To download this statement release in PDF format, click here.

The interview can be listened to by clicking here.

This was an interview that touched on the status and cir­cum­stances of Mizrahi (‘eastern’) Jews in Israel. The presenter was Jonathan Green, and the Executive Producer was Claudette Werden. The inter­viewees were Orly Noy, an Israeli born in Iran and Sara Saleh, an Aus­trali­an citizen of Palestini­an back­ground. Ms Noy is presently on a tour of Australia promoting “an Arab and Middle Eastern altern­at­ive to Zionism”.

The interview and the program could fairly be cat­egor­ised as an “analysis of current events” for the purposes of the ABC’s Code of Practice 2019, and the accuracy standard therefore applies. The interview failed to meet that standard. The following is a non-exhaust­ive list of the factual errors that went unchal­lenged:

1. Ms Noy described Mizrachi Jews as “the Jewish com­munit­ies who immig­rated to Israel mainly in the early 1950s after the estab­lish­ment of the State of Israel”. In fact most of the Jews who immig­rated to Israel in the early 1950s were Holocaust survivors from Europe. Mizrachi Jews are Jews who were born in countries in the Middle East, including Israel. There is some debate about whether this includes Jews who came from North African countries such as Egypt, Morocco, Libya and Tunisia, but Ms Noy missed this nuance com­pletely.

2. Ms Noy stated that Israel “excludes” its Mizrachi Jewish citizens and also its Arab citizens. She said Mizrachi Jews in Israel “have the sad choice to either hold onto this [Arab] identity” or pay “the price of not being included in the Zionist project”. In fact Mizrachi Jews (and Arab citizens of Israel) have exactly the same voting rights, and legal, civil and religious rights, as Jews of European back­ground, making a nonsense of Ms Saleh’s spurious claim that “it’s apartheid”. There have been three Mizrachi Israeli Pres­id­ents (Yitzhak Navon, Moshe Katsav and the current President, Reuven Rivlin, a native of Jerusalem). Mizrachi Jews are the majority group in the Jewish pop­u­la­tion (as Ms Noy acknow­ledged), and they are therefore prominent in gov­ern­ment and politics, the media, academia, culture, business, sport, religion and the military: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_Mizrahi_and_Sephardi_Jews

3. Ms Noy stated: “you’ll see Mizrahis in the more low tech positions and these are the ones that, unlike the European origin Jews, who are sitting, you know, in air con­di­tioned com­mand­ing rooms, are sending the Mizrahis to the check­points, to the daily con­front­a­tion with the Palestini­ans”. The following is only a sample of Mizrachi Jews who have held the highest offices and ranks in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF): Gabi Ashkenazi – Former Chief of the IDF General Staff; Eitan Ben Eliyahu – Former Major General in the IDF; Gadi Eizenkot – chief of staff of the IDF, who retired in January 2019; David Elazar – Former Chief of the IDF General Staff; Dan Halutz – Former chief of staff of the IDF; Moshe Levi – Former Chief of the IDF General Staff; Shaul Mofaz – Former Israeli Minister of Defense, Former Chief of the IDF General Staff; Yitzhak Mordechai – former general and former Israeli Minister of Defense.

4. One truthful statement made by Ms Noy was that “very few Mizrahis today will even define them­selves as Arab Jews. That was a concept intro­duced by Mizrahi academics and intel­li­gent­sia, but the common Mizrahi would do everything within his or her power to distance himself or herself from the Arab identity”. However, she failed to identify the cause, saying only “that is what we have been taught for so many years, that you don’t want to identify yourself with being an Arab”. What is con­spicu­ously missing from Ms Noy’s narrative is how and why some 850,000 Mizrachi Jews left their countries of birth in the Middle East and North Africa in the first place. In short it is because they were subjected to precisely the forms of per­se­cu­tion and dis­crim­in­a­tion in those countries which Ms Noy falsely alleges about Israel. The oft-repeated claim that Jews lived in safety under Muslim rule, and that their problems actually began with the advent of Zionism, is a myth. Whilst Jewish com­munit­ies in Arab lands generally fared better than those in Europe, they too faced periodic, state-orches­trated outbreaks of violence and other forms of per­se­cu­tion, and were always treated as second class citizens – they paid addi­tion­al taxes, had no political rights, and, by law, their testimony in court counted for half the value of that of a non-Jew. From the 1940s onwards, Jews in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Syria, and Yemen had their property and belong­ings con­fis­cated, and they were subjected to severe anti-Jewish riots instig­ated by their respect­ive gov­ern­ments. Private and communal prop­er­ties owned by Jews were nation­al­ised, bank accounts were frozen, and Jews were dismissed en masse from employ­ment. This policy made no dis­tinc­tion between Zionists and non-Zionists; it did not separate those who hoped to stay in the places where their ancestors had lived for centuries from those who were glad to emigrate. Of the 820,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands between 1948 and 1972, more than 200,000 found refuge in Europe and North America while 586,000 were resettled in Israel – at great expense to the Israeli gov­ern­ment, and in most cases without any com­pens­a­tion from the Arab gov­ern­ments who had con­fis­cated their pos­ses­sions. In the cases where com­pens­a­tion was paid, it was at well below market value at the time of com­pens­a­tion. Today there are only a few thousand Jews left in Arab countries, and they are even less safe than members of Christian com­munit­ies. Given that back­ground, Mizrachi Jews are generally more hardline in their attitudes towards their Palestini­an and other Arab neigh­bours than Jews of European back­ground. Mizrachi Jews over­whelm­ingly vote for right wing and religious parties. Because of their long history of per­se­cu­tion and dis­crim­in­a­tion in Arab countries, very few of them see them­selves in any sense as “Arab Jews” or of Arab nation­al­ity.

The ABC Code also states : “A demo­crat­ic society depends on diverse sources of reliable inform­a­tion and con­tend­ing opinions”. The interview mani­festly failed to meet the standard that it would not “unduly favour one per­spect­ive over another.” Indeed, the inter­viewees agreed with each other “abso­lutely” (to use their own word), and the presenter did not put any contrary facts or per­spect­ives to the inter­viewees to respond to. It was a ‘soft’ interview, devoid of “con­tend­ing opinions”.

The ABC has an oblig­a­tion to “Present a diversity of per­spect­ives so that, over time, no sig­ni­fic­ant strand of thought or belief within the community is knowingly excluded or dis­pro­por­tion­ately rep­res­en­ted.” May I suggest that, in order to get a different view, you interview Eman Amasha, an Israeli woman of Druze, Arabic-speaking back­ground. Not­with­stand­ing Ms Noy’s alleg­a­tions about the exclusion of non-Europeans from Israeli society, Ms Amasha is the spokes­per­son of the Embassy of Israel in Australia.

Contact
Peter Wertheim AM | co-CEO
ph: 02 8353 8500 | m: 0408 160 904 | fax 02 9361 5888
e: [email protected] | www.ecaj.org.au