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T

el Aviv — The political
nationalism exhibited
by Jews of Oriental
origin, or Sephardim, has less
to do with their history of liv-
ing. among Arabs than with
their 40 years in Israel,
according to Dr. Yoram Peri of
Tel Aviv University.
He analyzed the various
theories put forward by social
researchers during a recent
conference on "Ethnic
Origins and Political Trends"
at the Hebrew University's
Truman Institute.
Some social scientists claim
that 1,000-1,500 years of liv-
ing in close proximity to
Moslems and Arabs in the
Middle East, from the borders
of India to the North African
shores of the Atlantic Ocean,
have led the Sephardim to
say: "We know (the Arabs).
We've lived among them. We
know that they understand
only force?'
Other researchers say that
the nationalistic and anti-
Arab feelings of Sephardi
Jews stem from the approach
that "We've suffered from the
Arabs in our past history. We
now want to get even with
them."
But Peri suggested that a
sophisticated analysis of the
Israeli Sephardi nationalism
indicates a more recent
psychological reason with
origins in the early days of
the State of Israel.
By and large, Oriental Jews
feel that they were placed at
socioeconomic disadvantage
by the Jews of European
origin, the Ashkenazim, who
were the majority and leader-
ship in the 1950s, he noted.

Many members of the im-
migrating Jewish com-
munities of Egypt, Lebanon,
Iraq, North Africa, Syria and
Yemen found that their so-
called transitory development
town settlements became per-
manent residential slums.
This naturally led to anger
and frustration. And conven-
tional wisdom is that in corn-
petition between older and
more settled residents, the
conflict is transferred into
hostility toward a communi-
ty even lower than
themselves. In the case of the
Sephardim, that meant the
Arabs.

But Peri rejected such a
simplistic "psychological
estimation" of the reasons for
the nationalistic voting pat-
terns on the part of Sephar-
dim compared to the
Ashkenazim.
He agreed that the basis for
political outlooks can usually
be traced back to the educa-
tion of the voter, but the
educational gap between
Ashkenazim and Sephardim
in Israel is lessening, even
though it has not yet com-
pletely disappeared.
In the universities, for ex-
ample, only some 20 percent
of the student body is from
the Oriental sector, which
comprises slightly above 50
percent of Israel's Jewish
population.
Among lesser-educated
citizens, the level of
"hawkishness" is higher.
Better-educated people tend
to be more open in their
thinking and behavior, more
ready to compromise, against
hard-fist policies vis-a-vis the
Arabs, more open to social
contacts with them.
Political scientists and

