect more closely the sociological discourse about Mizrahim to the sociological discourse on women in Israel. The basic claim of Mizrahi feminism is that lower-class women find themselves positioned not only at the margins of the class ladder below men, but also below upper-class women. Therefore, the differences between groups of women are sometimes greater than the differences between the men and women from the same social group. [1]
Mizrahi feminism seeks to distinguish between the category "Mizrahi women" and other categories within which they can be subsumed, as in the group "Mizrahim" and the group "women"; it also seeks to express the different and unique aspects of the identity of Mizrahi women. According to this movement, Mizrahi women possess a different life story than Ashkenazi women, one that includes subordination not only as the category of "women" but also as the category of "Mizrahim". In other words, the recognition of the unique point of intersectionality between the two. [2]
Vicki Shiran, the founding mother of the Mizrahi feminism in Israel, wrote the following description:
In the life of a Mizrahi feminist, gender-based oppressions intersect with ethnic ones, and most often with class-based oppressions as well. Thus, she finds herself struggling on several fronts: against masculine oppression, Mizrahi-masculine oppression, the ethnic oppression by Ashkenazi women and men, and her oppressors and exploiters as a member of the lower social class. In addition, Mizrahi feminists are also acutely aware of their own oppressive position as part of the Jewish majority that oppresses the Arab-Palestinian minority, women and men alike. All of which require her to undertake a complex worldview, to look critically into herself and her actions, move seamlessly among different and conflicting identities, and, most importantly, to create a new world through non-violent eradication of the oppressive old world... Mizrahi feminism points to the mechanisms of oppression within feminism itself, which oppress and marginalize women by choosing to ignore its inherent structures of power. Mizrahi feminism thus exposes the prevalent practice of Ashkenazi feminism to articulate itself as a feminism representing all women, and to present the particular agenda of Ashkenazi women of the upper and middle classes as if it were a universal agenda reflecting the priorities of all women in Israel.
Mizrahi feminist academic Ktzia Alon points out that though Mizrahi feminism opens up a rich area of discourse, it also arouses deep conflict, given that both the concept of "feminism" and the concept of "Mizrahi" are mired in controversy in Israel, which when put together is greatly intensified. [4] Henriette Dahan Kalev, out three theoretical conclusions of Mizrahi feminist analysis: "First, blindness, transparency, and exclusion of social categories are not only binary, occurring on the part of the hegemon towards the marginal groups. The phenomena of exclusion, displacement and transparency also exist between groups that are not hegemonic and within them. Marginalized and oppressed groups are not exempt from being discriminatory themselves. Second, an understanding of the difference between transparency, exclusion and marginalization is essential to arriving at the solutions required for social change, whether through legislation or political struggle.Third, legal recognition and affirmative action are conditioned upon the existence of a political struggle to pave the way for public recognition that must precede legal recognition." [1]
The Mizrahi feminist poet Esther Shekalim wrote:
I am a woman in all my entirety, I am an Israeli, I am a Persian, I am religious, I am alone, but I would be happy to find a partner. Each of these elements is a crucial part of my identity. I am also in favor of gender equality and I most certainly write women's poetry because I know that if I do not do for my identity as a woman, no one else will do it for me." [5]
The 10th Feminist Conference, which took place between June 16–18, 1994 in Givat Haviva, was considered the defining event marking the birth of Mizrahi feminism in Israel. [6]
In the 1980s and early 1990s, attempts were made to place Mizrahi feminism on the feminist agenda in Israel, in order to bring attention to the range of issues related to the unique life experiences of non-white women. The Mizrahi feminists claimed that Israeli feminism, which purports to represent all women, in fact represents only the interests of Ashkenazi women of the higher socio-economic classes, and ignores the unique problems of Mizrahi women. Mizrahi feminists also claimed that they experienced oppression and discrimination by white feminists in the course of their activities in the feminist movement. [7] Mizrahi feminists demanded recognition of the discrimination they face on ethnic and class grounds within and outside the feminist movement, the formulation of a new feminist agenda that includes the needs and interests of Mizrahi women, and an egalitarian distribution of resources, control of decision-making and representation in the core organizations of the feminist movement, in which Ashkenazi feminists held exclusive control. [1]
After failing in their attempts to get their issues on the feminist agenda and gain representation within the movement, a group of Mizrahi women, among them Ella Shohat, Tikva Levy, Mira Eliezer, Henriette Dahan-Kalev, Neta Amar, Vicki Shiran and others, initiated an action to "take the mic" at the 10th Feminist Conference in Givat Haviva in 1994. This time, they consciously chose a plan of actions that would ensure they could not be ignored or their issues tabled, even at the cost of open confrontation with the Ashkenazi feminists. [4] The Mizrahi feminists engaged in angry protest at the event, and stormed the stage during the ideological debate, accusing Ashkenazi feminists of racism, oppression and exclusion, and began narrating and describing their experiences as Mizrahi in Israel. Among their stories, the women recounted how their names were taken from them and changed to Israeli names upon their arrival in Israel, the degrading treatment and racism that was and continues to be endemic to Israeli society and institutions, attitudes that pressured or forced them to deny and abandon their Arab culture and their languages of origin in order to integrate into Israeli society. [8]
