by Uri Cohen
Many smart people have interpreted the Likud's efforts through the prism of a zero-sum struggle between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. Nothing could be more absurd. The struggle the Likud is leading is for national unity and against tribal disintegration.
The Likud is the largest and most significant party in Israel. The changes instituted by Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir and their colleagues in the early 1970s, as members of the opposition, led this movement to the leadership forefront impacting every facet of our lives. This empowerment is predicated on the Likud's character as a unifying social party. For decades, Likud was able to mend the social rifts that could have morphed into those very "detached" tribes poorly evoked by Reuven Rivlin, who in his infamous "tribe" speech said our society would be split and privatized, with a vague nationalist backbone, in which Zionism is waning, to be replaced with a country of all its citizens bereft of its unique Jewish character. The Likud, however, strived for and forged broad national unity. Within this context, the Likud's most important creation was the establishment of the Sephardic middle class.
For nearly 40 years, the Likud party successfully labored to create a new class, which previously didn't exist, and which became one of the most important foundational unifiers in our society. It's not for nothing that Rivlin ignored this group in his vision of tribalism. With its actions, the Likud prevented Israel's disintegration into disconnected, alienated tribes. With that, the forces that had previously enjoyed systematic socio-economic advantages never came to terms with the Likud solidifying a lasting grip in most of the major cities and the periphery and becoming a dominant force. This development forced them to look in the mirror and face their resounding failure to foster social unity. They viewed the new forces in the Likud as an ideological threat, and no less importantly, a threat to jobs and their access to resources that once belonged only to them. Resources of wealth and employment once passed down through inheritance were opened to competition. The Likud ruined their party.
The Likud's fundamental tenet is to cultivate equal and open competition and oppose a system that only serves the privileged class. From this vantage point, we can better understand the efforts to dismantle the Likud and re-anchor these systematic privileges, which will again give them the power to decide who is worthy of getting ahead and whose path will be blocked.
Israel's system of higher education in the early 1970s, prior to the Likud's ascent to power, served one sector of the population only: the Ashkenazi middle class. Anyone who examined this system saw how one-half of the population was offhandedly oppressed and excluded. It was a system of evil and heartless academic tracking implemented by the Labor party. Look at this system today – in terms of accessibility, even if complicated and problematic and full of upward mobility traps that preserve the power of the privileged class, it is completely different than before. The Likud managed to spearhead reforms, which ultimately opened the door to a large and strong Sephardic middle class that doesn't need to ask for, rather receives its rights on the basis of mutual competition. Those positions once earmarked for one particular group became fair game under the Likud in open and equal competition. Anyone who thinks the foundations of inequality are gone, however, is lying to himself, but the foundation of competition is growing stronger and turning into a symbol of new unity.
The ill-disposed reaction from the privileged class has become more dissenting and violent. They view this competition as a danger to their status. In their eyes, the Likud represents the dismantling of their bastions. Their employment in the municipalities, schools, corporations and government ministries, which once belonged to them without contest, have become arenas for fairer competition. Their status has eroded. The members of the advantaged class now face one question: What must they do when the social gaps in Israel are closing in the wake of the Likud's successes? Should they embrace the Sephardic middle class, or rather launch an aggressive and anti-democratic protest movement that seeks to "restore past glories?"
The Likud movement is at the very heart of the deep change taking place in Israel, which explains the hysterics of the privileged class. Consequently, many smart people have interpreted the Likud's efforts through the prism of a zero-sum struggle between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. Nothing could be more absurd. The struggle the Likud is leading is for national unity and against tribal disintegration.
Uri Cohen
Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-likuds-grand-social-project/
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