The stormy discussion that developed at the conference was conducted in high tones and with expressions of anger and outrage and the Mizrahi feminists, and the original discussion that was planned for the evening was wholly disrupted, displaced by an open battle between the participants, who were divided into two groups according to their positions on the Mizrahi issue. The Ashkenazi women, both as individuals and as representatives of such organizations as the Israel Women's Network and the Women's Voice, vehemently rejected the claims that they were partners in the oppression of Mizrahi feminists and claimed that the ethnic issue was irrelevant to feminism and that it was obsolete. The Mizrahi women, on the other hand, accused the Ashkenazi women of silencing them, and of blindness to the intersections of gender, ethnic and class identity of Mizrahi women and demanding Ashkenazi recognition that the Mizrahi and ethnic struggles also affect women's lives and should be integrated immediately into the Israeli feminist struggle. [9]
After the events of the conference, and the refusal of Ashkenazi feminists to recognize the demands of Mizrahi feminists, some Mizrachi women felt that they had no choice but to separate themselves from the feminist movement and to act separately. They organized the first Mizrahi feminist conference, which took place in 1996, and dealt with the history of Mizrahi oppression in Israel, including issues from the participants' childhood and until the fateful feminist conference less than two years earlier. The social and political implications of dealing face-on with the oppression, discrimination, and humiliation that were and still are the lot of the Mizrahi women included the development of Mizrahi feminist consciousness among many Mizrahi women, who had never before seen feminism as a movement that was relevant to them. Later on, after the formulation of Mizrahi feminist theory and the cohesion of the group into a solidly independent movement, the Mizrahi feminist broadened their areas of activity, whether in long-recognized areas of feminism such as legislation, education and culture, or in the founding of uniquely Mizrahi feminist organizations, the primary example of which is Achoti - for Women in Israel, which was founded in 2000 and operates according to the principles of Mizrahi feminism, providing such services as forums and workshops, a community center, a publishing house, political action, education and more. [4]
Similarly to any ethnic movement, Mizrahi feminism deals with the particular oppression occurring at the intersection between Mizrahi ethnicity and gender. Some of the particular issues facing Mizrahi women in Israel, and particularly setting Mizrahi feminism apart from Ashkenazi feminism, include:
Mizrahi feminism draws a great deal of its inspiration from Black feminism, which seeks to abandon the universal white feminist perspective. Whereas white feminism attempts to create a universal female identity, African-American feminism posits that African-American women have a different agenda than white women, which stems from a different life story: a life story consisting of exclusion, marginalization, and social and cultural transparency. And that therefore, black women must recognize that they cannot view the entire feminist agenda through affiliation and belonging to the hegemonic social category (i.e., whites), and to ignore the existence of other categories of transparent and excluded women. [12]
Triple oppression, also called double jeopardy, Jane Crow, or triple exploitation, is a theory developed by black socialists in the United States, such as Claudia Jones. The theory states that a connection exists between various types of oppression, specifically classism, racism, and sexism. It hypothesizes that all three types of oppression need to be overcome at once.
Mizrahi Jews, also known as Mizrahim (מִזְרָחִים) or Mizrachi (מִזְרָחִי) and alternatively referred to as Oriental Jews or Edot HaMizrach, are a grouping of Jewish communities comprising those who remained in the Land of Israel and those who existed in diaspora throughout and around the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) from biblical times into the modern era.
Jewish ethnic divisions refer to many distinctive communities within the world's Jewish population. Although considered a self-identifying ethnicity, there are distinct ethnic subdivisions among Jews, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, mixing with local communities, and subsequent independent evolutions.
The Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition is a social justice organization among Mizrahi Jews in Israel.
The Wadi Salib riots were a series of street demonstrations and acts of vandalism in the Wadi Salib neighborhood of Haifa, Israel, in 1959, sparked by the shooting of a Moroccan Jewish immigrant by police officers. Demonstrators accused the police of ethnic discrimination against Mizrahi Jews.
Vicki Shiran was an Israeli criminologist, sociologist, poet, film director, media personality and activist. She was a leader of a movement promoting Mizrahi Jewish consciousness in Israel. She was an advocate of equal rights and played a key role in the fight for the advancement of Mizrahim. She was among the founders of The Mizrahi Democratic Coalition and the Feminist group Achoti, and is considered one of the founding mothers of the Mizrahi feminist movement.
Ars, or Arsim is a derogatory Hebrew slang term derived from the Arabic word for pimp. It is usually used to denote a certain ethnic stereotype: low-class men of Mizrahi origin who associate with a certain macho subculture. An ars is typically crude, uses vulgar language, hangs out with criminal types and wears flashy clothing and jewelry.
Yehouda Shenhav is an Israeli sociologist and critical theorist. He is known for his contributions in the fields of bureaucracy, management and capitalism, as well as for his research on ethnicity in Israeli society and its relationship with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Smadar Lavie is a Mizrahi U.S.-Israeli anthropologist, author, and activist. She specializes in the anthropology of Egypt, Israel and Palestine, emphasizing issues of race, gender and religion. Lavie is a professor emerita of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, and a visiting scholar at the Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Lavie received her doctorate in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley (1989) and spent nine years as assistant and associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis. She authored The Poetics of Military Occupation, receiving the 1990 Honorable Mention of the Victor Turner Award for Ethnographic Writing, and Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture receiving the 2015 Honorable Mention of the Association of Middle East Women's Studies Book Award Competition. Wrapped in the Flag of Israel's first edition was also one of the four finalists in the 2015 Clifford Geertz Book Award Competition of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion. She also co-edited Creativity/Anthropology and Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity. Lavie won the American Studies Association's 2009 Gloria Anzaldúa Prize for her article, “Staying Put: Crossing the Palestine-Israel Border with Gloria Anzaldúa,” published in Anthropology and Humanism (2011). In 2013, Smadar Lavie won the “Heart at East” Honor Plaque for lifetime service to Mizraḥi communities in Israel-Palestine.
Mizrahi Jews constitute one of the largest Jewish ethnic divisions among Israeli Jews. Mizrahi Jews are descended from Jews in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia and parts of the Caucasus, who had lived for many generations under Muslim rule during the Middle Ages. The vast majority of them left the Muslim-majority countries during the Arab–Israeli conflict, in what is known as the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries.
Feminism in Israel is a complex issue in contemporary Israeli society due to the varied demographic makeup of the country and the country's particular balance of religion and state issues. For secular Israeli women, the successive campaigns for women's rights and equality reflect a similar timeline and progression as Western democracies. For Israeli Arabs, however, the issue of feminism is strongly linked to Palestinian causes. And for Orthodox Jews, selected women's rights and women's representation in the Israeli Parliament are recently debated issues.
Multiracial feminist theory is promoted by women of color (WOC), including Black, Latina, Asian, Native American, and anti-racist white women. In 1996, Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill wrote “Theorizing Difference from Multiracial Feminism," a piece emphasizing intersectionality and the application of intersectional analysis within feminist discourse.
White feminism is a term which is used to describe expressions of feminism which are perceived as focusing on white women but are perceived as failing to address the existence of distinct forms of oppression faced by ethnic minority women and women lacking other privileges. The term has been used to label and criticize theories that are perceived as focusing solely on gender-based inequality. Primarily used as a derogatory label, "white feminism" is typically used to reproach a perceived failure to acknowledge and integrate the intersection of other identity attributes into a broader movement which struggles for equality on more than one front. In white feminism, the oppression of women is analyzed through a single-axis framework, consequently erasing the identity and experiences of ethnic minority women the space. The term has also been used to refer to feminist theories perceived to focus more specifically on the experience of white, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied women, and in which the experiences of women without these characteristics are excluded or marginalized. This criticism has predominantly been leveled against the first waves of feminism which were seen as centered around the empowerment of white middle-class women in Western societies.
Esther Eillam was a central figure in Israeli feminism from its inception. Eillam's activism and her writings on feminism and social justice have garnered her awards and recognition, including an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Henriette Dahan Kalev is an Israeli Senior Lecturer of political science and the founder of the Gender Studies Program at Ben Gurion University. She is one of the founders of the Mizrahi feminist movement, and one of the leading theorists of Mizrahi feminism.
Ahoti – for Women in Israel is a feminist social movement, founded upon the principles of Mizrahi feminism. The movement works to promote issues of economic, social and cultural justice, and to empower and create solidarity among women of the lower socio-economic classes in Israel.
Shula Kehset is an Israeli social and political activist and entrepreneur, Mizrahi feminist, artist, curator, writer, educator, and publisher; one of the founders and the executive director of the MIzrahi feminism movement, "Ahoti – for Women in Israel".
Bracha Serri was an Israeli poet, recipient of the Prime Minister's Literature Award for 1990.
Carmen Elmakiyes Amos is a social and political activist, a medical clown, and a filmmaker. She is a founder of the "Not Nice" social movement, of the Tor Hazahav Mizrahi political movement. In April 2019, she ran in the national elections for the Knesset as a candidate for the Gesher party, led by Orly Levy-Abekasis.
Ketzia Alon is an Israeli academic, social activist, Mizrahi feminist, art curator and critic, and owner of Gama Publishing. She is one of the founders of the Ahoti – for Women in Israel movement.
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